Mage Knight Returns! Maybe. Sort of.
Many gamers have bittersweet memories of Mage Knight. It was an awesome tactical miniatures game that didn’t require painting or bookkeeping, with freeform movement and a bunch of cool fantasy factions. Yet the property was horribly mismanaged by the original Wizkids, with alternate rule sets and an eventual revamp (Mage Knight 2.0) that effectively killed the game by making all the old figures obsolete. Now Wizkids might bring Mage Knight back.
At this point, Mage Knight isn’t really coming back. A digital game company called MFV is planning a multi-platform digital version of a new Mage Knight game. They’re holding a Kickstarter campaign for it that might lead to a new tabletop Mage Knight, if it’s successful enough.
Normally I’d be jumping for joy at the news of a new version of Mage Knight. As is stands, though, I’m feeling pretty tepid about this. For one thing, I’m not interested in a video game (especially one that uses a square grid, gutting the core of Mage Knight right out of the gate). There are enough of those. For another thing, the goal of the Kickstarter campaign is $700,000. Admittedly, they’re only one day into the campaign, but as of this writing, they’ve hit a grand total of $15,000. I just don’t see this getting off the ground.
There are other problems. One of the cool awards for contributing is a set of limited edition physical figures based on the new units they’re designing for the video game. The level to acquire those? $170. And as far as Mage Knight actually returning as a tabletop game the way it should be, there are only vague assurances that Wizkids is using this project to gauge if there’s enough interest.There don’t seem to be any specific benchmarks for that to happen.
My last concern is probably mine and mine alone — they’re returning to Mage Knight 1.0 rules (with optional unit dials for use with HeroClix rules). Most people are overjoyed to see a return to 1.0, but I actually really liked Mage Knight 2.0. The figures were better, the abilities were more flexible and interesting, and overall it was just a better game.
I’ve got a decent collection of 2.0 figures, so I think I’ll get my Mage Knight fix these days with those. I wonder if leftover stock on those has hit bargain bin pricing yet.
July 3rd, 2012 7:17 PM
I grabbed a bunch of 2.0 figures out of a clearance bin to learn how to play. I’m not a fan of the Clix series and its move OR shoot philosophy. I played the Mechwarrior Dark Age game and it rapidly turned into turret wars as no one wanted to move into the line of fire without being able to shoot. That and the pushing rules meant that pieces could only move every other turn without taking damage. I really liked how Mechs pushed for heat and not damage, that I think would be a better mechanic if you could push in the same turn, so you could move and attack for heat penalties. I don’t know, I never really played Mage Knight, but is runs on the same engine, and therefore carries the same flaws.
July 5th, 2012 10:44 AM
I think that swicthing game systems and confusing the hell out everybody was a wonderful thing. It let me pick up a lot of really cool figures cheap to use for my roleplaying games (though I did need to cut off those annoying bases).