After the success I had playing The Mind, I was all over the idea of Medium, just to get that same spooky mind reading sort of feeling. I haven’t played this a lot, from my experience its a hit or a complete miss. It seems to really depend on who you are playing with. It is interesting that with certain people, we weren’t getting any hits but with other people you almost couldn’t miss. I guess some people just aren’t on true same train of thought. At the end day, how much I like this game is really dependent on how successful you are with your partner in the game.
The idea of the game is to connect psychically with your friends. You and a partner will try to connect two words on a card to the same word at the same time. Again when you keep missing it’s hard to stay interested but with you start getting the same answers it is a lot of fun.
The game comes with 18 sets of cards. The sets are labelled in the corner with a small number. Each set of cards has words that connect better together. To set up the game, randomly choose different sets. You will need one set fewer that the number of players. Shuffle those sets together then separate that deck into thirds. Shuffle three crystal ball cards into the bottom third, then place the other two thirds of the deck on top. Deal six cards face down to each player. Make three piles for the mind meld tokens separated by first attempt, second attempt and third attempt. Place them point side down in the middle of the table.
The first player partners with the player on their left. The first player chooses a card and places it face up on the table. The player on their left will pick a card a place it face up next to the first card. Then they will think of what the medium word, that is the word that would connect both cards is. This can be a thought more than a single word, for example, “bee keeper” would work fine. Once ready count to three and both players say the work they think is the medium.
If the word is a match take a mind meld token from the first attempt pile and place it between you and your partner. That will be added up at the end of the game and your turn is over. If you do not match you get to try again. This time you use the words you just said instead of the words on the cards. If you match on the second attempt you can take a mind meld token from the second attempt pile and your turn is over. Finally, if there still isn’t a connection you get one last try with the words you just guessed to get a token from the third attempt pile. If you still don’t match, that’s it for the turn, you get no points this round.
At the end of the turn both players draw a new card.
The partner from the first round then plays with the player on their left. and you continue around the table.
Each time a crystal ball card is drawn place it in the middle of the table, this symbolizes that the connection is starting to be lost. Once the third crystal ball card is drawn that will be the last round and the game is over. Since you will have points with both the person on your left and on your right you will have two scores. The team with the highest score wins.
Once you’ve played a few times you can add in the esp cards for more chances to get points. If you play an esp card during another teams turn you can join in on the answer and potentially get extra mind meld points. I haven’t used these yet, but sounds like a nice added element to the game. There’s also play variations if you want to play with the same player or if you want to just have a two player game.
This has a bit more depth than The Mind, but I found that making the connections could be more frustrating. From my experience, people liked playing The Mind better, but also got on board with Medium faster. So they are fairly evenly matched. If you wanted a bit of a theme night you could definitely play The Mind, Medium and Mysterium together for a fun physic themed party.
If you like Medium, try some of these games:
The Skillful Meeple 
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