Myths & Legends - The Game That Took On Magic

Sometimes I get weirded out when I find out a card game kind of just came and went, stuck around for quite a while and then just disappeared without anyone noticing. Or at least I didn't notice. What if I told you this game enjoyed a solid seven-year run fending off the likes of Magic the Gathering and Pokemon What if I told you this magic clone came and went and despite being the nation's most popular card game you've never heard of it. And by nation I am of course referring to the Republic of Chile. What's up my movers and shakers, I'm Dave, this is MSPaints and this is Myths and Legends. Yeah, along with copper and lithium we can also count like middle child Magic the Gathering knockoffs as Chile's chief exports of the 2000s. Okay, so it is no mystery to deep lore followers of MSPaints that I absolutely love me some bollocks magic clones. Yeah, it's kind of cruel. Sometimes I feel like a teacher laughing at all the kids awful drawings after school and in the case of, you know, our Towers in Time video the Towers in Time the trading card game I am in fact laughing at awful drawings made by children. But what I actually enjoy the most about all these magic knockoffs is the honest-to-god effort that was put in and the hard-fought confidence some of them had that they were going to come into the trading card game market swinging and kind of, you know, just hold their head high and stand the test of time. The test of Towers in Time. So yeah, today we are talking about Chile's Ichiban number one okay cool Magic the Gathering clone. Myths and Legends. Made by Salo in the year 2000 Myths and Legends is a gold depletion fantasy historical Myths and Legends battler thing. And by gold you probably think I mean mana oddly no I don't no I don't it's a deck depletion game gold is mana is deck right yeah it's a deck depletion nice and simple the deck is your currency but gold is also your currency Myths and Legends ran for a staggering 39 sets what the **** you know sometimes I get ridiculed for sitting in my dungeon all day just me and Hector my frog and we have no idea what's going on in the world outside you know like we have no idea that Trump got re-elected no I didn't know he got re-elected but did you know that Myths and Legends ran for seven years with 39 sets no neither did I with over 3,000 cards of course not all the expansions made it out of Chile but a good chunk of the game was translated into English and released in the United States and Europe Myths and Legends core theme was as you might imagine Myths and Legends which saw Arthurian knights fighting dragons fending off attacks from Anubis and frost giants and if you stuck around for the final set they released Anubis could fight a load of World War I planes tanks and characters **** yeah so I got very lucky and found a job lot of this stuff on eBay for 20 pounds five starter decks and a booster box which I think has been rummaged through and all of the gold resource cards have been apparently taken out but whatever five starter decks will do me I have had a little play of this and can report it is fine yeah I mean I play a lot of these weird card games here and there usually dead ones but the only one that really sticks around for me is the Final Fantasy trading card game yeah **** that magic the gathering set that's coming out this thing is where the party's at you might want to check those little indie links down below if you want to see what broadsword wargaming has in stock for this game anyway speaking of a lot of fun let's dive into Myths and Legends so there are five types of cards totems are essentially buff cards that sit on the battlefield until their ability is used allies yeah these are your warrior cards that do the slapping and take the slapping talismans are an instant play spell thing that have a one-time burn and gone effect gold cards which act as your currency let you play every other card and weapons cards which allow you to upgrade your ally cards or if it's a cursed sword for example downgrade your opponent's ally cards as with all non-magic the gathering games from around this time the battlefield is a convoluted mess of bollocks you place your castle deck first yeah this is where you draw all your gear from but also when this deck runs out you've lost the game so you know don't let your deck run out your gold reserve area sits behind your castle deck this is where you can play your gold cards at the start of the turn you spend that gold it goes into the used gold pile in front of your castle deck okay and your defense line to the right of the castle deck and that's allies that are acting like lumberjack wrestlers you know match extras ready to block incoming alpacas okay and the attack line is directly above that where in my turn i can push defenders into an attacking stance and there's a ruin pile which is a fancy directive four term for a discard pile that's to the left of the castle deck and the support line at the very back of the area where your totems can sit and wait to ruin everyone's day with their effects and then we have the exile pile jesus ******* christ which sits to the left of your ruin pile and your discard pile has a sub discard pile that contains cards with permanent effects that still have an ongoing effect even though they've done their thing each player draws up eight cards and you may play a gold card to the gold reserves you can then spend that gold to pay for any kind of other card that you want as you move to the fighting phase sorry i meant the mythological battle phase the opponent declares defenders to a matched attacker then the talisman war begins yeah man talisman war any talismans or totems you have ready to fire off their effects can be paid for now and buffing can commence yeah the whole mythological battle phase where you're choosing attackers and pairing stuff up to defend he's kind of edging your bets to see what kind of resources your opponent has in reserve to buff up their guys after you've committed the cards so it's worth kind of just taking your time seeing what your opponent's got because he could just give them all spitfires and ak-47s if you wanted i would love to give a snake a spitfire once every effect has been resolved you kind of just see who's got the highest power at the end of it all and then the ally with the lowest power loses the rumble and any attacker that gets through makes you discard cards from your deck equal to their power rating and you know what for a game that is so heinously unergonomic to look at it actually works kind of well and it's kind of fun yeah it's simple it's it's nuts and bolts a lot of the cards have small text at the bottom that kind of expands everything and makes everything a little bit more unique but it is ultimately in its systems very simple and easy to pick up as you know the mythological battle phase and the talisman phase after it is essentially just like grabbing handfuls of chimpanzee ---- behind your back and hoping your opponent can't guess how much you're about to throw that's basically it but despite everything i've just said i have actually genuinely had a pleasant time playing this yeah i enjoyed it but what i enjoyed the most was all of the pensium 4 grade graphic design choices that were put onto these cards oh yeah now i'm not shooting on the artwork if you were here for the towers in time video you know i'm not shooting on myths and legends because this is leaps and bounds ahead of that however the tie-in of all the assets together is absolutely chef excellence barely readable metallic gradient in a barely readable font check a rarity icon that takes up way too much space check epic text that serves no function being basically unreadable anyway check characters that i can't tell if i'm looking at their front or their back check color wheel violations check mermaids with fish covering their tits check osiris posing for a selfie with a hippo and it all goes wrong check artwork so impossible to comprehend they had to put epic text at the top of the card to give you a fighting chance to figure out what the picture actually is check stylized backdrops for text boxes that make it objectively harder to read the important info check check and ******* check this game has it all will it go into my favorites pile probably not uh will i bust it out every now and again with a new friend or an old friend that has never seen this before it probably probably i think it's it's a fun little battler to be honest and uh there's not enough documentation on it online there's not enough uh released sets to really have uh to be able to gain the system you just kind of take a handful of crap throw it down on the table and just have a big silly fight um yeah man osiris fighting a hippo that's that's something sg1 never covered sadly myths and legends uh ended in 2010 a new set was brought out of retirement in 2014 uh with 190 new cards bringing back artists from the original first edition there's also a computer game of this on steam but sadly after its last push in 2014 myths and legends would become just like its namesake a myth and a legend thank you to my wonderful patreon community for supporting content just like this you guys are a wonderful wholesome hobby corner of the internet thank you for supporting me and thank you for supporting one another as we shamble and bramble through this weird and wonderful world of tabletop gaming of course before you go leave a like and a subscribe if you would kindly and do let me know in the comments what is your favorite dead ccg slash tcg from the magic boom era because i need some more ammunition well i don't i've got plenty of ammunition but i need some fresh suggestions so do let me know cheers i'm out of here