We're currently busy in our second game of Mists of Zanaga after having bought it two days ago. I own all expansions (all boxes and packs that exist) but we're really becoming frustrated with the way the ritual-track mechanism seems to make things go haywire.

With Set the Deceiver, it ended up giving him all the allies in the market-deck in short order....

WIth Harridan the Stalker we've had her filling up the Roaming Monster track before you know it; and ofcourse, after the 6th monster, the next one shifts the left-most monster off the Roaming Monster track and discard it. But ofcourse, the ritual-token on the discarded monster is added to the first matching ritual which has a large chance of triggering Harridan's effects again, adding another monster, perhaps completing another ritual, and that perhaps a few times.

In a game with 4 players , it looks like this type of cycle gets triggered at least once every 3 or 4 player-rounds; resulting in only characters with 5 or more hitpoints surviving since her effects seem to cause an avarage of 3HP damage per cycle or so. Meanwhile, we also have Rite of Venom ritual caused to be completed this way; hitting each player for 1HP at the beginning of their movement phase..

In other words; no items left; no allies; mostly only one or two hitpoints left at the beginning of the round..

We did end up defeating her, but only because the Rite of Soulbinding ritual ended up getting played; giving each player a +8 on their magic attack... giving a lucky break in this near-deadlock situation....

My opinion so far on Mists of Zanaga, is that, as a player, you end up being treated as a pinball in the pinball-machine created by the ritual-track going into a feedback-loop of some kind or other...

My third post on this forum; and they've all been about Mists of Zanaga... Can we get a revise on the player-guide, please ? This expansion really needs it.

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Clod

I know some people have had a hard time with the Rituals in Zanaga, but our group has really not had that same problem at all. In fact, I'm currently of the opinion that Rituals might be too easy to manage and control, as with only a little bit of teamwork its farily easy to "game the system" so that Primal Gods are not getting their special abilities triggered very often. Which is not to say that we havent' had games like you describe where the Rituals get out of hand quickly and soon the heroes are all badly beaten up... but I'm ok with the Primal Gods winning a game or two. It keeps you on your toes, and definitely acts as its own alternative doom track as you have to successfully manage both the Roaming Monster Track, the Ritual Track, and the Primal Gods special abilities.

At the end of the day, i think Zanaga just requires players to rethink their tactics and play more cooperatively than perhaps they are accustomed to. It also helps if everyone knows how the Rituals work (and how they can hurt you) before the game begins as new players often aren't thinking about the unintended consequences of their actions.

Judd