Mindbug & Expansions Review - You Can't Just Have The Best, You Have To Be The Best

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In Mindbug, you summon hybrid creatures and send them to battle against your opponent - but when you summon a creature, the opponent may use one of their Mindbugs to take control of it. Outwit your opponent in a fascinating tactical duel in which having the best cards and playing them at the wrong time can be deadly for yourself.
Cards in Mindbug represent weird creatures that all come with unique and powerful abilities such as a Compost Dragon, a Snail Hydra, or a Kangasaurus Rex. Each player starts the game with ten creature cards (five in hand and five in a draw pile) and tries to use them to reduce the opponent's life total to zero. In addition, every player receives two Mindbug cards that can be used to mind control an opposing creature when it is played. This innovative Mindbug mechanism is the core of the game and leads to a unique decision-making process that makes Mindbug feel utterly different from any other card game.
Playing a card doesn't require any resources in Mindbug. As a result, the game has no ramp-up phase (such as gathering resources) and doesn't require weak cards. Since there is also no deck-building, you can start playing right away from a single deck. There is also no unfair advantage as players draw cards from the same deck and always get the chance to mind control the strongest opposing cards. In the end, it all comes down to your own decisions, making the game extremely fair and competitive at the same time.
BGG Link - boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/3...
TimeStamps:
0:00:00 - Overview
0:04:10 - Expansions
0:06:05 - Ease of Play
0:06:40 - What I Like
0:08:34 - What I Don’t Like
0:09:35 - What I Can See Others Not Liking
0:10:00 - Final Thoughts
0:11:15 - Recommendations
5.0 - My absolutely favorite games. You can pry them out of my cold dead hands.
4.5 - Love this game! At the same time missing something that would make it a 5. Could be hard to table, lacking variability, a little light, etc.
4.0 - Really great game, almost always keeping, although has meaningful complaints as to what takes away from the experience.
3.5 - Really enjoyed, don't love it, may lose out to better games but the idea of never playing again is a bit sad.
3.0 - A good game, would play and suggest with the right people, if I never played it again wouldn't lose any sleep.
2.5 - A game I'd play again , but will never suggest it myself
2.0 - A game I don't want to play again
1.5 - A game I can't find any reason to recommend
1.0 - A game that is just bad.
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[@tjp2957]

This has less luck in it than Radlands IMO, a lovely game

[@todorkon]

This game is designed by several people (one of them with a comment here) and if remember correctly, Richard Garfield joined them later in the process. Saying just "designed by Richard Garfield" does not seem right to me, even if it may be that his name helps sell the game more than his fellow co-designers names..

[@rightfulkingbob6753]

I agree it slightly frustrates me every time someone acts like Richard Garfield made the whole game, I love him but it’s a team effort and he only joined later on

[@christiankudahl7405]

Thanks a lot for the review, Alex :)

[@ttocsisme]

Just picked up the cheapest version in a Christmas order. Probably stick with the base version. Fun on the first play. Also picked up Wizards of the grimoire. I am looking forward to playing that in person. It has been fun on BGA with my partner.

[@SuBerial]

Base version is really good, you don't really need more cards for this type of game.

[@srebme2]

The mind game sounds really interesting…

[@martinvitek5945]

Have only base game, but after few games we found some cards, where you have to play mindbug whenever these cards came to play 😅

[@serd213]

I'd like to buy this game, but I'm wondering, what cards require a mindbug?

[@martinvitek5945]

⁠@@serd213 Don’t get me wrong, the game is great. The issue happens when people playing know all or at least most of the cards, as the game is not exactly balanced. This is mitigated by mindbugs. Don’t know exact name in english, but for example there is card like Girrafodyl (mix of girrafe and crocodyle) that returns all the cards from the players discard pile to his hand when this card comes to play.

[@leroy7647]

Then again if you almost killed your opponent, having more cards isn't necessarily going to improve things. You might actually just need a sneaky or direct damage card in. I just got my copy and I cannot wait to sleeve it (card quality is meh) and play it. Such delicate and interwoven mechanics condensed from Magic but maybe also from a game as HearthStone. I never liked the feeling of being overwhelmed by some card I didn't know about that just totally destroyed me, I love the premise of a way smaller system that you can easily learn by heart, that is almost reduced to rock paper scissors, but not quite and still keeps a lot of tactics.

[@kendagera]

Awesome game. I can only recommend it, since I have it from the start of the campain. PS. : You did 2 huge mistake in the beginning, forgetting to discard 2 cards (play effect of the ferret bomber). And playing the game alone, which is not that fun 🤣