Just got done playing a full co-op scenario of Mage Knight, which ran about 4-5 hours for a 2p game. Ouch! We lost, but managed to conquer 2 of the 3 cities though.
The game kicks ass, but the quick tutorial scenario actually played a lot smoother and only took a few hours to play, so we’ll probably stick to the quicker scenarios for now.
What really caused the co-op game to bog down were the advanced things that came into play mid-game that weren’t covered in the tutorial: cities, attacking/blocking multiple units, and all of the resistances that caused a lot of confusion and calculation errors. We’re still not sure, in fact I’m pretty positive that we messed up some rules, particularly in combat. It’s much like the dilemma we first had with monsters in Arkham Horror.
Still, we had a ton of fun. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that Mage Knight is the best and most fulfilling board game I’ve ever played. It really is like Heroes of Might & Magic in board game form. A total fucking blast.
Now, where are my expansions at?
That name … it’s familiar …
Wait, you were the one always kicking my ass in Ascension. This “let’s play A Few Acres of Snow” thing might not go as trippingly as I’d planned…
Yeah, there’s no way to play against AI at the site. I suppose you could set up two accounts and play yourself in two browsers, but if you’re going to go to that kind of trouble you might as well just kick my ass in this, too.
SlyFrog
4963
People like you are not making it easy for me to hold off on buying this.
I think I need to go set up my copy of Magic Realm.
Dang it! I’ve already convinced myself that the game isn’t for me and then I read something like that.
Its too complex for my group. The games last too long. There is too much downtime between turns. There isn’t enough player interaction. That is four strikes against it, but every time I read opinions about the game it seems to wear down my defenses a little more.
To make matters worse, my last two attempts at designing a board game were hybrid deck building adventure games on a map which should tell me something. Why design a game when I can simply go out and buy the same thing that has already had all the rules worked out and play testing completed?
I gave in last week when they were going after Chuck to order a copy :) Last I heard my copy was someplace in the great northwest.
I need to find the posts about painters because Super Dungeon Explore is in the same box!
Just got my Mage Knight yesterday! I know other people have commented on this, but the box insert is too cool. I’m so used to ditching the cardboard insert and plastic baggies and buying an artbin plastic organizer to put all my little tokens and chits in. What’s this? A box insert that has organized spaces for everything? I don’t have to do anything? Absurd!
I was weirdly disappointed because there was nothing to punch out or organize, aside from taking the plastic off a few things. I kind of love opening up a new board game and punching all the bits out and putting them in bins. That’s probably why Fantasy Flight and I get along so well.
Vlaada has stuff in the works, apparently. In response to one user floating the idea of mobile rampaging enemies on BGG, he made a comment about how you can use the mana dice to determine compass directions on the map, and hinted at expansion material. I’m guessing it will just depend on how well the game sells, and it seems to have sold relatively well so far.
I actually trashed the insert and just bagged everything, because I found that trying to make everything fit back in after playing was a pain. But I may have just been impatient.
One nice thing about bagging, at least, is that you can put all of each character’s stuff in one bag, which makes setup a bit easier.
As a former Wizkids games player, back when they were peddling plastic crack (Mageknight and Mechwarrior), it’s strange to think of them as making proper, awesome, self-contained, Board Games.
I want to buy Star Trek: Fleet Command, but I don’t want to potentially purchase a box of broken ships for 100.00… I totally forgot who published Mage Knight and purchased it without thinking about it. I’m not yet disappointed by it. I’ve not yet played a full game yet though.
I bought a box of broken ships for $60 and WizKids replaced all the defective ones (including those that just had gluing errors) very quickly and painlessly. They’re really standing behind their products under the new management.
Yeah I trashed the insert as well, in favor of a few Plano boxes. The insert was a nice idea, but just too fiddly for me and the plasic it was made of was pretty awful.
I’m with Two Sheds on the pre-punched cardboard, I find it oddly satisfying to punch those boards and organize everything.
Heh, coincidentally, the copy I was coerced into buying came in the mail today. I’ve already got the sinking suspicion that I’m not hardcore enough for a game like Mage Knight, but I’ll reserve judgement until I’ve actually played a couple times, of course.
And since I asked a while ago: I was very pleased with Miniatures Market. Good price, reasonable shipping cost, and it shipped pretty quickly. A++ will impulse buy under pressure from message board again.
It’s nice to order from an online store with such great prices that also has a retail location where someone will pick up the phone. When I found out Khazad-Dum was out I called them to add it to my recent order and they did, but when the order showed up Khazad-Dum wasn’t in there. It turned out their shipment was delayed by a day so they decided to send the original order and then send Khazad-Dum separately at no additional shipping cost to me so I’d get everything as fast as possible. It’s refreshing to get Amazon-like service from a mom-and-pop shop, just like the good old days.
And Miniatures Market just found a new customer in me. There is no substitute for good customer service so I went with them for a few supplies I needed that my local shop doesn’t carry. Very reasonably shipping on small orders, so much so that it was still cheaper than retail .
I love Miniature Market. Glad that they’re blowing up and becoming more and more popular.
Played The Resistance yesterday – not sure if it’s been talked about in this thread – and holy hell it’s fun. It’s a Werewolf-type game that takes about 15 minutes to play, unless, like us, you spend about a half hour denouncing, scheming, theorizing, propounding, and denying all at the top of your lungs. At the end of the second game, one of the players said, “That is the funnest game I have ever played in my life.”
Got fleet command last night. Talked with my flgs owner who let me open the box first to see what condition it was in. One ship had popped off its stand and the cards were spilled but not bent, so I bought it right away. Can wait to play it tonight.
SlyFrog
4979
Count your cards. Even though everything looked in good shape in mine, I was missing a mission card.
WizKids has frankly been disappointing in how slowly they’ve been responding to it.
apost8
4980
Yep – I like it better than BSG. I think you played at an appropriate pace, too. If you play too quickly, it is too easy for the spies to win. You should be spending some time discussing why people are voting the way they are to give the true Resistance members a fighting chance.
