Step by step instructions on how to play Mysterium Board Game. This cooperative deduction game is unlike anything else out there. It is also extremely versatile being able to accommodate 2 – 7 players. It may seem intense, with all the various steps, but it is not at all. There are many different phases to go through and boxes to check but once you play one you will have it down. This is definitive learn how to play Mysterium guide.
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HOW TO PLAY MYSTERIUM – WHAT IS IT?
You have dared to cross the threshold of the haunted Mysterium Manor… How very brave! Settle in around the table, open your mind and awaken your sixth sense as you prepare for an extraordinary séance with the aim of laying a stranded soul to rest…
Mysterium is a cooperative mystery-solving game that plays a bit like clue and a bit like Dixit, in which everyone wins or loses together. All players share the same goal of uncovering the truth behind the death of the ghost that haunts the manor, thereby putting his soul to rest!
HOW TO PLAY MYSTERIUM – STEP BY STEP
Time Needed: Approximately 42 minutes.
This is a step by step guide for how to play Mysterium the popular group clue giving and deduction board game. Additional notions and special rules can be found below the list. These will be referenced for your convenience.
1. SETUP | Determine Ghost
To kick off how to play Mysterium, you need a ghost. One player has to be the ghost and everyone else is a psychic investigator. Determine this right away as it will effect setup.
2. SETUP | Lay Out Mantles
In a row moving from bottom to top, place you person, place, weapon and tracker mantles in the center of the playing area.
3. SETUP | Choose Color and Get Starting Materials
Every player needs to choose a color. They then need to take the corresponding sleeve, player token and clairvoyance tokens. Also take your corresponding clairvoyance tracker and place it on top of the “0” on the tracker mantle.
4. SETUP | Determine Difficulty Setting
There are three levels of difficultly that affect the number of options that are laid out. Decide between easy, medium or hard. We will be setting everything up according to the “easy” setting.
5. SETUP | Deal Out Suspect Cards
In each of the three suspect mantle (person, place, weapon) layout 6 corresponding cards in each section,
6. SETUP | Ghost Card Matching Setup
These three different category cards that were just laid out have numbers on the back. The Ghost has a standing frame that is setup so only they can see what is behind it. They match their blue cards to the numbers on the cards that were laid out in the mantle. They then have to shuffle those and slot in one for each player (each player has a slot on the ghost board for their own person, place and mantle) add one of the cards at random to their slot for that category. You should have two leftover for each.
7. SETUP | Take Out Large Picture Cards
Remove the large deck of picture cards and put that behind the ghost screen for them to draw from. The ghost cannot use words and can only give these photos out as clues each turn.
8. SETUP | Setup Correct Clayrvoyancy Track
The numbered arc that goes on top of the clairvoyance track has two sides. You use one depending on player count. On the sides of this, there are little star icons that denote the number of players that side corresponds to. Flip up the right side and put it on top of the tracker.
9. SETUP | Take Crow Marker
The crow markers allow the Ghost to discard their hand of image cards and draw new ones. This is important if they have nothing good and are not giving good clues. The number of these you get is based on player count and difficultly level but is signified by a crow symbol that has a slot on the bottom so you can place it on top of the ghost board, marking its use.
10. SETUP | Put Pieces on Initial Mantle
All players put their player piece on the bottom of the bottom mantle, the person one. You have to move upward through the different suspects to get to the top in order to win. You cannot move on until you complete the mantle you are currently on.
11. SETUP | Put Out Clock
The final step of how to play Mysterium setup is putting out the turn marker. In the same center play area, add the standing clock board and make sure the hour hand is set to 1 o’clock.
12. GAMEPLAY | Phase 1 | Ghost Gives Out Clues
To kick-off gameplay, the ghost needs to give out the giant blue image cards, without talking, to all the players. To do this, the ghost draws a hand of seven. They then give any number of those cards to the first player facedown (a clue if very abstract, it could be anything to why you chose it). They then draw back up to 7 and give any number to player #2. This continues until every player has been given clues. No one looks at these yet.
13. GAMEPLAY | Phase 2 | Seance | Timed Discussion
Included with the game is a 2-minute old school sand timer, flip it over to kick off the Seance phase. Players can now look at the cards they were given and try to figure out who is their subject based on the clues they were given. All players (minus the ghost) talk all this out and can collectively work together to try and figure out everyone’s answer.
14. GAMEPLAY | Phase 2 | Seance | Players Make Choice
When everyone is confident in the choice they are going to make, they move their player marker from the bottom of the mantle to the card they think correspond to them (what the ghost’s board says that only they can see).
15. GAMEPLAY | Phase 2 | Seance | Clairvoyance Tokens
After everyone has made the choice for themselves, they then get to judge other players. The Clairvoyance tokens you have are either going to have an X (signaling “wrong”) or a checkmark (signaling “correct”) on them. For each other player who is not you, you can choice to put down one of these to make a bet if they were right or not. These get you Clairvoyance points on the top track which help you in the end game.
16. GAMEPLAY | Phase 2 | Seance | Phase Ends
When players have all voted (who want to, its optional) or the sand in the timer runs out, the Seance is over and it is time for the Ghost to start handing out some answers.
17. GAMEPLAY | Phase 3 | Ghost Check | Ask For Accuracy
The Ghost still cannot talk so going around the table one by one, players ask the ghost if they got their choice right. The Ghost then needs to work out some system like knock once for yes and twice for no type of thing. If the player is right they move up to the next mantle and get put any vision cards they got in their colored sleeve. If they are wrong they go back to the mantle they just came from to try again next time, but they keep their vision cards of that mantle to help in the future.
18. GAMEPLAY | Phase 3 | Ghost Check | Clairvoyance Point Check
Once players know if they were right or not, it is now time to earn any Clairvoyance points if you made any correct votes. If they got anything right they move their token that many up on the tracker, if they got it wrong they move nothing. Regardless, any token used is spent and doesn’t come back until after the fourth round.
19. GAMEPLAY | Move Clock 1 Hour and Repeat Phases
After this process has been completed, you move the hand on the clock forward one tick and you do it all over again. The idea is that all players need to make it to the final mantle before time runs out so they can guess who the ultimate suspect is. Each mantle works the same way with you receiving clues and needing to guess the item that corresponds to the clues you were given and you.
20. GAMEPLAY | Final Showdown
If a round has completed and all players have made it past the person, place and weapon mantles, you move on to the final showdown. If you have made it to the final but other players have not, turns continue as normal. You do not need to do anything, but you can still be there to help others.
*Once you get to the final mantle, you add Clairvoyance Points to your track equal to the number of hours remaining on the clock
21. GAMEPLAY | Final Showdown | Lay Out Master Suspects
All Players should have collected their specific person, place and weapon in their colored sleeve as they moved along the mantles. Take these all out and put them in columns next to other players. Put number tokens above each column for voting purposes.
22. GAMEPLAY | Final Showdown | Ghost Gives Master Clues
Of all the laid out suspects, there is one true person, place and thing. The Ghost knows this and again needs to give out big clue cards. The Ghost chooses one card to denote the correct person, one for place and one for weapon. The ghost puts these facedown next to the gameboard in a row. There is no more communication in how to play Mysterium from here on out.
23. GAMEPLAY | Final Showdown | Voting
This is the part in how to play Mysterium where those Clairvoyance Points you have been collecting come into play. Each player gets a secret vote and when they have to vote and when they get to see these clues comes down to that track. You start at zero and move from left to right. The first card gets flipped over at 1, the second and 5, and the third at 7 points. Once a number hits with your marker on it, you have to guess. So if you only got 6 points, you will have to vote before the third card is flipped. These votes are done with your tokens and go your sleeve.
24. WINNING | Guess Correctly
After everyone has made their vote, the ghost reveals the true answer via a secret token they placed on the tracker board. If the majority of the group answered correctly, everyone wins. If they do not, everyone loses. You also lose if time runs out before getting to the final mantle.
HOW TO PLAY MYSTERIUM – KEY INFORMATION
DIFFICULTY
One of the best things you discover as you learn how to play Mysterium is that you can adjust the difficulty very easily. Choose the difficulty level for the game. This determines the number of character/location/object cards that will be used.
TWO AND THREE PLAYER GAMES
The how to play Mysterium rules for 2 or 3 players make for a very different game but still a satisfying one. The point of this is to add enough options to keep things challenging. Special changes below –
FOR SETUP:
The clairvoyancy track, the related markers and the clairvoyance tokens are not used.
Each player plays with two psychics.
During the shared vision, the three vision cards are placed face up.
FOR THE REVEAL LINEUP:
(For 2) Randomly create two additional groups of cards (with a character, a location and an object in each group) using psychic cards discarded during the game, bringing the total number of groups to four. Then place the tokens numbered 1 to 4 by the four groups thus formed.
(For 3) Randomly create two additional groups of cards (with a character, a location and an object in each group) using psychic cards discarded during the game, bringing the total number of groups to four. Then place the tokens numbered 1 to 4 by the four groups thus formed.
FOR STRAW PULL:
(For 2) The player who plays the two psychics uses only one of his intuition tokens to designate the suspected culprit’s group.
(For 3) Psychics vote openly rather than in secret. The two players with the role of psychics must agree which group to identify as the suspected culprit’s group and place their two intuition tokens on it.
GAME CONTENTS
- 6x Intuition Tokens
- 6x Sleeves
- 6x Clairvoyance Level Markers
- 36x Clairvoyancy Tokens
- 1x Clock Board
- 4x Progress Boards
- 1x Character Progress Mantle
- 1x Location Progress Mantle
- 1x Weapon Progress Mantle
- 1x Epilogue Progress Mantle
- 54x Psychic Cards (character, location, weapon)
- 1x Sand Timer
- 1x Clairvoyancy Track
- 54x Ghost Cards (character, location, weapon)
- 1x Game Screen
- 6x Ghost Tokens
- 6x Culprit Tokens
- 3x Crow Markers
- 84x Vision Cards
HOW TO PLAY MYSTERIUM – IN CLOSING
We hope you can now say you know how to play Mysterium. This fantastic cooperative thematic deduction game is a very fun and unique experience. You can play with a vast variety of players and gameplay changes enough each time to keep things fresh game after game. There are many steps and components to deal with, but the gameplay is straightforward and not intimidating at all if you slowly and confidently work through the steps.
