Gathering the Mortals
Mytikas lets you step into the Greek world of grand temples and fickle Gods. What I love about this game is how fast it is to set up and how simple it is to teach. The game includes several boards: the main Building Board representing Mount Olympus, the Action Board, and a Player Board for each builder to track their progress.
Players each have their own set of coloured buildings and a single worker to determine the actions they’ll take each round. Deal out one God card to each player, then shuffle the remaining cards and place a few face down at the top of the mountain. These are covered with locks, waiting to be revealed later in the game.
Next, add plots to Mount Olympus according to your player count. Each player receives a starting resource of either stone, marble, or gold, and chooses a favour token from one of the four gods on the Action Board: Zeus, Demeter, Poseidon, or Hades.
With that done, you’re ready to begin your climb toward Olympus. The mountain awaits, and the favour of the gods is never certain.
Pleasing the Gods
Mytikas moves fast thanks to its limited actions, keeping every turn exciting. On your turn, you place your worker on a free space and perform the action there. If you have a matching favour token, you get a bonus action. Your God cards can also grant extra moves, such as swapping building blocks or converting them into other materials. Since no two workers can share a space, your options are always restricted, so careful planning is key.
Actions include collecting materials, moving them up the mountain, taking or placing offerings, building a town or temple, and claiming favour tokens. Each action sets you up for points or extra opportunities on future turns.
The goal is to move building materials from the base of Olympus to the highest tier. Higher buildings score more points, with the grand temple at the very top worth sixteen. Seeing others move gold up the mountain pushes you to take the Hades action as often as possible to keep up. I once had a game where someone built a small house at the top. It was anticlimactic but clever, as it blocked anyone else from claiming the big points. You really have to decide whether to spend the time moving so many resources up the mountain, because if you lose the race, you’ve lost time that could have been spent building elsewhere.
You also earn points by attracting Gods to your player area with offerings. Gods are fickle, and other players can outbid you to steal a God along with their points and special abilities. These abilities are not just nice bonuses. They can give you extra moves, reduce resource costs, or let you swap materials. The competition can get intense and occasionally ruthless, which I both love and dread when it happens to me. I was on track to win when a player noticed my God card, Athena, lay unlocked. In their last move they managed to steal my card and bag themselves a whopping twelve points, winning the game. A victory that should have been mine!
The locking mechanic provides some relief. Once you offer enough to a God, you can lock them in so no one else can steal them. Another God is then revealed and the bidding process begins again.
Favour tokens add an extra layer of strategy. They let you take a bonus action on your turn and even copy an action when another player uses the same God. For example, a Zeus token lets you take the bonus move and mirror another player’s action if they choose Zeus’s spot, essentially giving you a free turn. Tokens are scarce, so you need to use them wisely. Once spent, they’re hard to get back, and if you hoard them, other players can snatch them when the supply on the Action Board runs out.
The game ends when all locks are taken, a player builds all their buildings, or three of the four tiers of Olympus are full. It’s quick and punchy, with just enough opportunities to be clever, grab extra turns, and indulge in some healthy, occasionally brutal competition.
Aesthetic Offerings
Upon opening Mytikas, I had mixed feelings. The 3D Mount Olympus board is stunning and has real table presence. The natural colours of the mountain are visually appealing, and paired with the individual player boards, the overall effect is striking and serene.
Yet this calm look is disrupted by other elements of the game. The Action Board is bright and bold in neon colours, which contrasts sharply with the natural tones of the mountain and gives a slightly cartoonish feel. The God cards also differ in style, so the art feels inconsistent, and the identity that the Mount Olympus board was creating is lost among competing ideas.
Some mechanical elements do not fully match the theme. The locks feel a little detached from the world of Olympus, and some of the iconography is unclear. The symbols for moving blocks are not always intuitive, and it can be tricky to tell whether an action moves a block anywhere on the mountain or just up one tier. For such a simple ruleset, the icons make it hard to follow at times.
Another issue is the player colours. One of my friends is colourblind, and I’ve noticed over time that some colour choices can make gameplay confusing. Mytikas is a prime example. The colours include purple and blue, along with light orange and dark orange. Even without colour-blindness, I sometimes picked the wrong piece because the two oranges are so similar. I can see why they might have chosen two shades of orange to evoke Grecian pottery, but then why add purple and blue? It feels inconsistent with the theme. It’s a minor gripe, but it can detract from the enjoyment.
Games are not all about looks, but for a game with a theme like this one, you expect the presentation to feel consistent. This isn’t a deal breaker, but it’s a little disappointing, especially as most of these issues could be easily fixed.
Final Thoughts
Overall, I really enjoyed playing Mytikas. I don’t have a Greek-themed board game in my collection, and this one fills the gap nicely. I also love how fast this worker placement game plays. With four players, we completed a full game in an hour and thirty minutes.
The game feels very different with two players. Although it scales by blocking spaces, it’s easier to hoard favour tokens and maximise actions each round. At the same time, fewer Gods and plots make the game feel more intense, which I found refreshing as it forced me to adapt my strategy from previous games.
For some, the limited actions may feel too simple if they’re used to heavier worker placement games with long chains and optimised turns. Mytikas is not that type of game. Its simplicity and speed are part of its charm, and the occasional opportunities for meanness create depth as you juggle scoring while finding ways to foil other players.
Mytikas leans slightly on the mean side but works well as an entry-level worker placement game. As a fan of the mechanic, I still found it rewarding, as there was enough to consider to make each worker placement meaningful. It definitely felt heavier than lighter games like Flamecraft.
We did note that some end-game triggers are unclear. You may need to house-rule them, as the rules give no guidance on what happens if the end game is triggered while mirroring another player’s action. Who ends the game and who misses an extra turn?
It may not be as polished as Zeus intended, but Mytikas delivers a fast, playful taste of Greek myth that will appeal to newcomers and casual fans, with enough chaos to tempt veterans as well.
About the Author:
Sophie is a gamer, blogger, podcaster, and book lover with a passion for solo narrative video games. When she’s not immersed in games or writing, she’s probably out hiking. Her favourite board games feature worker placement, nature themes, and smart tableau-building mechanics
