by mathewsdad
Got a call from my LGS that my copy of Mage Wars had arrived so I went over and picked it up yesterday and then played a game this afternoon and here are my thoughts of the game.1. In trying to setup the recommended starting books for each mage, we could not properly set up those books as 1 or 2 cards were missing from each book. I had even purchased the extra cards and were still short. The starting cards in the game should fulfill the initial starting decks as they recommend.
2. Setting up those books with my son's help still took us a long time and we followed their recommendations. Setting up your own book would be sure to take quite a bit of time but after playing through it several times and as the cards effectiveness becomes apparent, this should become easier.
3. The 1st 2 turns or so are basically just used to set up your mage and get them ready for combat. That was to be expected.
4. As we played Priestess against Beastmaster, one of the BIG things that became apparent was although the board is big, it is not big enough.
Near the end, I had my Priestess in one zone with 2 pieces of equipment, 2 enhancements, and 2 spells and my son had 4 creatures each with an enhancement.
Where do you find the room in the zone to place all of the cards that are associated with all of those creatures??
5. Often times while playing, it would be nice for each player to have a copy of the rule book to make sure they knew what an effect did or how a rule played out. I will print a second copy off and have it handy.(It is 48 pages after all !)
6.Mentions in the rule book with about rage tokens but none were found.
One additional thing was that the cleanup phase after the game is over can be quite daunting as you set up your spell book and then putting everything back in the spot where it belongs can take a while.
It might be better to get larger card holders (3x3) and set up your own spellbook so there is a little less page turning or not use a spell book and just have the cards stacked in your hand and you could flick through them easily.
All in all I liked what was there aside from the minor quibbles. The customization that can happen will be a big feature of this Mage Wars as no two players will have the same spell book. Enjoy it I did.
I look forward to your comments and seeing how others feel about this game.