Mage Knight Board Game rules refresher

Read the refresher

You are building a Mage Knight from a small deck of Basic Actions into a powerful hero, and in most scenarios the winner is the one with the most Fame. You do that by exploring the map, fighting enemies, recruiting Units, and conquering sites, all within a hard limit of Rounds.

A quick word on setup. Each player starts with a deck of sixteen Basic Actions, a hand of five, one Command token, and a stack of Level tokens showing Armor 2 and Hand limit 5. Shield tokens go on zero on both the Fame and the Reputation tracks. Three offers sit beside the board: three Advanced Actions, three Spells, and a Unit offer of Regular Units equal to the number of players plus two. Enemy tokens are sorted face down into seven piles by their backs. The Source holds mana dice equal to players plus two, rerolled until at least half show basic colors. The Day/Night board starts Day side up. The map is the starting tile plus two or three revealed tiles, with the rest of the tile deck ready to be explored.

Now the flow. Rounds alternate Day and Night. At the start of each new Round you flip the Day/Night board, reroll the Source, replace the Unit offer, refresh the Advanced Action and Spell offers by removing the lowest card and adding a new one on top, then everyone readies their Units, flips Skill tokens back up, shuffles their whole discard pile into a new deck, and draws up to their Hand limit. Then each player takes a Tactic card, lowest Fame choosing first, and the Round order tokens are rearranged by Tactic number, lowest first. Players then take turns in that order. On your turn you may move, and then take one action, or instead you Rest. If your deck is empty at the start of your turn you may announce the End of the Round, and you must announce it if your hand is empty too. Everyone else then takes one last turn and the Round is over.

The heart of the turn is your hand of cards. An Action card can be played for its basic effect, or powered with one mana of the depicted color for its stronger effect. A Spell needs one mana of its color for its basic effect, and at Night its color plus one black mana for the stronger one. An Artifact gives its basic effect when played, or its stronger effect if you throw it away. Any non-Wound card can also be played sideways for Move 1, Influence 1, Attack 1 or Block 1, but never for Ranged, Siege, or elemental attacks or blocks. Wounds can never be played at all. Mana comes in red, blue, white and green, plus gold, usable as any color during the Day only, and black, usable only at Night. Once per turn you may take one die from the Source; you return and reroll it at the end of your turn, and that is the first thing you do. Crystals sit in your Inventory, up to three of each color.

Movement comes first and must be finished before your action. Total your Move points and spend them space by space according to the terrain costs on the Day/Night board. Revealing a new map tile costs two Move points, and you must be next to a spot where a tile can legally go. Entering a space with an unconquered keep, mage tower or city ends your movement and is an assault. You cannot enter a space occupied by a rampaging enemy, and if you move from one space adjacent to a rampaging enemy directly to another space adjacent to it, you provoke it, your movement ends, and you must fight.

Then you take exactly one action. You can interact with locals at a village, a monastery, a keep you own, or a mage tower or city conquered by any player, playing cards for Influence points and adjusting the total by your Reputation modifier. Influence buys Units from the offer, Healing at three Influence in a village or two at a monastery, a Spell at a mage tower for seven Influence plus one mana of the Spell's color, an Advanced Action from the Unit offer at a monastery for six, and cities have their own options on their City card. Alternatively you can explore an adventure site, challenge one or more adjacent rampaging enemies, burn a monastery for Reputation minus three, or do nothing. Assaulting any fortified site costs you one Reputation regardless of the outcome.

Combat runs in four phases. First Ranged and Siege attacks, where only Siege works against fortified enemies, and enemies that are fortified twice cannot be targeted at all. Then the Block phase, where you block one chosen enemy at a time and must match or exceed its full attack, doubled if it is Swift. Then Assign Damage, where each unblocked enemy deals damage equal to its Attack, doubled if Brutal. Damage sent to a Unit Wounds it and is reduced by that Unit's Armor. Damage to your Hero comes as one Wound card into your hand for every Hero Armor value of damage, rounded up, and if the Wounds added to your hand during that combat equal or exceed your unmodified Hand limit you are knocked out and discard all non-Wound cards. Finally the Attack phase, where any type of attack works and fortifications are ignored. To defeat enemies, your total attack must equal or exceed the total Armor of everything you are targeting, and enemy resistances halve matching attacks.

You gain Fame immediately for each enemy defeated, but you only Level up at the end of the turn. Odd levels give you a new Command token as your top Level token flips over, revealing better Armor and a bigger Hand limit; even levels give you a Skill token and an Advanced Action card. Units you recruit sit under Command tokens, are spent when activated, and ready at the end of the Round.

If you Rest instead, you cannot move, fight or interact. A Standard Rest discards one non-Wound card plus any number of Wounds. If your hand is nothing but Wounds you reveal it and take a Slow Recovery, discarding one Wound.

At the end of your turn you return your mana die, then if you are not on a safe space you must Forced Withdraw, backtracking your move and taking one Wound for each space. Then clear your play area, take the benefit of your space such as a crystal from a mine, claim combat rewards, process Level ups, discard any cards you wish, and draw up to your Hand limit. That limit goes up if you are on or next to a keep you own, or a conquered city you have a Shield on, using only the higher bonus.

After every Round, check the scenario. If its end conditions have been met, or the Round limit has been reached, the game is over; otherwise you play another Round. Several endings, such as conquering the last city, give every player one final turn, but if the Round ends during that, the game stops immediately. Scoring then follows the scenario, normally the standard Achievements categories on the Scoring card added to your Fame, and in the competitive scenarios the highest total wins.

A turn, played out

It is a Night Round, and you stand on a safe space next to a rampaging enemy with Attack 5 and Armor 4, no special abilities. Your hand holds 5 cards: 1 Wound, an Action card showing Block 2, or Block 5 when powered with blue, an Action card showing Attack 2, and 2 other Action cards. The Source shows 1 blue die, 1 black and 2 gold. The gold is useless at Night, so you take the blue. You do not move, since you are already adjacent, and your action is to challenge the enemy. There is nothing to do in the Ranged phase, so you go straight to Block. You spend the blue die to power the Block card for Block 5. That matches the enemy's full Attack, and since it is not Swift, 5 is enough. Blocked, it deals no damage. Had you let it through, 5 damage against your Hero Armor of 2 would mean 3 Wounds, rounded up. That is under your Hand limit of 5, so you would survive, but badly. In the Attack phase you play the Attack 2 card, then turn both remaining cards sideways for Attack 1 each. That totals 4, equal to the enemy's Armor, so it is defeated, and you gain its Fame immediately. Say that Fame carries you to Level 2. You wait until end of turn. First you return and reroll the blue die. You are on a safe space, so there is no Forced Withdrawal. Level 2 is even, so you gain a Skill token and an Advanced Action card. You keep the Wound and draw back up to 5.