The forest is a living organism, where beneath the surface an intense, silent struggle for survival takes place. In Mycelia, you take the role of a mycelium that expands, fruits, and spreads spores to gain dominance in a world full of competition. This title combines the feel of biology with tactical competition over space. And if things get too cramped in this underground realm, the North American Expansion comes to the rescue, introducing trees, symbiosis, and an option for a fifth player.
Gameplay
Base game
In Mycelia, players move their Mother Fungi, spread spores, and try to grow new mushrooms from them. The game is played on a modular board composed of triangular tiles of various colors—likely representing different types of forest floor. Spores are represented by small wooden cubes in each player’s color. To create a new mushroom, the spore requirements on the relevant tiles must be met, and moreover, they must form a single continuous network.
The key is the mycelial network—only connected spores can be used for fruiting, and a cleverly placed Mother Fungi can not only secure its resources by blocking the opponent’s Mother Fungi from entering a tile but also sever an opponent’s network and take over their spores on that same tile.
Each player has five player mats—each one is a spot for one mushroom card, contains a spore‑production tracker, and becomes an archive for dead mushrooms. Those mushrooms, when slid under the mat, provide bonus benefits.
Each turn you choose two different actions from among:
- move—your Mother Fungi,
- explore—placing a new forest tile,
- spore—distributing spores and Mother Fungi or fruiting bodies in the direction of the wind,
- fruit—using spores that form a single network and fulfill a mushroom card’s requirements to create a new mushroom, whose card goes on your board, and a wooden marker is placed on one forest tile, removing one spore from that tile,
- decay—when a fruiting body has fruited twice, you may perform a death action: remove a wooden spore marker from the forest, and slide the corresponding mushroom card under your board to gain a bonus;
- discover—draw mushroom cards from the display.
When placing a forest tile during the explore action, sometimes insects will appear on it. If your Mother Fungi enters that tile, you collect the insect. Insects can help you by moving another player’s Mother Fungi, resetting the mushroom display, or adding end‑game points.
The game ends when every one of a player’s five mushrooms has gone through the full life cycle—from growth to death. The winner is the player who accumulates the most points from fruiting bodies, dead mushrooms, and insects.
Expansion – North American Expansion
The expansion introduces a new ecological layer: saplings and grandfather trees.
During the spore dispersal action, if a forest tile contains a sapling leaf token, you may place a spore on it instead of directly on the tile. Such an investment grants a symbiosis bonus—an extra spore, a forest tile, or an insect.
A new action is aging. When a sapling accumulates three spores, and your Mother Fungi is on the same tile, you may transform it into grandfather tree—a new element in your network that pushes spores onto adjacent tiles and is worth 5 points.
The expansion also introduces components enabling five‑player games and 34 new endemic mushroom cards from North America, each with its trivia and death actions.
Impressions
Mycelia is a beautiful, abstract game with a biological theme. It’s difficult to pinpoint which mechanic dominates or to fully classify them. There is tile placement of forest tiles, but that is not the core of the game. There is an open draft of mushroom cards from the display. The heart of the game is creating a spore network, enabling you to place new fruiting bodies, which in turn can grow your network further and, of course, score points.
This aspect is interesting because it gives players room to base their strategy on negative interaction—by cutting opponent networks or stealing spores, making it harder for them to fruit. Yet it is not mandatory; if you prefer to avoid a confrontational style, the game becomes more of a Euro‑style race for points. However, that possibility tends to fade as more players join, and the forest can become quite cramped.
On one hand, the game is strongly strategic; on the other, randomness softens that firmness by introducing some chaos and occasionally forcing you to revise expectations. The elements that bring in randomness are the face‑down stacks of forest tiles (from which you choose a tile to place) and the wind die (which determines the direction of spore dispersal and also the bonus for symbiosis). These elements inject natural unpredictability into gameplay.
A compelling aspect is how the game abstracts the fungal life cycle: you aim to grow new mushrooms so you can pursue your strategic goals or disrupt your opponents. At the same time, you want to complete the life cycle and execute decay (mycelial decomposition) to gain benefits and make space for new mushrooms.
With the North American Expansion, a new spore mechanic (or perhaps even two) is added. You may decide to sacrifice a spore to place it on a sapling’s leaf, which brings the benefit of a symbiotic bonus. You may also perform the aging action to turn a sapling into a grandfather tree. That action adds a new token, which becomes part of your network and hinders other players’ spore dispersal—the tree owner decides in which direction spores are pushed.
The expansion adds replayability and makes it possible to play with five people. Although we did not test what Mycelia feels like in such a rich setup, I suspect it would not be a peaceful experience. Trees change the dynamics of the game somewhat, adding the possibility of redirecting both your own and your opponents’ spores. A well‑placed tree can help you gather spores on tiles of the appropriate colors. This makes the game even closer to a forest ecosystem, but also more tactical.
Conclusion
Mycelia and the North American Expansion impressed us regardless of the number of players (though we did not test it with 5). The depth of strategic planning, shared ecosystem, mechanics allowing for negative interaction without forcing it, top‑tier production, and beautiful mushroom illustrations make us look forward to playing this again. Highly recommended.
Big thanks to Split Stone Games for a review copy of the game.
