Mage Knight is an exploration adventure game considered by many as the ultimate solo adventure game. You play as a mage character exploring across a revealing hex map, and who over time levels up, strengthens their powers and recruits followers in order to achieve their objective, chosen at the start of the game. It has a light element of deck building, with just a few cards added during the course of an adventure, and its main mechanic is to manage your hand of cards, initially with six drawn each round, to its best potential, using mana or crystals to boost or change the cards powers.
For a non kickstarter game, the components are very good with decently painted models, nicely illustrated hexagonal tiles and excellent card art, some of my favourite from any game. My only real desire for improvement would be that the monster tokens really could have been bigger sized discs, or have accompanying cards to make their artwork stand out and its threat more apparent.
There are four mages in the original box, with each using a largely common deck of cards apart from one or two exceptions which are specific to their own unique skill set, and they also each have different upgrade paths through their skills tokens. There are some really neat ideas in the game, day and night modifiers will change how easy terrain is to cross and how some monsters reveal. Mana is also available to tap into, with dice rolled at the start of each turn, it can be converted into crystals that stay with you, and these will combine with your cards to give you special effects, building on the core actions such as movement, influencing, attacking, blocking or gaining mana. Combat is a complex affair, with range and siege aspects to consider, plus elemental modifiers for fire and ice, and here i could have enjoyed an optional simplified version that was less brain taxing.
The game is a puzzle and an adventure rolled into one package, and it is so satisfying on one hand but complex on the other, taking a few reads of the small print rulebook, but youtube videos really help to get a feel for it. There are many little combat modifiers rules which are especially tough to remember each time. This game has been in and out of my collection, returning once again with the latest ultimate edition which finally made me stick with it, and I really do find the hand management choices it brings an addictive experience that can be so rewarding. The gameplay is also long, however i do enjoy running simple quicker missions such as liberating a mine or two, or finding a tomb to explore, playing out my own imaginative story. It is a classic game for good reason, but for me can go in and out of favour.
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Expansions
There are expansions you can add to enhance or change the gameplay although these are all wrapped up in an ultimate edition now (my additions highlighted green = own, blue = part owned, red = not purchased) :
Krang & Tezla
Two smaller box expansions added in new playable mages, Krang, the mysterious and dangerous Orc Chaos Shaman, and the forest dweller Storm Druid Braevalar. Both packs bring in some extra monsters and scenarios to play and given mages are the most interesting part of the game these are great additions, adding more content without making things more complicated.
Lost Legion
This is the big box expansion, adding in an enemy boss, General Volkare and his Lost Legion to play against with their own automated actions. It also includes a new mage knight, Wolfhawk plus new location tiles, enemy tokens, unit cards, artifacts, spell cards and and extra unique card for each of the other mages. It is the most important expansion if you want more content and do not have the ultimate edition but does add more layers of complexity.