Of all the board game upgrades we’ve done over the years, our upgrade to Atheneum: Mystic Library is one of my favorites. Not only is was this an extremely affordable upgrade, it took pretty much no effort to complete. That’s a win win scenario.
Original spiders
One of the most disappointing components I’ve seen in a while are the spider tokens included in Atheneum. First of all, the spiders are really tiny. You don’t want giant spiders cluttering your library shelves, so I’m sure this was done on purpose. Second, because the spiders are so small, you almost can’t see what they are. I joked when I wrote my review that I initially thought the spiders were watermelon seeds!
The spider upgrade
Little plastic spiders for crafts are pretty easy to find, even if it’s not Halloween. I was able to score this bag of spiders on amazon that had more than enough spiders to add to Atheneum, and there was still a bunch leftover for my kids to play with.
Why upgrade the spiders
The main reason I choose to do a board game upgrade for our spiders was to make the game more aesthetically pleasing. I also thought my kids would enjoy the game more if they had some realistic spiders to play with. The more I play board games with my kids, the more I appreciate the importance of quality, interesting components. They’re far more likely to immerse themselves into a game that’s got lots of cool, tactile pieces and great artwork, than those that don’t!
So there you have our spider upgrade! If your curious to hear more about how Atheneum: Mystic Library plays, and what we think about it, you can check out our review here.
