Card Game Review: ‘Woven in Myth’

It’s extremely difficult to find a good two-player tabletop game to play while you wait for the rest of your playgroup. Often you end up just sitting around and building the tallest meeple tower you can. So I’m happy to find a great filler game to play with either my friends or my wife.

Sure, you can take out that 2-5 player game that really isn’t great unless you have at least four players and challenge each other. But you’ll eventually put it away in favor a lightsaber fight because you’re utterly bored.

But WildBird Games’ dungeon crawling two-player card game Woven in Myth fills this niche perfectly.

The Setup

The setup is simple and fast. You shuffle the cards and lay out a 6×6 vertical map between you and your friend. When laying out the cards, you place them from left to right.

The game comes with two pawns, one black and one white. The row in front of each player is the starting row. And the player may choose upon which starting row card to place their pawn.

This is the fastest setup for a themed card game I’ve seen since Go Fish. And it doesn’t diminish the complexity of the game one bit.

The Design

Woven in Myth is a beautifully drawn game. Designer Matt Bromley draws every illustration by hand before enhancing it on his computer. And his attention to detail is quite apparent.

Myth, as the name of the game suggests, is the major theme for each illustration. The event cards each feature a mythical creature of some sort. They includes faeries, minotaurs, unicorns, and even Cthulhu.

Bromley used Celtic motifs across all illustrations, lending a particularly ancient feel to the game. When opening the box, you almost expect to find stone game pieces.

When I asked Matt if he had included any hidden meaning in his images like Apple did with their “forbidden fruit” logo, Matt only winked and told me I had to figure it out for myself.

Gameplay

This is where Woven in Myth really shines. Any filler game has to be fast-paced and easy to pick up. This one wins on all fronts.

The players are in a labyrinth and the goal is to reach the opponent’s side and escape. This is much harder than it seems. Event cards can change the game in any turn.

A player’s turn consists of two actions. For one action they can choose to flip, rotate, replace, or resurrect a card. For the second action, they can move their pawn to an adjacent connecting corridor card.

They can move their pawn before or after the card manipulation action. And they can forfeit their move if they want.

The event cards can be either visible or hidden. The cards are double-sided, so deciding to flip a card near your pawn can be either disastrous or beneficial. I learned quickly that flipping cards near your opponent might be a good idea.

The Vortex cards will rotate all adjacent cards. The Cthulhu card discards the row and column it’s in and makes the character near it retreat. Essentially, if you’re adjacent to an event card and there is no wall between you and it, you reap the “rewards” of the card.

The gameplay of the Woven in Myth card game mixes the perfect amounts of luck and strategy. If you’re looking for a game that is fast and requires a good bit of strategy, get this one. And remember, when you enter the labyrinth, you may never come out.