I can’t tell if you’re joking. Which reminds me, when are you coming over to play Archipelago?
-Tom
There are also cards (spells) in Mage Knight that force other players to discard. That’s the one that made me ragequit the game and never play it again.
I understand where you guys are coming from for versus, even though I don’t agree that it’s a serious issue.
However, both are non-issues for co-op. Tom felt it was quite random in determining the strength of your hero:
Even as a cooperative game, you’re just as likely to be the guy stuck with a BB caliber hero while the other guy has a bazooka hero. This is a terrible design for a game that you’re also supposed to be able to play competitively.
But I didn’t find that to be the case as I was actively coordinating with the other players on who should take which options, and we were trying to build some player forces into those specialized in taking out a large number of weak opponents, and other players into forces specialized in neutralizing or taking out the larger and more dangerous opponents. If two of those forces could attack the enemy in tandem, you would stand a lot better chance of success.
It was also nice seeing just how overwhelming the enemy forces looked. I’ve seen more than one experienced player feel it’s “impossible” to take it down. Which makes it all the sweeter when you’re able to do it.
You’re describing my favorite Mage Knight experiences perfectly.
Since @tomchick doesn’t enjoy fully co-operative games, I can’t imagine him liking Mage Knight. I only enjoy it when it’s a game where me and my friends are discussing how to maximize the dice, rewards, and threats on the board. It helps with the downtime as well because I feel involved in helping everyone’s turn. Successfully organizing a group attack on what appears to be an impossible city and succeeding is very rewarding.
However, I have no interest in ever playing it competitively again.
I don’t think I have ever encountered someone who liked or would recommend Mage Knight as a competitive game. I certainly vastly prefer it as a coop game. and not just because I prefer coop in general.
I don’t know where you get that idea, because I absolutely do enjoy solitaire (aka co-op) games! Flashpoint, Eldritch Horror, Warhammer Quest, Sentinels of the Multiverse, even the new Arkham Horror LCG. The reason I don’t enjoy Mage Knight has nothing to do with its viability as a solitaire (aka co-op) game and everything to do with its design. Not a single one of those ten reasons up there is “because it’s cooperative”. And anyway, the problem Syzygy quoted isn’t related to co-op, but to playing Mage Knight competitively. Hence this part of the quote:
This is a terrible design for a game that you’re also supposed to be able to play competitively.
Also, ha ha, you guys like Mage Knight!
-Tom
So wait do you play these solo or do you actually play co-op with, you know, other people? I thought you didn’t like them as co-op either.
It’s true that Mage Knight is not a very good competitive game, and that it is unfortunate that it pretends it can fill this need, but I don’t think that makes it any less great as a coop game. Also, yes, you might want to take advantage of the magic dice but part of the strategy of the game is making sure that the crucial bits of your plan don’t rely on them - that’s why mana crystals exist and can be obtained in several different ways.
I play co-operative games that require other players co-operatively (Archipelago, Dead of Winter, Homeland, Dark Moon, Battlestar Galactica). I play solitaire games solitaire when there’s literally nothing in the design that makes them multiplayer (Pandemic*, Eldritch Horror, Mage Knight, Sentinels of the Multiverse, etc). So when @porousnapkin claims I don’t enjoy “fully cooperative” games, he’s incorrect because he’s making assumptions about how they should be played.
I should probably just link to the places where we’ve all discussed this. Wherever that is. But my point – which I think is clear in the article up top – is that my problem with Mage Knight is entirely with the design and has nothing to do with whether it’s being played with or without other people.
-Tom
* Okay, I don’t really play Pandemic.
If you didn’t watch Dice Towers’s top games that need to be toppled, you might enjoy it. I think one of them goes on a mild rant about Pandemic Legacy.
I can’t stand co-op games generally, but I love co-op Mage Knight. I’ve never tried playing competitively, I read the rules and it clearly seemed like a co-op game, no idea why Chvátil put a versus mode in there. The game’s a hard recommendation though, because of it’s running time and a few sharp edges in the design.
Wait, you have Silver Tower? I thought that would be too many ‘toys’ for you!
I think he is referring to Warhammer Quest:The Adventure Card Game.
Is Dice Towers that Tom Vasel guy? I don’t mean to be a dick, but I’ve never seen anything by him that didn’t come across as smug and grating.
-Tom
Yep. it’s him. I take no offense since I have no connection to him at all. I just have a handful of You Tube videos I watch to help me pick new games. It’s not him that disliked Pandemic, one of his… side-kicks?
I get what you mean though. They actually have a list of games where he and his group won’t teach new players because they mess it up… I assume because they’re new at the game. Almost every game I’ve ever played I had to teach myself and then spend years teaching others. I have a core group that learns with me but since friends, spouses and family members cycle through our game nights… often a new player is around. I can’t imagine refusing to teach someone a new game.
That’s so weird to me. I have never NOT enjoyed teaching someone how to play a game.
-Tom
I think you guys are being a bit harsh on Mr. Vasel on this one. That “top ten games I won’t teach” list was much more tongue-in-cheek than you are making it out to be.
I can also adamantly agree with the games on their list. I hate teaching people to play Race for the Galaxy, but I love playing it. When you play it with people who have played it 10 or more times, it’s a 20 minute game. If you play it with new people, it takes an hour or more. Plus there’s often a ton of confusion over the cards. In Age of Steam you might expect a new player to bankrupt themselves before finishing. In Puerto Rico, a new player experimenting can cost the player to the left the game.
There’s a ton of games I love teaching to new players, but there are also games that only become good on multiple plays with the same people. That list was about those games. If you get someone in your group who’s going to be coming to multiple game nights, then it’s worth trying to get that player excited about those games. If a new player is there on a one-off, not sure they’ll come back, there’s different games that fit that situation better.
I mostly play with repeat players so I ended up having a lot of games on their list. I have friends who are more likely to do one-off sessions with new people and we collect quite different games.
It’s actually a top ten list of games they won’t play with newbies. In some cases, eg Puerto Rico, it’s legitimate to criticize the effect of playing with people with dissimilar experience. In one case, they pointed out that when they were newbies, they didn’t enjoy playing with experts.
But I agree that the whole exercise was partly tongue in cheek. They have churned out literally hundreds of Top Ten lists, it’s understandable that our occasionally they throw on a bit of a wild card.
Anyway I enjoy their reviews, particularly Garcias’s, because the reviewers are reasonably thorough yet fairly concise.
I have a similar reaction to his videos.
That’s not how I feel at all. If someone wants to learn a new game, and we have time, I’m not going to tell them no it’s not worth my time. I don’t care if they only play it once or not. I am exposing them to a hobby, and it’s up to them to decide whether or not they like the more complicated games or prefer to stick to the softer ones. The only way they’re going to know though is if you try. I don’t think it was mean-spirited intentionally, but a list like that doesn’t do the hobby any favors. I’ve had people tell me I hate board games until I came to your house… now they’re regulars. Maybe the reason for that is I really don’t give a shit if we spend 3 hours teaching someone a game they later decide they don’t like and would rather not play again. It was social time, we enjoyed talking to each other, and because the company is still fun they come back and we do something else that night when they do. I still allow them to choose games from my list to try… and I wont’ even sigh heavy if they pick something that takes an hour to set-up.
As for the tongue and check, one of his side-kicks flat up said he wouldn’t play one of those games with new players, not all… others they were like well maybe.
I tend to like his reviews and his comments because I can see the game, I am familiar with how he feels about other games and it gives me a guideline. Especially with Kickstarter out there creating waves, there are so many to choose from now… I need to whittle down the list somehow when I want to try a new game and hope some of my group will like it too.