New Mistborn game helps Brandon Sanderson’s unique form of magic come to life

In Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn series, some people have the power to metabolize metal to work magic, burning pewter to enhance themselves physically or brass to soothe someone else’s emotions. But the most powerful characters in the world are the Mistborn, who can use many types of metals and combine their powers to effectively fly and even see the future.

Mistborn: The Deckbuilding Game taps into Sanderson’s clearly defined magical mechanics to allow players to show off the power of a Mistborn by building complex combos using their metals as efficiently as possible. The goal is to either complete three missions, which provide rewards for reaching milestones along the way, or to eliminate your competition by reducing them to zero health.

Characters get more powerful as the game goes on, unlocking the ability to burn more of the game’s eight metals each turn, which are used to activate cards that can allow them to move up mission tracks, attack other players, or sculpt their deck by buying cards in the center row or eliminating weak starting cards. Many cards have kickers that produce more powerful effects if you can burn more of the same type of metal, which encourages specialization. You can take a broader strategy by flaring metals, effectively putting them on cooldown until you refresh them with a card of the same type on the future turn, and I feel like I didn’t use this strategy enough in the early game to ramp up my deck.

One novel aspect of the game is its approach to damage. In a three- or four-player game, one person is the target and is the only player who can be attacked. It’s not all downside since the target gets to do damage to all their opponents whenever they attack. Whenever the target is damaged, they can choose to pass the token on to another player or keep it. It’s clever in that it prevents players from all ganging up on the person who’s ahead on the board but it can also be strategically kept by someone who’s playing a more aggressive deck.

I’m eager to test out some more strategies and try the game’s co-op mode, which feels more faithful to the series’ plot in that the Mistborn team up to take on the tyrannical Lord Ruler. The game also feels ripe for expansion, introducing more characters from the series and story elements beyond its first book.