Mage Knight Ultimate Edition Unboxing
Transcript
Hi! It's Ryan from Nights Around a Table, and the game i'm unboxing today... is a game and a half! i've actually lacked the upper arm strength to put it on the table, but i think i'm uh... i've mustered it up by this point, so here we go! (indiscriminate grunting) i think i threw my back out! This is Mage Knight: Ultimate Edition by Vlaada Chvatil, who i only know from another game uh... called Codenames, which is sort of a really light party game, and it's kind of wild finding out that it's the same guy who made THIS game, because... it's like finding out that the guy who directed From Dusk Till Dawn is the same guy who directed Spy Kids, which is true. This game... as usual with unboxings, i know very little about the game. Why did i buy it? Because i'm craaaazy! Uh... because i know two things about this game: my friend Max described it as... he goes "Oh Ryan, it's a... it's a BOX of rules!" And i was like "SIGN ME UP!" And i know that you can play it solo. And those two things are very strong selling factors for me. i don't have to burden anybody with having to learn it... i can just learn it by my self, play it by myself. Very excited. So this is actually w... a third thing i know about the game is that this is the base game, plus they did a bunch of expansions for it, so this is the base game plus all the expansions in one enormous box! And this is the biggest game box in my entire library.
Nothing comes close. The second biggest thing i've got is, like, the Alhambra Big Box...uh... but it's still quite a bit smaller than this. i joke about the weight of it. It's actually not as heavy as you would think, given its size. i mean, you pick up Lisboa, and Lisboa's probably got an extra - you know - kilogram or two on top of THIS box. Um, so i'm itching to see what's inside. One of the things that i heard about - or read about - the expansions to this game was... some people were complaining about the quality of them. The component quality wasn't the same, or wasn't consistent, with the original base game, and sometimes you're mixing in cards, and because the print quality's different (cuz they were made years apart) you can... you can tell the difference. This apparently fixes that problem. There's a consistent quality of all the components right across the board, and so i hung on. i've had this on my To-Buy list for EVER, for years and years and years, and finally, this year, i took the plunge and i waited, i got the Ultimate Edition. Here it is. Let's take a look at what actually comes inside. (humming inanely) A fifth thing i know about this game: you're a mage... who's also a knight. (ding) Smooth like butta! Box Fart-O-Meter... zero! (flaccid
trombone sound) Here we go... the box is so big, you can like... climb in and ride it to the mainland. Here we go: right off the top is a bag that promises to suffocate all your babies, so already we know it's kind of a dark theme. And inside... is a very thick, VERY th... hold on. There's a few... are these supplements? "New dual-colored action cards..." These are sort of... i don't even know! This is... an accounting of what's in the box, i suppose? Speaking of accounting... Vlaada Chvatil, uh... it's a badass name. i mean, i would love to be called Vlaada-anything. That's pretty cool. Um... the man himself isn't... he doesn't cut a very imposing figure. Uh... he looks like an accountant.
Which is what brought that to mind. Great! So... three different booklets right underneath those, uh, supplements. Game Walkthrough! There's a whole book just w... walking you through your first few rounds of the game, and telling you how to play it. And then, the Ultimate Edition rulebook for the expansions, which is very thick at 26 pages long. i don't know why i'm getting so excited about that! (wheezing) Hoo-hoo! And the, uh, the rulebook for the, for the base game, i presume, at 24 pages long. So already, you've got fifty pages and change of rules to go through, which... i relish! Looking forward to it. Underneath that, this is a shrink wrapped - here, let me get the box out of the way. Try not to hurt anybody. This is a shrink wrapped - uh - pack of cardboard. i'll ... i'll use my knife, crack it open, and just go through what's in there. i won't punch it all out.
Ain't nobody got time for that! Ok. (heh) Using my finely-honed knowledge of... of board games (oh - it's punching itSELF out. Can't wait to be played!) ... finely-honed knowledge of board games, this is a... score tracker. Ain't no flies on me! Score tracker, uh... terrain tiles to pop out. Uh... oh. Interesting. i alw... uh - you know me: i like artwork in games. i comment a lot on the artwork in games, and it's interesting that these tokens here are in a different style.... And i was completely mistaken. i thought at some point i looked at the game, and i thought that these terrain tiles were raised, and they stack.
i dunno if these cardboard tiles layer on top of each other, or if i was completely out to lunch? Not sure. More of the same, more of the same. Terrain tiles. Tokens. i think these are the bad guys that you fight, as a mage. Or a knight, really. Either. Both? Um... all kinds of stuff i don't understand, having never played the game. We'll just pop these two back in there, cuz nobody's gonna take the joy of punching stuff away from me! i'll put all this to the side, and bring in the remainder, which includes the minis! i don't... i don't understand, really. Everybody on the internet who likes board games - a certain type of board games - seems to be crazy about miniatures. i'm not a D&D player.
i don't play Warhammer, so i ... i really don't get what the big deal is? Minis to me are just like ... euh.,.. toys... tiny toys that don't... have articulated limbs, that you have to... assemble and paint yourself. i don't see the appeal. These ones are pre-painted. Now i know there's probably purists out there who are like "Eww! Pre-painted! Meh! i don't get to spend 40 hours on each one?" i'll take a close... little bit of the... i mean, they're nicely... they're nicely p... it's a better job than i could do, that's for sure. i know there are certain purists who will probably re-paint them, bet you anything. This guy... is a little... orc-y looking goblin... troll... captain... monster... thing? And... some...
castles with what looks like HeroClix-style bases that you can twist. i think, from - again
the very limited amount of info i have about this game, i think these... these are castles that you lay siege to as a ... knight. Or a mage. Or both! And, we're almo - you know
wer're almost down to the bottom of it. That's what you get: you get a huge rulebook, a bunch of cards to punch, and... this interesting (horrid sucking plastic crinkle noise) plastic insert. And looks like the insert is designed around the components that come with the game, which i always like, so i saw a round piece there that you're gonna punch out - that's gonna go there. Something's gonna go underneath... i really like when they put little scoops in for your fingers, so you're not digging stuff out, and they don't require you to grow big long natty fingernails... Plastic bags - that's fine. i was actually playing a game the other day that had all, like, kitchen Zip-Loc bags with all the stuff in it, and i realized "Oh my gosh, it must not have come with... with plastic bags!" So! Thank you for including plastic bags. Uh... little plastic or resin uh... tokens depicting what i can only assume are delicious candies? That mage knights eat? You know those mage knights, and they love their hard candies. Uh... and cards. Cards, cards, cards! One, two, three, four decks of cards, and i'm really bad at this, but if i were to estimate, i would say there's probably about fifty thousand cards there. And i know that's kind of like a running gag on this channel, but i might not be far off with this number of cards! i'm only gonna crack open one. Just one. Uh... i get - you know what? i think i know more about this
game than i'm letting on, because i'm realizing now... i think the whole gist of Mage Knight is that you... are a mage knight... and you have (grunt) Strong teeth! You have a handful of cards, and i gather - i might be wrong - but i gather it's a little bit like Race for the Galaxy, where you've got a handful of cards, and you can use your cards to cast spells or fight or do knight sort of stuff, or discard them to use extra powers or something, so it's like your, your cards are both your abilities and your currency? i think? And i mean, ok. This artwork... it's fantasy artwork. Some of it looks a little bit goofy. Some of the proportions are a little bit off on people, and it's a little bit... it's okay.
It's okay. It's not really the style that i go for, but it's fine. It'll do. That'll do, Mage Knight. So there's one deck. The cards feel... um... a little rough, actually. The...the... the edges are rough, and they don't have really shiny, nice glossy finishes to them. They feel a little bit coarser than cards i'm used to, to be perfectly frank. Or to be wonderfully Ryan! Uh... i'll put those aside, and the last thing i'll take a look is... of course it comes with dice! Here are one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, fifty, fifteen... i'm bad at estimating.... uh, dice, with little arcane Mage Knight-y symbols on them. Great! That is the sum total of what you will find in the absolutely gigantic Mage Knight: Ultimate Edition box. Now, i'm sure that once you get all that stuff punched out, it's gonna feel like a big pile of more stuff, cuz if you're gonna buy a box that big, and you're gonna put stuff in it, you're gonna wanna feel like you have tons of stuff. And, i mean, once that stuff comes out of the cardboard, it will be tons of stuff. But! It was sold to me by my friend Max as a box full of rules, and it didn't disappoint, for here are the rules that come in the box. Um, that is going to take days and days of reading, i'm sure. i can't promise that i'll do a How to Play on this, because this game is notoriously... uh... deep? Complicated? i'm not sure. But, um, i dunno - maybe! We'll see. Who knows? Um, that's it though! Mage Knight: Ultimate
Edition. Uh, maybe i'll play it and tell you how i like it on the Community track, if you're following that? Maybe i'll pop onto Board Game Geek or Reddit, and let you know what i think! Did you just watch that whole thing? Oh-hey! To 100% this video, click the badge to subscribe, then click the bell to get notifications when i've got new stuff!