What is Mage Knight?

[Gizzard]

I passed on the original Mage Knight as I already have my grubby little hands full of Warhammer stuff. But I did pick up a starter and 2 boosters of Dungeons because:

1) I always loved DungeonQuest. The idea of scooting through a dungeon, grabbing all the treasure you can at insane risk to your well-being - what could be more fabulous?
2) It looked "small", rather than huge, expensive armies of stuff you probably only need a handful of figures.

Having read the rules, but not actually having a chance to play yet, I am still hopeful. Here are some random impressions I had about the rules:

The original Starter pack seems a bit small to play with; the basic game is scored by how much gold you grab and the Starter comes with only two treasure chests, which makes me imagine lots of dorky games that end in ties --- "I got one chest, how many did you get? One? Hmmm, I guess thats a tie again."

The characters can gain levels. When you gain a level you are fully healed. I'm not quite sure how this works as a game mechanic. How tough is a single encounter, is each one a "level or die" situation? (Every two encounters roughly looks worth a level). And if I get to 5th level (the highest supported) do I just run over everything in the Dungeon?

The monsters move as blips around the dungeon until they encounter players, then they expand into actual monster figures. Its similar to the old Space Hulk game in that way. Also, each player gets a certain number of moves per turn and can move his hero(s) or any of the blips.

Hope this helps.

 

[Glyfair]

The original Starter pack seems a bit small to play with; the basic game is scored by how much gold you grab and the Starter comes with only two treasure chests, which makes me imagine lots of dorky games that end in ties --- "I got one chest, how many did you get? One? Hmmm, I guess thats a tie again."

How much gold you get is what's important. In the "Lone Wolf" game (the only game you can play with just a starter) there are many, many ties. That's because survival is quite hard in that version. That's why I recommended the 100 pt. hero teams game. In the last game there were 4 treasure. Three came up traps (so no gold). The only treasure was a potion that was used (thus not counting towards gold).

Some more comments about MK Dungeons:

The rules are horribly written. You wouldn't know this was a company who put out three previous sets of Mage Knight. Thank God their DC & Marvel superhero games are going to have rules written by Monte Cook. Make sure you read the FAQ on the WizKids site before you play.

I recommend the following minimum purchases for each player if you are going to play anything other than a trial.


1) One starter set: Nonetheless, you can get by without this. The rules are on the website, and the map isn't supposed to be used once you buy a dungeon builders set. You could subsitute two booster packs.
2) Two booster packs: Gives you a variety of Mage Spawn (the monsters) and more variety in heros (there are supposedly only 8 possible heros in the starter set, of 32 different heroes).
3) One Dungeon Builders set: It's nice for the terrain pieces (like the doors), but necessary for the dungeon tiles. Make sure you have one for each player. The version that uses the tiles requires each player to place 5 tiles, the sets each come with 6 tiles.

I've found it very fun. Plus the door pieces make very good dungeon pieces for D&D (not to mention to upcoming artifacts sets - with more cool terrain pieces).

Glyfair of Glamis

 

[dagger]

I thought Id bump this because I'm more interested in MK and when I awoke this morning it was off the page.

 

[Paragon]

CRACK

It is the latest version of gamers crack.
becareful man I've lost some good friends to that stuff.

Paragon

 

[dagger]

Magic use to be that way for us, few years ago.

 

[Guacamole]

About Mage Knight

You can find good info at:

www.mkrealms.com

Which has a lot of the mini's on it etc. It can be pretty adicting to collect, so I stopped, but the battles are fun, and the cool thing is that the common pieces don't totally suck, like common magic cards do. I too find them excellent for miniatures, though not on grids because their base is larger than the standard size for mini's and printed grid maps, but they do work well for wilderness combat.

With regard to Mage knight though, I find their method for keeping track of damage rather ingenious. There is a dial at the base which keeps track of health and stat deterioration as the game progresses. As far as war games go, it is one of the easiest I have learned.

Personally, I have been appalled by some of the quality put out by chainmail. Some of those pieces are a pain to put together so I will probably use mage knight more in the future...

 

[dagger]

I picked up a Starter kit, I will prolly get a booster pack next week.

I plan to have at least one battle with a buddy before I buy anymore though, Ill prolly do a battle this weekend.