Every now and then, people come to boardgamegeek and ask the simple question: "Which game can you recommend for solo play? The more thematic, the better."
Typically, the answers to this question include the games Onirim, Friday, Ghost Stories, LotR-LCGand, well, this little oddity of a game here, Mage Knight Board Game. The typical recommendation, however, goes a little like this:
(Enthusiatic) Go and get Mage Knight, definitely the greatest solo experience out there.
(More calmly) But keep in mind, the rules are pretty complex and take quite a bit of study to get them all right. And the game is long.
(Shuddering with remembrance of their first few games) Especially for beginners, who need to regularly check some rules.
(Upbeat again) But the game is so rewarding, it's worth every second you put into learning the rules.
(More realistically) Okay, make that every single one of the dozens of hours you put into learning the game.
However, none of those second thoughts about the game make the recommender question whether or not Mage Knight really is the kind of game you recommend to a person you hardly know. There is a very good reason for this:
Mage Knight provides you with probably the greatest solo experience out there!
Even though it probably has a couple of rules too many to give you a realistic chance of getting them right during your first month of playing this.
But hey, if you're playing it solo, who cares whether or not you really got every single little detail hidden in the dozens of pages in the rulebooks right?
So, what is this game about?
You, the player, are a Mage Knight, exploring the Atlantean continent, going down dungeons to fight monsters and win spells or artifacts, hiring people to support you on your quest and take wounds you don't want to take yourself, conquering mage towers and keeps, and dealing with marauding enemies who are hindering your moving around freely. (Not as much as the actual moving mechnics keep you from moving around freely, some might be tempted to add.) And, most importantly of all, you spend your time gaining fame and levelling up.
There are different scenarios giving you different objectives, but for the solo game, the goal is to conquer two cities, one stronger than the other, where you (and the guys who you hired during the game) face three to five to six enemies at once. For comparison, in a dungeon, you face one single enemy and hope all will go well.
So, the narrative arc, if everything goes well for you, has you going from being somewhat wimpy and unintimidating to being a commander of men, a caster of spells and a scourge to anything he or she lays his or her eyes on with a discontent eye. Awesome!
Yup, Sounds cool, how does it work?
There is a map that is built during the game made out of hepta-hex-tiles (tiles consisting of seven hexes). On this map, you will have different terrains on which there are different locations to visit, explore, conquer or burn down, which, except for visiting, usually means defeating an enemy. 884
And talking about enemies, some are placed upon the board and attack you if you try to move in their neighbourhood.
You navigate the board and fight these enemies by using cards.
You have a starting deck which is slightly different for each hero, i.e. each hero has one card in her deck that is a deluxe version of a card the other decks contain. You will want to get more and better cards into your deck, and you will want to keep wound cards out of your deck.
As your hero enters the game, your hand limit is five cards. (This limit will increase by levelling up often enough.) At the end of your turn, you always draw from your deck up to your hand limit. On your turn, you can use the cards in hand to do stuff, keep or discard each of the cards you kept in your hand, possibly get some goodies (like new, better cards for your deck) and then you draw again.
It's a deckbuilder, you say. Where you get to keep cards you didn't use in your hand, you say. That's not *that* complicated, you say.
And I answer yes, yes, and well, not yet.
Let's look at how a player's turn goes, shall we?
First of all, you have the moving phase of your turn. You may play cards that give you movement points, use abilities you get when levelling up to get movement points and exhaust units you recruited to get movement points. 629