Just in time to help you wind down from your Thanksgiving or keep you entertained while standing in long lines for Black Friday comes our latest show – a rather long one at that. This time we review Dungeon from Wizards of the Coast, Reds! from GMT, and The One Ring: Adventures Over the Edge of the Wild RPG from Cubicle 7 Studios, and Mage Knight from WizKids. There’s also plenty of news and opinion as you’ve come to expect!
We’re a tad sillier than we normally are but we were having some laughs just prior to Turkey Day.
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Founder/Editor-in-chief of The Gaming Gang website and host of The Gaming Gang Dispatch and other TGG media, Jeff tackles any and all sorts of games but has a special fondness for strategy, conflict sims, and roleplaying games. Plus, he's certainly never at a loss for an opinion...
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Another fine show. I traded for Mage Knight when it first came out and it is one of my favorite games, reminded me a bit of Avalon HIll’s Magic Realm. I think it works best as a complex solo puzzle/adventure type game, it’s not very much fun with 3 or 4, it’s ok with 2. It does take a time investment to grok the rules; it’s almost like a detailed war game. There are a lot of of different cards such as spells, units, artifacts and units, plus skills that you get for leveling up. During the course of the game, you will only utilize a handful of the different cards and skills. At first that frustrated me, but it does add to the re playability of the game, every game will probably play out differently. The rulebooks are a bit of a mess, besides the small type there is no index and it can be time consuming and aggravating to find stuff. They should have followed the GMT model with a rulebook and playbook. It does have every mechanic under the sun…except dice:(
Yes it is a tough call for me. I have enjoyed playing solo, but the time involved in playing multi-player games is just too much to be fun for me. Every turn is like solving a puzzle. The rules allow you to take back your move if you make a mistake, but this adds to the length of a player’s turn as well. You are allowed to attack other players, but you don’t gain much from doing so, and overall it feels a lot like a multi-player solitaire game anyway. Much depends upon the cards that you have drawn into your hand for that turn. Sure, you can use your cards as generic ‘+1’s for attacking, blocking, movement, and influence, but then you start burning through your deck very quickly and hasten the end of the round, or use up the cards that you really need (once you get to the village you wish to recruit from or dungeon you wish to assault).
I like playing when I have the time to sit and ponder the best move without the pressure of making sure that the other players are having a good time, or waiting while they figure out their own course of action. Two players might be ok, if you both know the rules fairly well.
I agree it would have helped if they had used a wargame model for their rules, with an index, as it really is a lot like a wargame.
Some people may love the game (and do), it has a lot of complexity built-in, and strategies that you can pursue, and it will play out differently every time (as you mentioned Andy).
I’m going to give multiple players another shot, now that they understand it a bit more perhaps it will grow on them and we can get through a full game. The problem is that in most cases the first game is crucial as to whether or not the game gets to hit the table in the future or not. If they have already decided it sucks, it gets difficult to overcome that first impression.
Another good show! Here’s to another 50! Not sure if I’d be interested in Mage Knight as it seems as if it’s a lot more complicated than it’s worth.
Boys,
Another great show! Couple things ( and sorry ahead of time ) Elliot pronounced RAVNICA wrong . I know its tough for you guys to get all these strange fantasy names right but as a Magic player that one hurt(did I say I was sorry already :))
Anyway though I am a gamer I must admit one of the things I love about your podcast is the WISEASS comments. Best WA comment was ALAN GREENSPAN needed to play Mage Knight
Almost choked on my Taco Bell Doritos Taco 🙂
keep up the good work
Thanks John! I have to say the pronunciation police are out in force today. At least you have the decency to correct us in a polite manner as opposed to a couple emails I received today. Geez! My response to those types of emails is always an invite for the writer to go and record their own shows and they can crank out all the correct pronunciation as they’d like…
I’m not knocking you at all John and there’s no reason to be sorry, as I did catch Elliott’s mistake as we recorded, but I think it’s pretty obvious to our listeners we’re just a couple of regular Joes putting together a show on the fly – many times in the late night/wee morning hours. I’ll leave in a lot of our mistakes because I never want us to come across as a couple of talking head, NPR style hosts; there’s a podcast that comes immediately to mind folks can tune into if they’re into that sort of thing.
I tend to use the wrong pronunciation for attribute in the right context all the time (as do quite a few RPG designers I’ve talked to) and somehow that fact drives a few of our listeners up the wall. It’s not as if we’ve ever claimed to be English professors…
As for the WA comments? You should hear what gets edited out of the show to keep the program as semi-family friendly as possible. 🙂
Jeff,
Like I said you guys are the best. Love the podcast, love the website.
I’m glad my critisism came off the way it did.
Now I dont feel so bad blasting you about getting the FOG BOWL wrong:)
btw wouldnt mind getting explicit copy of podcast 🙂 sure its hysterical
keep up good work
jfcjr
I knew there was something wrong about the Fog Bowl – number one it wasn’t against Dallas or Detroit as they’re the two teams that always play on Thanksgiving. At least we got the teams right! Hahahaha!
Whoops, sorry
Good show.
Loved the Mage Knight card description. Reminded me of an xkcd comic
http://xkcd.com/37/