The Inside Scoop on Gaming

As I stumbled in to my local gaming store today after work, looking for new stuff, I found the owner sitting amongst a horde of little plastic minis reminiscent of the Battle Beast toys of the olden days. I never even got to ask what all was new before he started throwing boxes of them at me, proclaiming them to be the most awesome thing ever. After some calming down, he explained further that they were a new collectable miniature wargame. Being of the soon parted with money variety, I shelled out the eighteen bucks for the "starter pack" of ten minis, dice, ruler, and instructions.
The minis are fairly standard sized, made of a soft plastic, and pre-painted. The paint jobs are about what one would expect on mass-produced stuff, almost all of them unfortunately look like they were a gamer's first mini, no real detail to the painting at all. I wasn't surprised by this, if you want a good mini, you paint it yourself, right? For a buck-thirty per mini ($6.50 for the five-mini boosters) I wasn't going to complain. They're sturdy and can be stuffed into a bag, dropped, thrown at people, etc without worry, unlike my relatively fragile and easilly-chipped metal minis.
The genius of them, however, lies within their bases. The statistics of the figure, movement rate, offense, defense, and special abilities, are all displayed on the base, and whenever the unit takes damage, you simply twist the outer ring of it clockwise and the statistics shown change to reflect its new, wounded state. That's right, no more fiddling around with record sheets, rulebooks, counters, paper, or anything else. Just look at the mini's base and you're instantly aware of what it can do. When a unit takes too much damage, instead of new stats, skulls show up in the statistic area to make it very clear that it has run out of hit points. This also makes it very easy to keep track of units that can actually get stronger as they're wounded, berserkers and the like.
The rule set to go with them is very simple and often clever, lending itself to very fast turns. It only took one read-through of the rules for me to have a solid enough grasp of them to start a quick game with some vic...friends who happened to be handy. Most units were very satisfyingly sturdy, able to take a few hits before dropping. Nothing's quite as annoying in a wargame as spending good points for something, only to have it drop in one lucky hit.
Ah, yes, points. The collectible aspect of the game is interesting, but something that will probably irk people who really want to get certain units, but don't have others around to trade with. If I recall correctly, the booster packs each have one rare, one uncommon, two commons, and one completely random mini, and the starters have double that. All of the basic foot troops have weak, standard, and tough versions, of increasing rarity, of course, and there are the big, bad unique units that tend to be rather spiffier-looking than their generic minions and even more rare. Each piece also has a point value assigned to it, with the more powerful ones costing more. Most of the basic troops cost 12-24 points, the bigger ones 30-40, and the really powerful ones can reach as high as 145. It's an important factor that helps prevent a player with all rare units from just rolling over players with more common units, keeping out some of the problems that have plagued the collectible card games in years past. There are several different factions, although there are no rules forcing a player to use only troops from a single one, and consist of:

Atlantis Guild: Technomages with cool golems, flamethrowers and other goodies. Elemental League: More nature-ish, with healers, trolls, elves, and elementals. Necropolis Sect: Can't have a fantasy wargame without the undead! The Bone Golem is one of the truly good-looking minis of this game. Black Powder Rebels: The "common man" (and dwarf) looking to put down all those mages. Knights Immortal: A bunch of generic-looking knights. Orc Raiders: Orcs, the other fantasy wargame staple! Draconum: Big, bipedal dragon people.

Each group has its own focus, and most have about ten different types of troops to call upon. I imagine that units that can heal will be in high demand for any army. There are several special abilities to add diversity to the units, Mage Knight has just as many specialty units as any other wargame. Just because it's simple doesn't mean that anyone's been denied body-animating necromancers, health-stealing vampires, regenerating werebeasts, sneaky scouts, and so on. Putting together a good army looks to be something that is going to take quite a bit of thought.

The only big downside is, as I've said, the appearance of the minis. My friends who playtested the game with me have no intention of buying it, based solely on that issue. If you can, get a look at the minis out of the box (the pictures of them on the box are, of course, much nicer than reality) and make sure you can deal with them before you buy. They don't look bad when you're playing and they're a few feet away, but when you're looking closely at them it's a little painful. I'd try to strip the paint from mine and paint them up myself, but that sort of ruins the idea of having cheap minis to wargame with.

Style: 4 (Classy and well done)
Substance: 4 (Meaty)

Mage Knight: Rebellion
Author: Kevin Barrett and others Category: Miniature Company/Publisher: WizKids Line: Mage Knight Cost: $17.99 Page count: n/a Capsule Review by George Jackson on 11/10/00. Genre tags: Fantasy	As I stumbled in to my local gaming store today after work, looking for new stuff, I found the owner sitting amongst a horde of little plastic minis reminiscent of the Battle Beast toys of the olden days. I never even got to ask what all was new before he started throwing boxes of them at me, proclaiming them to be the most awesome thing ever. After some calming down, he explained further that they were a new collectable miniature wargame. Being of the soon parted with money variety, I shelled out the eighteen bucks for the "starter pack" of ten minis, dice, ruler, and instructions. The minis are fairly standard sized, made of a soft plastic, and pre-painted. The paint jobs are about what one would expect on mass-produced stuff, almost all of them unfortunately look like they were a gamer's first mini, no real detail to the painting at all. I wasn't surprised by this, if you want a good mini, you paint it yourself, right? For a buck-thirty per mini ($6.50 for the five-mini boosters) I wasn't going to complain. They're sturdy and can be stuffed into a bag, dropped, thrown at people, etc without worry, unlike my relatively fragile and easilly-chipped metal minis. The genius of them, however, lies within their bases. The statistics of the figure, movement rate, offense, defense, and special abilities, are all displayed on the base, and whenever the unit takes damage, you simply twist the outer ring of it clockwise and the statistics shown change to reflect its new, wounded state. That's right, no more fiddling around with record sheets, rulebooks, counters, paper, or anything else. Just look at the mini's base and you're instantly aware of what it can do. When a unit takes too much damage, instead of new stats, skulls show up in the statistic area to make it very clear that it has run out of hit points. This also makes it very easy to keep track of units that can actually get stronger as they're wounded, berserkers and the like. The rule set to go with them is very simple and often clever, lending itself to very fast turns. It only took one read-through of the rules for me to have a solid enough grasp of them to start a quick game with some vic...friends who happened to be handy. Most units were very satisfyingly sturdy, able to take a few hits before dropping. Nothing's quite as annoying in a wargame as spending good points for something, only to have it drop in one lucky hit. Ah, yes, points. The collectible aspect of the game is interesting, but something that will probably irk people who really want to get certain units, but don't have others around to trade with. If I recall correctly, the booster packs each have one rare, one uncommon, two commons, and one completely random mini, and the starters have double that. All of the basic foot troops have weak, standard, and tough versions, of increasing rarity, of course, and there are the big, bad unique units that tend to be rather spiffier-looking than their generic minions and even more rare. Each piece also has a point value assigned to it, with the more powerful ones costing more. Most of the basic troops cost 12-24 points, the bigger ones 30-40, and the really powerful ones can reach as high as 145. It's an important factor that helps prevent a player with all rare units from just rolling over players with more common units, keeping out some of the problems that have plagued the collectible card games in years past. There are several different factions, although there are no rules forcing a player to use only troops from a single one, and consist of: Atlantis Guild: Technomages with cool golems, flamethrowers and other goodies. Elemental League: More nature-ish, with healers, trolls, elves, and elementals. Necropolis Sect: Can't have a fantasy wargame without the undead! The Bone Golem is one of the truly good-looking minis of this game. Black Powder Rebels: The "common man" (and dwarf) looking to put down all those mages. Knights Immortal: A bunch of generic-looking knights. Orc Raiders: Orcs, the other fantasy wargame staple! Draconum: Big, bipedal dragon people. Each group has its own focus, and most have about ten different types of troops to call upon. I imagine that units that can heal will be in high demand for any army. There are several special abilities to add diversity to the units, Mage Knight has just as many specialty units as any other wargame. Just because it's simple doesn't mean that anyone's been denied body-animating necromancers, health-stealing vampires, regenerating werebeasts, sneaky scouts, and so on. Putting together a good army looks to be something that is going to take quite a bit of thought. The only big downside is, as I've said, the appearance of the minis. My friends who playtested the game with me have no intention of buying it, based solely on that issue. If you can, get a look at the minis out of the box (the pictures of them on the box are, of course, much nicer than reality) and make sure you can deal with them before you buy. They don't look bad when you're playing and they're a few feet away, but when you're looking closely at them it's a little painful. I'd try to strip the paint from mine and paint them up myself, but that sort of ruins the idea of having cheap minis to wargame with. Style: 4 (Classy and well done) Substance: 4 (Meaty)

Mage Knight: Rebellion