So, without any further ado, let's get this review started!
In Mage Knight, you play one of four powerful warriors known as "Mage Knights" as they journey into uncharted kingdoms in search of power and prestige for the glory of the great empire from which they hail. Even as you start the game, your Mage Knights are already in possession of vast amounts of physical and magical power so as to rival the strength of armies. As you journey into this unknown land, the heroes will lay waste to marauding bands of orcs, delve into perilous dungeons, topple wizards from the tops of their towers, and storm heavily fortified keeps. As you do so, you will gain in power through increasing your fame (experience for leveling up), finding and hoarding spells, artifacts, and magical power, as well as learning new skills and abilities. Not only that, but the actions that your character takes will have an effect on your reputation among the common folk living in the land. Certain actions, such as destroying one of the many bands of orcs that you find scouring the countryside, will increase your renown among the people, making it easier for you to persuade the people to join your army in support of your conquest. Other actions, however, such as claiming a wizard's tower or keep as your own or , even worse, pillaging a defenseless village, while giving you a more immediate gain, will raise doubts among the townsfolk as to the righteousness of your cause, making it more difficult for you to recruit them or acquire other goods and services from them.
The game has a lot of fiddly bits to deal with, and as such is rather difficult to approach for the first time. In fact, it is so complex that the nice people over at Wizkids were nice enough to provide two separate rulebooks; One to guide the players through their first game, providing the rules and examples for various aspects of the game as they are likely to come into play, and another with full explanations and clarifications of the rules, as well as additional rules for more advanced aspects of the game that the players can sink their teeth into once they have a firm grasp of the basics, as well as some additional houserules/scenarios can be used to modify the game further.
As of the time of writing this, I have played the game three times, and while we have gotten through to the point of finding our first major city (the end-game condition for the "First Reconnaissance" scenario), we have yet to play through an entire game of the "Full Conquest" scenario. Therefore, I have not yet even begun to experience some of the later aspects of the game, but I've been holding back on this review for long enough, and I have a good enough idea of what to expect in the later game to speak my piece for the time being.
Warning: Massive Explanation of Rules! Skip ahead if you just want to hear what I thought of it!
The board is made up of a tiles, that represent a region of land that is revealed as the players journey as the players push the boundaries of the map, exploring and expanding the play area as they go. Each tile is actually composed of seven hexagonal spaces arranged in a "flower" formation, meaning that each time a player explores, he uncovers a handful of new pieces of terrain and points of interest. This makes exploration much quicker than simply revealing the map a single space at a time, and it also presents the players with more choices to make, as each region will likely present at least a couple of points of interest, such as a group of orcs (which presents an easy way to acquire fame and renown), unexplored dungeons (which presents greater risk (the player doesn't know what they'll be fighting until they have already committed to battle, but offers greater rewards such as greater fame and an artifact or advanced ability if they are successful) , or an enchanted glade (where they could recover some of their wounds as well as boost their stores of magical energy for the next turn).
Now, the more interesting aspect of the game is that the majority your hero's abilities spells and artifacts are represented by a deck of cards. Each player starts with a deck of 16 cards that vary slightly on which character you choose, and at the start of each turn a player draws up to their maximum hand size in cards. The maximum hand size starts at five, but there are ways to increase this as you progress through the game. Most of these cards are quite simple, as in their basic form, they will commonly provide a player with units of movement, attack, block, and influence, and heal, which the player will need to utilize effectively in order to achieve their goals. Almost all cards in your deck can have a special effect that can be used through meeting certain requirements (typically spending mana of a particular color). There are also other cards in your deck that can be used to gain and store additional mana, allowing you to give more power to your other cards. Additional cards can be added to a player's deck in the form of Advanced Action Cards, Spells, and Artifacts. Also, when you are wounded in battle, the damage you take is represented as wound cards that are added to your deck, and when drawn, clog your hand and cannot be removed unless your heal them or spend a turn resting (which puts them in the your discard pile to be shuffled into your deck at the start of the next round.
The turn order is determined by the players picking a card for their initiative from either the day or night decks, depending on the current phase that the upcoming round will be (each round represents a 12 hour day or night). Picking a lower initiative will give you a slightly better special bonus for choosing to later in the turn order. The game progresses around the table with each player taking their turn until one of them runs out of cards to draw and actions to take. That player can then spend their turn calling the end of the round, and once all the players have taken their turn for the last sequence of initiative, the round ends and all of the players' cards are reshuffled into their deck and a new round begins.
The goal of the game is to acquire the most fame at the end of the game. By acquiring fame, you can also level up your character. Leveling up will allow you to increase the size of your army, reduce the damage you take in combat, increase the amount of cards you can draw into your hand at the start of your turn, and give you new action cards and other special abilities. At the end of a game, you gain additional fame depending on how many special cards you have in your deck, locations you have conquered on the map, and units you have in your army. Some scenarios have alternate scoring methods, but I have not explored them yet.
There are of course all sorts of other fun fiddly bits in the game, but I'm hoping that can provide you with a decent idea of what the game is like.
End of Basic Explanation of Rules.
As stated at the start of the review, the game has a lot of fiddly bits, and is a bit overwhelming when everyone in your group is playing for the first time. The first time we played it, we spent three hours going over the rules before we even started our first round. However, once players have achieved an understanding of how the game works, the time it takes to start playing decreases pretty quickly. Still, the game takes quite a while to play, given that a full game is normally six rounds, and a round takes about fifteen minutes per player at the table, even after everyone has gotten acquainted with the rules. Despite the length of the game, the game does a pretty good job of keeping the players engaged. The deck building aspect of the game really helps in that department, as having a random variety of cards into your hand forces the player to consider their options for each round they take, as well as builds anticipation for the possibility of drawing one of those really cool cards that are in your deck and would be just what you need for the next round. Including new equipment as spells as part of your deck also helps in this regard as prevents players from being able to spam their favorite card every single round, and have to plan around what they currently have in their hand.
Another thing that is something of a mixed blessing is that all of the enemies on the board are stationary. While this may seem like a step down in some senses, it actually helps the game considerably, as it helps maintain the momentum of the game. An example of how monster movement can hurt momentum comes from Arkham Horror, a game of similar length and genre. In this game,the monsters need to be moved around the map, and quite a few of them have special forms of movement that frequently require rule look up, and wastes valuable time that the players could be spending actually playing the game. By cutting out monster movement, Mage Knight cuts out an element that is both unnecessary and time consuming, decreasing the amount of time it takes to move between one round and the other, thus maintaining the players' interests.
When playing games of this nature and length, it seems the most prevalent question is why we aren't just playing a Tabletop Roleplaying game, which is what these exploration/adventure themed board games seem to be trying to emulate. In the case of Mage Knight, Mage Knight is attempting to offer a fairly unique experience on a level that would be difficult for the person running the game to manage effectively. Additionally, Mage Knight, despite its length does a good job of creating an experience for that sort of adventure over only one or two evenings, whereas a full campaign of the same scope would likely take a couple of months to handle. That being said, a Mage Knight is a pretty cool concept for an RPG campaign, though I doubt many GMs would be up for the task, given how many D&D campaigns seem to fall apart when they get to an Epic Tier power level.
In summary, among the games that I currently own, I believe that this one will be my personal favorite. However, I would not recommend it at a party where players are expecting to play more than one game over the course of the evening. Still, if you and some friends are ever able to devote the majority of a day or possibly a couple evenings towards playing this game, I would definitely recommend it.
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