Miremarsh Review

Recently, I had the opportunity to play a round of Miremarsh for the first time. How did my experience go? In this review, I’ll not only explain it all, but tell you why and how you should join in the fun.

Before I dive into the feature presentation, here is a little history. Originating from a Kickstarter funded project, created by Room 17 Games, Miremarsh is a tabletop game, and was available to fund from July 2nd to July 30th 2018, and was successful with £137,602, over 300% higher than their set goal of £45,000! With many of their stretch goals met, and a ton of extras to be added, the project will be shipped worldwide in August 2019. If this game looks right up your alley, I will provide the link at the bottom of the page for you.

The idea of the game is to control a goblin from the warren where it lives, to one of the quests across the four corners of the board, getting harder the further you tread towards them. Be the first to complete the quest by fulfilling a certain objective to win the game and reap the glory for yourself. However, while goblins can be intimidating in groups, they cannot take much punishment alone, and will also die of starvation if you don’t feed them fish after each turn. If your goblin should meet his demise out there in the hands of the denizens of the marshlands, simply assume the role of another. If all of the goblins in your team, then the last one standing will be declared goblin king by default. Each goblin will come with a class, each with different skills and even different starting items. Be careful of the traps and monsters in your way, lest they start goblin you up!

As of the time of writing, some of the content is still under development, such as the backer exclusives and the stretch goal bonuses, but it’s now time to answer the questions that must be on your mind; “Is this project worth checking out and picking up?”, “Is it fun and enjoyable to play?” This is my honest opinion on this, and I can say without a trace of bias or hyperbole, it is the most fun experience when it comes to tabletop games.

For a starter, it was somehow refreshing and a palate cleanser to play for the opposite team for once. You are not the hero of this story, and the game takes full advantage of this, having you kidnap, kill, steal or so many other things to win. In other games, this may be something you don’t pay any mind to, but I really enjoyed how Miremarsh handles the multiple dice. Across the six sides, you can move, attack, look ahead, or make the choice with a wild card in the style of a pentagram. Each die will have different properties, prioritising one of those actions above all else, and which ones you use are up to which goblin you are taking control of. Better start getting to know these dice, because they could be the decider of life or death, victory or destruction. If you want extra buffs or even a familiar to help you out, then you can collect coins to use in a store. There is just so much to do, and it adds a lot of replay value to an already deep game.

I must admit that in tabletop games, I can take a little while just learning the rules and intricacies, and even then, I often forget them by the time we play it for real, but in Miremarsh, I was able to pick it up fairly easy when we were taught the ropes, and this entire review has been mostly from memory alone. Our run of the game ran though five turns, and it looks like it can run for at least 10 turns at a time, thanks to the decreasing number of fishy resources. Half way through, we summoned a tentacle monster who was meant to move freely around the board and hunt for us, but this time, we didn’t give it the satisfaction of finding us, though I can imagine it wouldn’t have been looking for someone to hug. I didn’t win, but even though there is not a traditional ranking of players, I came second in spirit, being neck and neck through the majority, and losing by a minuscule amount.

To close off, if this all sounds like something you could get into, I can whole-heartedly recommend Miremarsh. Even as we speak, the game is still growing and growing, becoming an even greater experience, and there could be some new features added in the future that even I am unfamiliar with. I may be repeating myself, but the game will be releasing and shipping to a country near you in August 2019, and please follow the link below if you wish to become part of the action. For the huge amount of what you will get out of the game, it will surely be a bang for your buck.

Thank you for reading,

-Kyle Wright.

References:

www.kickstarter.com - Search Miremarsh

room17.games

https://miremarsh.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders - Preorder here!

Special Thanks:

Ricard Fortun, the Managing Director for providing the game and giving me this opportunity.