by jhsjhs
Summary Review: Mage Wars is Magic: The Gathering on a 3x4 grid. If you like one, you will probably like the other. For people who want more detail…
I will not go into a full review of the rules, as many people before me have already done this, but: Mage Wars is a 2-person game where each player controls a mage of one of several types (Warlord, Beastmater, Priestess, Wizard). Each mage has a spellbook—basically, a deck—that consists of cards representing the spells they can cast. There are creatures to summon, attack spells, enchantments to attach to creatures, equipment for the mage, etc. Each turn the players alternate moves, moving/attacking with their creatures and casting spells from their spellbook. The game ends when one of the mages runs out of life.
Does this sound familiar? There is no shame in learning from successful games in the past, and Mage Wars clearly draws a lot from M:TG. There are a two notable differences, however:
1)The 3x4 grid. Mage Wars is, in effect, Magic turned into a miniatures game. The map is simple, just 12 squares, but adding the most basic miniature game-concepts (such as ranged attacks vs. melee attacks) dramatically impacts the play. There is nothing earth-shattering here, but this feature opens up dramatically different avenues of strategy for both play and card design.
2)The spellbook. Unlike M:TG, you have all of your spells available to you immediately, and you discard them as you play them. Consider the impact this approach would make to M:TG. No more random draws. Deck building is completely different—you no longer have to worry about not getting a given spell at a given time. You can play more “singles”, the perfect card for the perfect moment. Decks are vastly more powerful. Combos doubly so. It is a different game. That is Mage Wars.
The grid feels to me like a natural evolution of Magic, and has been tried before. Dreamblade did this extremely well roughly five years ago. Summoner Wars does a nice job with this now. The non-random spellbook idea seems more radical to me. While I suspect the grid has more impact on game play immediately, I think the spellbook idea may be more what determines whether the game succeeds or not, which leads me to the proper review.
For background, I have played MW five times. One was just a starter game to get the mechanics down, but the other four were played with a full spellbook and all the rules. To address an issue that has come up various times: the first two of these games ended when one player resigned, facing overwhelming disadvantage. These took about an hour each. The last two went to the bitter end, the last life point, and took about an hour and a half each. As both players were beginners, this included a fair amount of “what does this do? Can I play this? What is that card”, which will undoubtedly lesson with time. My guess is that with a bit of practice, the full games will hit a bit more than an hour. I would say that the early stories of five hour games floating around shouldn’t be taken too seriously. It is certainly possible to go on forever, but at least one of the two players would be making a serious mistake to allow that to happen. Much like in many war games, one side may benefit from delaying confrontation, but both sides never do.
I am more of a miniatures player than a M:TG player, but have played both. Mage Wars, to me, is more “Magic” than “Mini”, but this is not a bad thing. I am a firm believer in 80:20, and it definitely applies to wargames—you can get 80% of the fun from 20% of the rules. Mage Wars doesn’t have supply lines, or require laser pointers, but more power to it. It captures key elements of most miniature games—board control, offense vs. defense, mobility—with a minimal amount of rule clutter. The heart of the game is the spellbook. There is a huge variety of spells to choose from, not just in raw numbers, but in impact. It is almost as if they condensed several years of expansions into one set. You can build flaming walls in the arena and shove people through them, build a mana factory and try to overwhelm your opponent, play dozens of different creatures (only one of which, I think, is without some sort of special ability), attach dozens more enchantments to these creatures, turn your mage into a pure fighter…and on it goes. Five games in, I haven’t come close to getting my arms around the best strategies. Consider MW Magic (with a touch of chess) as opposed to the other way around.
Is it fun? Before I answer, let me try to describe what I see the game shooting for. I think Mage Wars is not just trying to be a game that is enjoyable when you sit at the table. I think it is aiming higher—it is trying to be a game that is roughly 50%/50% 2 player (actually playing)/solo (deck building). This is what has made Magic so successful, I think—it is the best solo game on the market (even if it isn’t marketed that way). This only works, however, if the payoff is there, and the game is actually fun to play. Mage Wars, to be really successful, will have to win on both fronts. Be a game fun enough to make spending time building decks feel rewarding. A high hurdle.
As mentioned, I have only played five times, so this will have to be a “first glance” sort of review. Having said this, my main take away from Mage Wars is though I expected to enjoy it, I like it more than I expected to. It is the first game since Twilight Struggle a few years back that has motivated me to really think about it outside of the game. I have had a very good time playing—each game has been both entertaining and given that sense of “you are learning something here” that I enjoy. Most surprisingly to me, I have spent more time than I expected thinking about decks. The “grid” aspect of the game combined with the non-random spellbook forces very clear choices on your play style. If you have lots of creature spells, you better play in a way that allows you to get them out and make them useful. If you want to build a mana engine, you need to get cards out to slow down your opponent. The lack of randomness really highlights this. There is a link between the deck building and the playing which is very strong, and makes spending time thinking about the decks particularly rewarding.
So, I like Mage Wars; I think it is a very good game. I find myself wondering if it will survive, whether it can build that critical mass of players a game like this (with constant new cards requiring constant new thought) needs to make it. One issue that has come up in various reviews that I hope does not cause a problem is learning curve. Upon first glance, this is a massive game, with seemingly endless choices turn after turn. All I can offer is my experience, but by the second game this had become much less of an issue. I certainly feel there is a huge amount about the game I still have to learn, but I am enjoying the process. One thought on this would be to learn the game with someone else, as it keeps these early games competitive, which is fun. Having said that, though, I would be happy to play a real expert and get killed, just to see what they did.
The other issue that has been much discussed is play time. M:TG has what in my opinion the perfect play time for a competitive/tournament game like this, roughly 30 minutes. This is not a 30 minute game, clearly, but what I have seen so far tells me that the 1-1.5 hour mark is a pretty fair estimate. I can’t help but feel that if the game could be played consistently in less than one hour it would benefit, and I am not sure that is the case. Maybe with experience it will get there, but if not, it isn’t too far out.
I think Mage Wars has a chance to succeed where my long lamented Dreamblade failed—as the miniatures/Magic dominant game. It is cheap to play compared to similar games, and the publishers seem to be listening carefully to player opinion regarding card distribution models. I think it may lean a little long to be a great tournament game, but maybe not, we will see. So far, it has been a lot of fun to play and has clearly rewarded thought. I will try to re-review this after another few months of play when I will know whether the depth is there, but as a beginner I give it my strongest recommendation. Definitely worth a shot if you are at all interested in a game in this space.