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Paige Watson
United States
Redmond
Washington
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Mage Knight: Board GameBackground
So I picked up Mage Knight: Board Game a couple days ago.
I'd been eyeing it for a while, and when I saw it on sale (only 2 left) at the local online retailer (cardhaus.com) I jumped.
You should know that I am turning into a Vlaada Chvátil fanboy. I own Galaxy Trucker and Dungeon Petz, and have strong intentions to get Dungeon Lords and Through the Ages: A Story of Civilization as soon as I can scrounge up the $$.
My Gaming Group
Most of the games that I play happen at work during my lunch hour. There's about 4 of us regulars and a couple of other co-workers who join in once in a while. As a developer, I get a little more lee-way when it comes to "lunch hours", so it's not unusual that we will play a game that takes 60-90 minutes. Since the company is fairly small, we also will often leave a longer game on the table in the lunch room and finish the next day.
Day minus One
The package arrived the day after I purchased it, and it happened to be the day that I was out most of the morning taking (and passing!) a MS Certification Exam. When I got to the office, it was already too late to play, so I just unwrapped the contents and started in on the reading.
Day One
I gathered two of the regular players (Mike and Missy) and the three of us started setting out the bits, and cards, and tiles, and dice, and reference cards, and player aids, and mana crystals, and everything else that comes with this game. I started reading the "learn to play" book to the others while Mike went through the rule book and filled in questions that came up.
Once we were all set up, we chose turn order and started. We got three turns (including looking up rules and the "Oh, I forgot that you have to...") in before we ended for the day.
Playing Time: 75 minutes.
Day Two
With a small amount of experience under our belts, we picked up where we left off.... still on the first round. After a bit of refreshing and discussion of rules that were played incorrectly the day before, and a realization that two of us had the wrong base cards, we got more into the flow of the game. More combat today as I took down a keep and others destroyed Orcs and Mage towers.
We made it a few turns into the second round (night), with some of the characters having advanced to level 3. I'm feeling more comfortable with the game play and I can see that once I learn the mechanics, the game will be much faster.
We left the game out for the weekend. I was hoping that we would be done in time to take it home, so that I could play the solo version, that didn't happen.
Playing Time: 95 minutes.
Day Three
After a weekend of great gaming, we returned to finish our game at lunch. I had one card in my hand (and none in my deck), and instead of calling "End of Round" I played it.
This meant that Mike was able to use his turn to place 2 more tiles, including the city tile. Since he placed the city tile, we each got one more turn, but being out of cards, I had no choice other than to call "End of Round" and skip my turn. 
Counting up victory points, we found that mike pretty much trounced us (something like 34, to the 17 & 16 scores of the others).
Playing Time: 40 minutes.
Summary
Total Playing Time: 210 minutes.
My thoughts after a single (long) game:
I liked this game. The theme and the play fit together quite well. I like the ability to play singularly, cooperatively or against others.
While it will be a longer game to play, I can see it hitting the table regularly. When we finished today, we immediately wanted to start another.
Mechanics
The learning curve is steep, but I think with a couple plays, everything will become comfortable.
We made several mistakes (which is fine for a learning game), but were able to play through them and correct them next time the situation arose.
As the game becomes familiar, I can see it speeding up. We spent a lot of time hitting the rule books and waiting for other players when we didn't have to (like leveling up and discarding/drawing/cleanup), and cutting out some or all of these things will take a lot of time out of the game.
Components
The cards and tokens are quite nice. I like the textures of the cards, but I am afraid that they will fray on the edges, so I am debating putting them (all) in sleeves.
I like the models of the heroes, but dislike the rubbery molded plastic. I would have liked to have a firmer plastic. The cities are made of a better plastic, but are bland in appearance. I'll probably end up painting them separately. As an aside, I kept wanting to call the white city, the "White Castle"...
I was able to get everything back into the box, where it goes without much problem, but if I do end up putting sleeves on the cards, I'm sure that they won't fit the inserts.
Rule books
I really like that there's a walk-through book that is separate from the main rules. I learn by playing, and this allowed us to jump in and sink or swim right away (mostly sink, in my case)
As many other people have pointed out, this rule book needs an index. Finding rules was quite hard when you didn't know where to look, especially with so much information. Also, the (often humorous) examples that are in other Vlaada Chvátil rule books, didn't exist as much as I would have liked.
Still, all in all, a fine game that I look forward to playing regularly.
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