There are a few things that initially drew me to Mage Knight. First, I’m a fan of complicated solitaire games. Second, I like games that are heavy on theme. Mage Knight brings a lot to the table in both of these areas. As an example of its complexity, Mage Knight comes with two rulebooks. One is a tutorial and explains how to use the other. In addition, the second rulebook doesn’t even have all the rules. For those you need to go to the reference cards, of which there are many.
Mage Knight, designed by Vlaada Chvatil, is a game system disguised as a boardgame. It’s a two to five hour play experience for one to five players. The core gameplay revolves around a basic deckbuilding mechanic alongside the exploration of a semi-random map built from hexagonal tiles. The map tiles can be arranged in different configurations depending upon the scenario.
Mage Knight comes prepackaged with a variety of both cooperative and competitive scenarios. In the standard scenario, Conquest, you explore the map looking for two cities, which you must attempt to conquer. Along the way, they will explore exotic locations such as castles, tombs, monasteries, magical glades, and the occasional mage’s tower.
Each of these locations is guarded by a different group of enemies with different attributes to take into account. Those familiar with adventure style games should feel at home among the settings within Mage Knight.
Let’s dig in to what makes Mage Knight unique.
Mage Knight is ultimately about time, information, and the most efficient use of both. In most scenarios you have only six rounds to achieve your goal. In each round you’ll choose an initiative card which grants you benefits that become more powerful the later in the round you act. Rounds cycle between day and night, each bringing different challenges and advantages.
During the day, information comes much more freely. When approaching fortified locations, it’s possible to see the inhabitants from an adjacent hex. For example, when you flip a tile and reveal ruins, you can see what challenges and rewards you’ll find there. When you reach for the source of all magic to fuel your most powerful abilities, you find the warm embrace of the sun giving you whatever color of mana you need in that moment. While the sun is in the sky, even the benefits obtained from your place in the initiative order involve versatility in the face of chaos or an abundance of resources.
Night, however, is a very different experience. When the sun dips below the horizon, the abundant forests through which you traveled so blithely transform into a mass of grasping branches intent on slowing your progress. Although the deserts are easier to traverse in the cool night, it’s small consolation compared to the maze your once familiar surroundings have become in the darkness. When approaching towers and ruins, there’s no way to tell what lies in wait for you except to charge blindly ahead. The source of magic itself has changed. When you reach for it, sometimes you can feel a dark energy push the few spells you may have learned to greater heights of power, but that power has limits and the source is unreliable. In the night, your place in the initiative order still grants benefits, but the purpose of those benefits is less clear, and the advantages they bring may not be advantages at all as you stumble forward praying for the sun to rise. You could wait until morning, but time is passing. If you wait too long you will never become strong enough to achieve your final goal.
As time progresses, your power grows. As word of your deeds spread, your reputation either improves or decays. If it decays too quickly, you will never amass the army you will need. If you maintain your rigid moral code, you will miss out on the potential power gained by assaulting the towers and keeps dotting the countryside. Worse still is the dilemma presented by the existence of monasteries. The monks within offer efficient and effective healing. They offer training to unlock techniques you would never have the opportunity to learn otherwise. Within their walls live allies who can make a difference in your final battle.
But as the sun sets on the second day–the halfway point of your quest–it becomes clear your power may not be enough. Within the sacred halls of the monastery, the monks guard precious artifacts. They have magical guardians, but by this point you’ve slaughtered medusas, great warriors, orcs which roam the countryside, werewolves and even mages in the very seat of their power. It is possible the people of this world will never forgive you, but the choice is on you and you must make it. Will you still be able to recruit the units you need? If not, will a powerful artifact make a difference in the final battle? Perhaps if you slay enough marauding orcs and rampaging dragons the people will forgive you. Maybe they’ll forgive you enough to look the other way the next time you burn a monastery to the ground.
These questions go round and round within your mind, but time is passing. You need to make a choice.
Throughout all of this, each turn you are looking at the cards you’ve drawn and trying to make sense of how your hand will aid your journey along the path you’ve chosen.
As your fame grows and your abilities increase, you will be able to choose from a slowly shifting supply of actions, spells, and skills. These choices are especially important because there will never be enough time to learn them all.
As you progress, you will see allies you’ve recruited sacrifice their health—and sometimes even their lives—for your quest. As you take wounds, they will clog your hand until you can find healing. Even worse, if you cannot recover by sunrise or sunset, they will be reshuffled into your deck to reopen at the worst possible time.
And finally, when you see that first city, when you are surrounded by allies you’ve recruited from across the land, wielding power you’ve fought for every step of the way, haunted by the memories of choices you had to make, your heart might very well break as you gaze upon the vast power arrayed against you in only the first of two dazzling cities. The second city will be much more heavily defended. But the day has fled,the sun is setting for the last time. You will have to finish this in the dark. There will be no time to rest. You can only go forward, perhaps to your death.
This is Mage Knight.