Mercurial: Rolling the Dice and Searching for a Story
Craft spells to produce the ruin or restoration needed to complete heroic deeds in the magical and bright world of Mercurial.
December is often known as Dicember around the solo board game world for a celebration of all sorts of dice games! I somehow started to avoid dice entirely, until I decided it was time to bring Mercurial to my table. This gorgeous title features some amazing artwork and beautiful engraved dice. Time to explore the land and cast some awesome spells!
Game Overview
Game Name: Mercurial
Publication Year: 2023
Designer: David Goh
Artists: Many (7 Credited)
Publishers: Good Games Publishing & Hyperlixir
Solo Mode: Included in the Base Game
Dice provide the elements to cast spells, yet sometimes a spell alteration is needed to convert the elements. When the right combination is formed, the spell is cast to complete a heroic deed! As the deck runs out, it becomes a race to finish the most valuable deeds and earn arcanas.
First Play
December 3, 2023
Complexity
3
Latest Play
December 3, 2023
Expansions
1
Setup Time
5 Minutes
Lifetime Plays
2
Play Time
45 Minutes
High Score
62
Game Area
32" x 26"
Low Score
60
Gorgeous Components
This is a high quality production that shows right from the start. The box sleeve for this deluxe edition is like another box, and the insert is one of the best I’ve seen in awhile!
All of the cards are excellent, being enormous with some amazing artwork in different styles that blend nicely.
My husband still insists on sleeves whenever possible for the games he thinks we’ll bring to game nights… I contend that sleeves are unnecessary, but I lost this battle. Ha!
Everything about this is visually beautiful, and I mean that sincerely! So much to love about the table presence.
Elementary, Watson?
I almost incorporated the expansion, yet the setup steps seemed a little confusing for solo. The base game includes a solo mode, though, so that’s where I decided to start!
My character was the Elementalist. Effectively, dice provide elements, spell alterations may change those elements, and they’re used to power spells.
Mana and acuity act as additional resources, since it usually makes sense to use a single die per spell.
Absolutely spend some time admiring the artwork here! This is easily the strongest part of the game.
Casting All the Spells
More amazing artwork! There are limited duplicates in the deck. Spells typically belong to 1 or 2 elements, which are used to power them up with the correct sort of dice.
The goal is to produce the right amount of ruin or restoration to complete a heroic deed. It’s a clever system, though… Ruin and restoration subtract from each other!
Even if a spell can be powered by the dice, it doesn’t mean that’s going to be the right choice. Neat decisions!
But this is the first part of where the theme dissolves… With no text descriptions, these spells don’t mean a lot.
Once Upin a Time…
The flavor text at the start of this rulebook is awesome, and paints the picture of a magical world with a story.
As I played and completed heroic deeds, I didn’t know exactly what was going on with these scenes. Beautiful artwork just didn’t really tie things together for me.
I’m someone who can piece together stories pretty easily, and it was hard to understand how these could be interpreted as both scenes of ruin and restoration.
Without that story and very repetitive gameplay, I found myself just looking forward to running out of spell cards.
Remembering What Large Artwork Conveys
Whenever I see cards with large artwork that takes up almost all of the visible area, I usually expect to see more of a story-driven game. Maybe that’s wrong on my part, yet huge art certainly is all about the theme! I was just struggling to figure out what my character was doing. In the end, this meant that I was only looking at the point values.
Now, I’ll admit I might be a bit picky. Yet look at the above pieces. Amazing and beautiful, but what’s happening? More importantly, how do these translate into what I’m doing? This is where the disconnect happened for me. It all boiled down to rotating dice and getting the right values, rather than thinking of the elements and possible story threads.
Playing Through Again
Gameplay was mostly an exercise in converting elements and powering up as many spells as possible with a small number of dice… Usually only assigning 1 to a single card.
With the Arcanist, nothing felt different. I didn’t mind this that much, though. There was just so much iconography I constantly had to reference and nothing exciting.
Abilities never chained together, and the only cool thing I pulled off were a few equilibrium spells for heroic deeds.
When ruin and ruination are cast at the exact same value, they cancel each other out for a bonus. Neat, but rare.
In Appreciation of Dice
Such beautiful dice! It felt like a shame to not enjoy using them more, since they really shine and make the game a bit fun during those rolls… Yet rolls are pretty uncommon.
With the spell alteration cards, it was more about finding out how to turn these dice to the elements I needed.
The solo mode cycled out the oldest cards, though, so this kept things moving along. It just dragged on for too long.
I had a chance to play multiplayer with Ganesh, and even with 2 players, it took us hours to reach the end. Great ideas here, yet it overstays its welcome for what it offers.
Session Overview
Play Number: 1 & 2
Solo Mode: Included in the Base Game
Outcome: 60 & 62 (2 Wins)
Technically, my scores were just barely decent, but I’ll count that as a success! Achieving equilibrium was the highlight of my plays, as I only pulled it off about 2 or 3 times. But… That was it. I can see this one being pretty fun for someone who loves working out optimal resource conversion choices and maybe achieving equilibrium with every spell. Sadly, this game is absolutely beautiful and high quality, but won’t be returning to my solo table.
%
1 Play
Affordability
Price & Value
5
Functionality
Challenges & Mechanics
8
Originality
Design & Theme
7
Quality
Components & Rules
6
Reusability
Achievement & Enjoyment
5
Variability
Distinctness & Randomness
4
+ Pros (Positives)
- Everything about the production is amazing and utilizes the best quality, including the insert and resource bins.
- Achieving equilibrium is a rather fun part of gameplay that isn’t easy to pull off, yet comes with great bonuses.
- Bad rolls with the dice don’t mean that much with the many ways that spell alterations can change their faces.
- Deciding which heroic deed to complete is important, as the reward is different and can mean an additional die.
- Arcanas require specific spell combinations, which can help guide decisions about what spell cards to pick up.
- Cycling out cards in the solo mode means that some good options are lost, unless carefully planned for.
– Cons (Negatives)
- The rulebook is extra lengthy and written in a way that makes the game seem more complex than it actually is.
- Play time drags on and involves a lot of repetitive steps, which doesn’t help make anything stand out.
- Without any descriptions, the artwork on the spells and heroic deeds doesn’t convey a storyline.
- It doesn’t take long to figure out the general strategy and sequence to make the most of the elemental dice.
Victory Conditions
Score 60+ Points
- Overall Goal Progress 75%
Goals and Milestones
Score at least 60 points.
Win at least 1 game as the Arcanist.
Win at least 1 game as the Elementalist.
Score at least 70 points.
Continue the Conversation
What do you enjoy about Mercurial? Have you managed to complete a lot of the solo achievements? I loved seeing this out on my table, and it feels like it could have been even better with a little more streamlining. Still, it’s always nice to find ways to enjoy a game that might not stick around forever! I know I’ll remember this one for its lovely artwork.
The first thing I noticed on this post were the card sleeves… I wasn’t sure if you had converted until I actually started reading. Did you find the cards easier to shuffle?
In some respects, sleeving makes shuffling easier, but I’m prone to knocking over stacks or just being completely clumsy and sending the cards flying! Unsleeved is still my preferred way to play with cards. You’ll usually be able to tell which games are more in my husband’s realm by the presence of sleeves. We’ll continue to jokingly have opposite opinions on this forever. Ha!