Tales of Myth & Legend

• Designers: Michael Guigliano, Keith Ward, Bobby West 
• Publisher: Van Ryder Games
• Players: 1-4
• Age: 14+
• Time: 60-150 mins
• Amazon affiliate link: 
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

Tales of Myth & Legend is a paragraph book game set in the time of ancient Greece. Players each control a fledgling hero or heroine that has their sights set on power and glory. The players compete not only with each other, but also against Alexander the Great himself.

In each round of the game, players simultaneously play a movement card that determines how far they will travel. Based on the results, the turn order will be adjusted, with players traveling farther distances going last, and those traveling shorter going first. In turn order, each player visits a city or location and has an encounter there, choosing a type — e.g., political, religion, or strength — based on the types available. The encounter is read aloud to the player, then they have to choose how to proceed.

Tales of Myth & Legend features many surprises and hidden components that are unlocked only based on certain events! With thousands of possible stories and encounters, this is a game you’ll be playing for years to come!

Setup starts by giving the players their Hero and Influence Track boards and their color specific components.  Players will choose a character and then have to decide on one of three specific skills tiles to use for the entire game.

  Starting levels on the three tracks are determined by the character and skill tile.   The different decks of cards are shuffled, and a starting number of Alexander tokens are drawn from the bag and placed on the matching cities on the board.

The game consists of 9 rounds, each indicating a Year of traveling and campaigning to spread your influence and build your legacy. Each Round has 3 Phases.

In Phase 1 each player will choose a movement card and then players will simultaneously reveal their cards. Players can choose to stay in the city they are already in (not move), move within their region, move to a neighboring region, or move to a far away region. The farther the player moves, the later they will be in the turn order as their hero spends more time travelling.

In Phase 2 the players will take their Hero Turns in order as indicated by the Turn Order Track, This phase is where the majority of the game takes place. A Hero Turn consists of 4 steps:

• Step 1: Move – The player will move their hero to the city of their choice. How far they can move is dependent on the Movement card they played in Phase 1 as well as where the other heroes are on the board as only one hero may occupy a space at any time.  If your desired move is blocked, or if your plans change, you can always move a shorter distance than your card allows.

• Step 2: Alexander Challenge – If the player moves to a city space with an Alexander token, they will need to resolve an Alexander card, otherwise this step is skipped. To resolve the Alexander Card, the player holding the Encounter book will draw one and read it to the active player. The player may have a choice to make and/or a benefit or penalty bestowed upon them. Just follow what the card says.  If you are able to resolve the card – that is, you are able to stay in the city of the Alexander encounter, you keep the card and take the token from the board.  Note that the bottom of the Alexander cards may have clues to quests and other fun things.

• Step 3: Encounter – Now, looking at the map, the player chooses one of the three encounter choices (always East, North, West); the icons at each direction telling you what sort of encounter is going to happen.  During an encounter the active player will have a choice to make. Most times, after making their choice, the active player will then roll their Hero die and add their influence stat that matches the encounter type. The reader will read the outcome based on the result.  It is possible that the player rolls a Good Omen automatic best outcome) or Bad Omen (automatic worst outcome). If a player gets the worst outcome, they will get to use their Inner Resolve die in their next encounter which will give them better odds of success.  Alternatively, if you don’t want to take a City Encounter, you can choose a more generic encounter based on one of the three stat tracks – these are randomized on the three card decks at the top of  the board, and they will direct the reader to certain passages in the book.

• Step 4: End of Turn – After the active player completes their encounter, their Hero turn is over. The player takes their Movement card back and becomes the new reader taking the Story Book for the next player’s turn. The next player, in turn order, may begin their Hero Turn.

In Phase 3, (unless it is the end of Year 9, in which case the game ends), it is time for Alexander to spread his influence across the land, Alexander Tokens will be drawn from the bag based on the player count and placed on the board in the indicated cities. Move the Alexander miniature one space up on the Year track and proceed to the next round.

At the end of the game players will total up their Legacy Points to determine a winner. Legacy points are scored during encounters, for Alexander Tokens acquired, and for rankings on each Influence track, The player with the most Legacy Points earns the title of THE GREAT.  If you had backed this, you’ll also have a little foldout display where you can permanently record the victor of each game.

Once you are familiar with the game, there are other modes you can explore.  The game allows you to play either solo or cooperatively.  You will control only one Hero and must finish with a better Legacy than Alexander. Most of the rules are the same as the multi-player experience but there are some exceptions to make these modes challenging.

After playing a few games with the core content you can choose to add additional expansion elements to your game (included in the box!), before you start the game open the Mt. Olympus Map Unlock or The Underworld Map Unlock.  The publisher recommends only using one of these unlocks at a time, not both unless you want an extremely difficult challenge.

My thoughts on the game

Per the publisher: “Tales of Myth and Legend is, unapologetically, a simple game mechanically. The heart and soul of the game are the amazing stories you will experience, so we have integrated just the right amount of rules and mechanisms to give the players some agency, but not to get in the way of the fun of enjoying your hero’s story.”  

This is more or less the description I got of the game at Gen Con 2026, and I’ll admit I was pretty much sold on the idea.  I have loved the idea of paragraph/narrative games though I’ll admit to having had very mixed real-world results with them.  Some of the games were simply too long for my lifestyle (7th Continent).  Others had unbelievable world building, but way too much time spent fighting and not exploring (Sleeping Gods).  Others had a great idea and immersive art, but maybe not enough story (Mythwind).  Some are just too close to a dungeon crawl for my tastes (Gloomhaven).  Some have sweet graphics and a vast array of choices, but more of the story was in the interpretation of the art then the words themselves (Vantage). Some started out great and then got weirder and weirder as the series progressed (Time Stories).   Some were great but can only be played once (Cozy Stickerville).  Though I have pointed out flaws in most of these, nearly all of the above games remain in my game collection presently, and they are still pulled out at the right time and with the right group because I just like this genre so much.

With that in mind, I was definitely looking forward to trying this one out.  The behemoth box arrived in the mail shortly after Gen Con (must be about 20 pounds!) and there was very little setup needed – just two or three punchboards.  I got out the rulebook that first day and read it though.  As is the usual custom around here with games that allow, my wife and I sat down and played a solo game together.  For games like this, it works great because one of us can read and one of us can choose what to do.  It’s much preferable to have another person around when playing this because it really does feel too easy to see spoiler information unintentionally if you are both reading the book and making all the decisions.

At each encounter, you get a little bit more of the story of this Greek inspired universe.  If you have read much mythology in the past, you’ll be familiar with many of the characters and story tropes.  But, it’s fun to be a part of the story and get to make decisions on how you want to story to go.  That being said, each little snippet of story in the encounters is self contained; there isn’t an overarching story arc that you get to develop; i.e. your choices in Encounter #1 will not change your story in Encounter #3.  What might change are the likelihood of possible outcomes as your stats may change as a result of your choices.

There are plenty of things to “unlock” as you play.  You can unlock character epic skills if you finish enough quests.  You can find new cities and add them to the map – providing you with possible encounters that wouldn’t normally be available to you.  There are also three mysterious boxes that I haven’t quite figured out what they contain yet.  Anyways, depending on where and how you choose to adventure, there are always new things that can be added to your game.  The rules are a bit unclear whether these things are permanently added to your game or not; we’ve chosen to return them to their envelopes and only introduce them to games as they are “discovered” again.

As you play, you’ll be pulled to both specialize as well as distribute your stat points.  Specializing will help you in the sense that your attribute stat level is added to your die roll when resolving encounters, and for the most part, the higher the number, the better.  So, pumping up one stat will help you be most successful at that type of encounter.  That being said, you might end up in a city that doesn’t have that particular type of encounter, and then you’ll be sorry.  Further, many Alexander cards require you to lose stats in order to complete them – and you’ll need to have enough stat points to be able to lose them.  Completing Alexander cards is the one reliable way to earn VPs in the game, so you need to be set up to complete them when you get the chance.

The big spiral bound book is great. It is divided into regions and then further by city. There is a Table of contents at the start of each region which makes it easy to find where you’re going. If you play solo, you’ll definitely want a shield (I folded a piece of paper in half), but again I’d recommend having someone else read to you. The text is in two columns, and to save pages (from an already huge book of 240 pages), the encounters might start in the middle of the page. In order to lessen spoilers, you’ll need to figure out how to cover up the other parts of the page. I would definitely also recommend folding the book over so you can only see one page at a time for the same reason. 

The game moves along fairly swiftly; though the book is quite thick, each player only gets 1 encounter per each of the 9 turns in the game as well as one possible Alexander encounter each turn.  The decision making space isn’t overly huge, usually choose between two or three options and then rolling a die – so I’d say that it’s safe to estimate about 3-5 minutes per player turn, may most dependent on reading speed than anything else.  Though there really isn’t anything to do when it’s not your turn, if you rotate the reading task as recommended in the rules, you’ll be active in the game a fair amount.

The game works well in a solo version as you are fighting against Alexander for the final score.  The multiplayer game is a bit more complex, in a good way, as you now have to deal with other players clogging up the map as well as fighting for initiative on any given turn to make sure that you can move to the location that you want to be at!   It’s important to remember that the information on the cards is open information, so there can be a lot of competition to get to places that are hinted to!  In our friendly games, we have kept some cubes nearby, and we just mark the map with places that have been hinted to from cards or from passages in the text.  As it’s all supposed to be open knowledge, it is just easier to have references on the board for everyone to see.

The rules are fairly well done, and honestly I’m surprised at how sparse the rules need to be for this sort of game.  It is honestly quite simple to play, and everyone should get the hang of it after a single turn.  I will make mention that there are a few pages of rules in the front of the big spiral storybook, and I’d make sure that people are aware of those as well – some of them simply involve the mechanics of how to use the storybook, but it’s still a good thing to make sure things aren’t missed (such as the explanation of how/when quest tokens are earned!!)  

So how much game is there in Tales of Myth & Legend?  More than enough for me, but to be clear, you’ll generally only make 1-2 decisions in each of the 9 turns and maybe a die roll with each.  Is that enough for you?  A lot will depend on how much you enjoy reading the stories and participating in them.  For me, it is a very enjoyable way to spend a game session.  While the opportunities to steer the path of the game are limited, I am enjoying the story and re-acquainting myself with Greek mythology.  In the multiplayer game, there is also a bit more puzzle solving (trying to find/win the quests) as well as the gamer-y battle for initiative when it matters, though again, the game leans more on the storytelling than the actual decision making.  The one complaint that some of my group have had is that we haven’t run into to many (if any) truly negative encounters – for the most part, the results are good, gooder and goodest.

After a half-dozen games, I feel like I’ve just scratched the surface of the actual content in the book, and based on the number of envelopes I’ve still never opened, there are plenty of surprises yet to come.   I will surely continue to explore this game through the rest of the year.

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it!
• I like it. Dale Y
• Neutral.
• Not for me…