Mindbug Beyond Evolution Review

Base Game

Mindbug is a 2-player card game where you play creatures to attack your opponent. You only get 10 creatures, but the deliciously intriguing part is you also get 2 mindbugs which let you steal an opponent’s creature as if you had played it.

Elegant and beautiful.

Trying to figure out how to sequence your plays to navigate your opponent’s mindbugs, while agonizing over when to use yours is just so good. So, so good.

Beyond Evolution

Mindbug Beyond Evolution is the first stand-alone expansion and second expansion overall for Mindbug. It contains 44 new playable cards (16 unique and 14 with two copies). Beyond Evolution also introduces two new keywords: Action and Evolve.

Action is an effect you can trigger on a creature that started your turn in play, instead of Attacking or Playing a card for your turn. For example, if you start your turn with Infernostrich in play, you can use its action to Defeat an enemy creature with power 7 or more, and then your opponent takes their turn.

Evolve lets you upgrade a creature to a stronger version of itself going from stage I to stage II to finally stage III.

Beyond Evolution Review

I actively do not recommend this new stand alone product as a starting point into Mindbug, one of my favorite games literally included in a tattoo on my arm.

As is frequently the case with expansions, this adds a level of complexity and nebulousness Beyond what you find in the base game. If you already love Mindbug and both you and your opponents want an added challenge, this expansion definitely delivers that. There are interesting new cards that lead to significantly more complicated board states and “discovered” attacks as the board states shift due to dying creatures (love you Coach Panda), but the counter play is much less obvious, less forgiving, and feels worse/more unfair than the base game (even though the balance seems on point when you adjust to it).

One of the major culprits for this is the increased amount of Tough, especially on creatures with incredibly powerful effects like difficult to prevent damage. Robopup is the prime example, a 1 power Sneaky, Tough. If you play a Robopup on an empty board, whoever gets it is likely to be able to make at least one and likely two unblocked attacks before it can either be destroyed twice, or a hunter can be played to attack it twice. (In this stand alone expansion, there are only 2 copies of a sneaky card bigger than this, and two copies of a card that stops sneakies from attacking.) Knowing this, you do not want to play a Robopup unless you already have a hunter in play or one of the few immediate answers to it available, or conversely you want to mindbug it if your opponent plays it. However, if you do not know this and you let it resolve for your opponent, or they mindbug the one you played, you are going to have a serious problem. Even playing against better than average strategic-gamers, they repeatedly made the mistake of playing this and other similar cards only for me to mindbug it and make them feel helpless. Other culprits include Dragon Inn, Mole Machine, and the frog and penguin levelers. (To be fair, The Experiment and Octocopter are two additional answers to these powerful Tough creatures.)

In addition to these, cards like Dr. Orange U. Tan (which lets you lose a life to return all opposing creatures to hand) and Westside Monster feel oppressive while Chuckling Chimporg feels too narrow.

All that being said, when I got a chance to play against one of the best Mindbug players in the world, everything felt reasonable and interesting; however, even I still made an objective misplay into a board state that my opponent insisted we rewind (allowing reasonable rewinding being my preferred way to play for all games).

Conclusion

Overall, I would be legitimately thrilled to play in a Mindbug tournament with this set included or even by itself, but I can’t see myself ever breaking it out outside of that, unless I run into another voracious Mindbug fanatic like myself who craves more content.