In Mysthea, there are two kinds of combat that players can face. First, through a special action players can choose to trigger a battle in a region. Second, players may be forced to face some formidable monsters, so strong they will require the Champions to band together if they want to have a chance of surviving. Let's take a closer look at both situations.

Triggering a battle is a special action a player might choose during their turn. To trigger a battle, a player will have to discharge an Artefact token. Next, the player selects a region where they have at least 1 unit (champion, troop, golem or fortification) and where there is at least 1 enemy unit.

Then, all players who are present in the selected region must put their hands under the table at the same time and secretly choose either to not react (and place an empty hand palm down on the table) or to react (choose a card from their hand and hide it in their palm on the table).

Players reveal their choices simultaneously. Each card chosen in battle has a color, which corresponds to a reaction. Players perform the reaction associated with their chosen card. For example, if a player reveals a yellow card, he will retreat units from the region where the battle is taking place. Red cards mean attack, green sacrifice, and so on.

After all the players have played out their chosen reactions, points are tallied for units still remaining in the battle region. All but the winning player will have to remove units from that region and place them back on their player board.

The number of units you must remove is equal to the difference in Strength Points between the strongest player and yourself.

The second kind of combat players face is against the formidable monsters of the islands of Mysthea.

If a monster card is revealed, the monster attacks the island where it is currently located. Each monster has a different Strength value, and players must join forces to defeat it! This is done by adding the Strength points of all the players on the island, and comparing the total with the Strength of the monster.

If they survive, each player who took part in fight will get a bonus, which is different for every monster.

If, however, they fail, the monster eliminates all the units of each player located in one of the 3 regions of the island attacked. After attacking, whether or not beaten, the monster will then move to the next island clockwise, to wreak havoc once again!

A new monster comes into play at the beginning of every Era. And, to mix things up even more, if a Storm card is revealed, monsters will move one island clockwise at a certain time in the end of that Era.

Stay tuned for more on game mechanics of Mysthea. Next week, we will be talking about Encounters, and the game's variable scoring system.