Since it's been out, I kept an eye on MK, since on the surface it seemed it would be just the thing to scratch my land crawling itch.
What kept me from buying it so far was mainly the language barrier (granted, it's not really hard to understand, but some players I know won't even try to make the effort of playing games in strange and alien languages such as english. Them snooty frenchies! ).
What finally made me buy it was the Nth delay in the french edition (I mean, it's only some cards, right? What's taking them so long?), as the project (supposing it's not vaporware) is now 1 year behind schedule. Frustration can be hard on my wallet, sometimes.
Mage Knight ? What is it about ?
Mage Knight is about some guys -conveniently called "<PERSON> sent on a mission to a far-away land. They come out of a portal (apparently, the portal mages in Mage Knights Land can only summon portals right next to the sea, while the city builders of far-away land have a strong aversion to it), and try to reach their goal, be it to discover an ancient city, conquer the land, or indulge in PVP bloodbath.
This is mainly achieved through use of cards, which will allow players to kill locales, steal their treasure, and burn down their houses.
How does it play ?
As probably many others, I came into this game expecting a dominion-like deckbuilding mechanic applied to a land crawl.
Well the deckbuilding part is actually pretty limited, because decks don't recycle as much as they do in other deckbuilders. This means that each card one adds to their deck/army can only be used so many times.
The other difference with "conventional" deckbuilders, is that any card one acquires goes to the top of their deck rather than into the discard pile, so there is also a short-term incentive to card acquisition.
As I realized that decks don't cycle much (after having cycled it thrice on the 1st round, and checking how the round is supposed to end...), I wondered how useful adding new cards to the deck would be (and also reacted with a "Meh...").
Thankfully, each way to acquire cards present the players with various choices, which, while random, usually allow one to add something useful to he deck. The low number of cycles also adds a tension to the game, as players are forced to make as best as they can with the choices presented, rather than wait for the perfect card to be available.
So, Dominion it is not. It's also not Thunderstone, nor Ascension.
Okay, new take on an "old" mechanic. Now, what about the rest of the game? Fights? There's got to be fights, right?
MK uses a system not unrelated to Dungeon Lords (oh same designer... figures). 366
A bit puzzle-y, nearly no randomness once the fight starts, randomness mostly lies in the setup.
Most adventure games go like this :
- assess chances to beat monster. If not acceptable, do something else.
- use action to move to monster
- use action to try to beat monster (depends on dice)
- if ok, win fight, if not ok, lose fight.
MK does it the other way around :
- assess chances to beat monster next turn (depends on card draw). If not acceptable, do something else.
- use action to get closer to monster.
- draw cards.
- if can win fight with acceptable losses, win fight. If not, then do something else.
Once you commit to a fight, you can usually predict how it's going to end. At least, you can't really blame a lack of luck if your character loses a fight and ends up damaged beyond all hopes of recovery.
Note this is not always the case, as you sometimes have to blindly attack face-down opponents, or some opponents will summon random monsters to fight for them. You may blame your bad luck for these. Or your lack of foresight.
Anyway. Fights in MK are usually more of a math affair than a luck fest. You're either willing to take the losses or aren't, but this also spares the suprise of He-Man getting bitten to death by a common mouse because of a 5% fumble chance. If this defines adventure to you, MK probably isn't the game for you.
Ok, so our guys get shiny new items/moves they can use a couple of times before the game ends, and kick the living **** out of the natives with nifty math skills rather than dice? Where's the adventure then?
Route planning and making the best from the lay of the land. 884