Mythwind | The Ranger | First Impressions

I have had the pleasure of playing as The Ranger two times now, and while I think there is a lot to like about this character and how he interacts with the world of Mythwind differently than everyone else, I’m not completely sold on the entire package. This isn’t to say The Ranger is a bad character, but rather that I’ve had more fun playing as The Farmer and the The Crafter so far in my Mythwind journey. Let’s take a dive into The Ranger, and see what you can do!

The Ranger is a unique character that can spend time away from the town on expeditions. These expeditions, depening on which difficulty you pick, can range from 3 days away in the wilderness to 5 days away. When not out exploring, you will spend your turns adding stock to your inventory so that you can bring more and different items with you on your next adventure.

The idea of grabbing new items likes a hatchet, trap or compass is actually really cool, and based on the cards that get flipped, some tools and goods will be more valuable than others. The items can also be used to buy new skills and more that allow you to manipulate decks, and even see one of the cards you will explore prior to actually exploring it.

If you crave randomness and adventure, then The Ranger is an easy choice as you get a fair amount of both of these things. While you can combat the randomness by revealing Exploration cards so you know what to expect, I personally still felt there was too much randomness for me. Yes, the cards on the back do indicate what tools or goods you likely want to have, but when it comes to doing Preparedness Checks you need to make sure the position of your goods/tools in your pack matches the position on the card.

Again, there are more ways to manipulate this with the ability to move items depending on a variety of factors, and yes, I fully acknowledge that as you upgrade The Ranger, you take more and more luck out of the equation. But for me, there is too much luck, and there is nothing worse than spending 3 of your 10 days in Mythwind exploring the wilderness, only to come back with almost nothing to show for it. And that, unfortunately, happened to me a few too many times over a few plays.

I want to acknowledge here that just because The Ranger is my least favourite character to play as does not mean the character itself isn’t worth trying. I’ve heard from many fans of the game who love playing as the Ranger, so this will come down to personal preference. Everything else about the ranger is fabulous, from the quality of the cards you will be handling a lot, to the miniature itself which is amazing. The quality is there, the production value is there, and more many the gameplay is going to be there too. For me, it just didn’t quite hit, and while I will suggest him to others when we play as a group, it’s not something I will play solo again.