Turn 1 - Mage Knight

Mage Knight
The large stone portal shimmered in the morning sunlight. A cool breeze slowly rolled across the open plains where the portal sat, giving the area a sense of tranquil peace. A low pitched warbling sound began resonating from the portal and the energy in the center of the gate shimmered as the form of a large green draconum stepped through, onto steps in front of the gate. Goldyx looked around the wide plains, scouting the immediate area for anyone lying in ambush. Apparently it was clear of enemies. Unfortunate, he thought, a challenge at the beginning of his mission would have been nice. Making sure his weapons and gear was secured to his back and sides, he began traversing across the grassland. Off on the horizon he could see several slight smoke trails rising into the sky. Maybe a village, maybe a caravan had made camp the previous night, who knew for sure. To his right, beside a small forest, was the beginning of hilly and slight mountainous terrain. A good spot to setup mines, he thought. Perhaps jewels or other gems to acquire. After a short amount of time walking towards the smoke trails in the distance, a echoing warble began to emit from behind him. Goldyx stopped and turned back toward the portal. The energy in the portal parted once more and a large armored figure, grasping a shield and sword emerged from the portal and stopped at the top of the stairs. Tovak. Goldyx waited. Evidently the Void Council had sent Tovak on this reconnassance mission as well. Unfortunate, as it would mean less spoils for Goldyx. He might as well wait for Tovak to reach him so they could at least discuss a strategy, to stay out of each others way at least. Tovak raised his shield in a slight wave and began to take a step down the stairs, when he stopped, looked at his gear and began removing his weaponry and armor as he continued walking towards Goldyx. Goldyx sighed and began checking his own equipment, perhaps after -

"This is stupid. I can't move at all, what the heck am I supposed to do?"

Unfortunately for Phil, his opening hand of five cards yielded no movement cards, so in order to be able to move his character he had to play his non movement cards on the table sideways, thus generating one movement point per card played that way. I on the other hand had drawn something that looked like this:

And this, from what I have read, is a pretty common problem when playing Mage Knight. If you don't have the right cards at the right time you can pretty much guarentee a very slow progression in the game. I've played about 4 or 5 games, one with Phil in a two player game and 3 or 4 solo games, and I haven't had too much problem with that. I'll get back to this later, I want to start at the beginning I guess.

Mage Knight(the board game) is a board game for 1-4 people, ages 14+, created by Vlaada Chvatil and produced by WizKids Games. My best description of the game is a kind of tactical rpg that uses decks of cards. I'm suscribed to lots of youtube channels, and quite a few of them are board game enthusiast channels that do playthroughs or reviews of their own for lots of games. One of them that caught my attention was a playthough of this game by a channel called Ricky Royal(Mage Knight Playthrough) and I thought it looked really interesting. The game has lots of pieces, lots of actions, and requires lots of forethought and planning if you arent incredibly familiar with the mechanisms and capabilities of your character/cards. For instance, here is what my game looks like when you open the box and take a look at all the parts:

In the upper left are the miniatures you use to play(Four different cities that are used for conquest and the four different Mage Knights you can play as). The lower left are the tiles used for creating the game world and where your mage knight will travel and have his or her adventures. In the right side of the box I've sorted the mage knight's skills, mana dice, mana crystals and tokens into small baggies, the enemies and other encounter tiles are in the black container that came with the game and all of the cards have been placed into two deep plastic containers. The two boards above the box are the day/night board that shows what round it is(day or night) and what the movement cost is on each space on a tile, and the fame and reputation tracker, on the right. There are 240 cards in the game, sorted into 4 deeds decks(one for each mage knight), an advanced action deck, a spell deck, an artifact deck, a normal unit deck and an advanced unit deck. Oh and the wound cards, which are technically placed in a deck too, and the two tactics decks for day and night. When you've finally sorted out all the parts and set the game up to start it should look pretty close to this:


Yeah, this game has a large footprint for the table and is INCREDIBLY complex when you first start. I watched a walkthrough, practiced a game, and then played the intro mission with Phil which is designed to be a walkthrough to learn the game and it still took a decent amount of time to just set up the game to play by myself. That said, after playing some more I feel pretty comfortable showing someone the basics of how to play and I enjoy the strategy required for the game. Sure you can just toss cards willy nilly and kill stuff, advancing at an ok pace, but you have to manage how you spend your cards because each game scenario you play gives you a set amount of rounds, like 2 days and 2 nights, which means when you run out of cards in your deeds deck, the round ends and you move on to the next one. So it goes Day - Night - Day - Night / End of game. With a time limit, it is incredibly important to manage how you spend your actions and how you manage time spent not exploring and just killing monsters to gain fame and reputation required to level yourself up and gain new skills.

There is too much for me to talk about when it comes to rules, so all I can really do is mention that I like this game. Its fun, it scratches the itch I get to play an rpg and it also manages to feel tactical enough that I get a sense of strategic combat and having to be careful that I don't bite off more than I can chew while trying to level myself up. Theres two expansions out for it right now, one just adds a new mage knight you can play as with his deeds deck and some minor stuff, while the other is a whole new campaign setting with a big bad guy. I don't own either of them but sometime in the future I may get them, depending on the price. Phil felt the game was too slow for his taste, but that was the first time we played a full game and weren't sure about the rules. I give the game a thumbs up because even if noone else wants to play I can still break it out on a day when I'm bored and play by myself and still have fun.