Mage Knight - How to Play - 3. Combat

now I love mage night but remembering how combat works in this game is a bit challenging so I'm putting this mage knight combat focus video together as part of a mage night series because I know it would help me out and I'm hoping it would help you out too let's just first talk about the various ways you initiate combat with an enemy one way you can initiate combat is if you decide to enter an unconquered fortified site like a keep mage tower or city as soon as you do this you initiate an assault on the defender or defenders that protect that site and you also lose one reputation as the citizens of the kingdom frown upon this now don't forget the word fortified as we'll come back to that when we talk about ranged attacks another way you can initiate combat is if you enter a keep that has already been conquered and not by you this means someone's tokin other than yours is on the keep when this happens if the other player is on the site you initiate player versus player combat if this player isn't at the location then you initiate combat with a grey enemy monasteries are a bit different you initiate combat when you decide to burn a monastery and fight the defender who lives there oh yeah and if you do this you'll lose three reputation because the citizens of the land really frown upon this next let's talk about adventure sites such as tombs dungeons monster dens spawning grounds and ancient ruins you initiate combat in an adventure site if you occupied the adventure site space and also decide to go exploring you neither lose nor gain reputation at these sites however you can occupy this space and not go exploring too and lastly let's talk about initiating combat with the two types of rampaging enemies in mage Knight marauding orcs and rakonin so you can initiate combat with these enemies in two different ways first you can just declare the assault from an adjacent space second you automatically trigger the assault if you move from one adjacent space to another adjacent space so if victorious you gain one reputation for killing a marauding org and two reputation for killing a drew Conan let's look at the basic steps of combat I'll start by making sure you master the basics of how straight-up physical combat works against one enemy and then we'll start to add things like different enemy attacks resistances special enemy abilities and then how combat works against multiple enemies player versus player combat is quite different from combat with enemies so we'll include it in a separate video [Music] combat mage Knight has four phases let's quickly look at these phases and then we'll look at each one in much greater detail phase one is called the ranged siege phase this phase gives you the option to strike the enemy first but only with attacks that include the word ranged or siege as part of the attack name if you can pull up one of these attacks it makes for a very quick and painless combat for you but ranged in siege attacks are harder to come by in mage Knight phase two is called the block phase if the enemy wasn't taken down in the ranged siege step then the enemy attacks you with the attack value as seen on the left side of the enemy token you have the option to either block the attack or not block the attack phase three is the assigned damage phase if you block the attack you can skip to phase four otherwise if you didn't block then you'll have to assign damage equal to the enemy attack value to your units hero or both and then finally phase four is the attack phase this is where you can use a combination of attacks that equal or exceed the armor value and you'll take down the enemy and collect the fame as shown on the bottom of the enemy token and possibly even rewards as stated for that location so let's look deeper at each one of these four combat phases in the ranged siege phase you have the opportunity to strike an enemy first before it has a chance to attack you but only with cards units or skills that have the word ranged or siege on them and cards cannot be played sideways to give you a range door siege attack of one since ranged and siege attacks are not basic attacks to successfully perform one of these attacks you need an attack either equal to or greater than the armor value of the enemy if you can't put an effective attack together that's equal to or greater than the armor value of the enemy the attack will be ineffective since the armor value will go back to its original value as soon as the next phase starts so it's better not to even attempt it as you'll just waste your resources now if either the enemy or the location is fortified ranged attacks won't work only siege attacks would work in this circumstance you can tell if an enemy's fortified if you see one of these little small tower icons next to its armor value of course this would indicate that the enemy you're fighting has a very tough like nails armor now enemies don't always have to have the tower icon to be fortified any enemy in a keep mage tower or a city is considered fortified because if you imagine it these locations would all have high walls so again only siege attacks would work against fortified enemies not ranged attacks now what happens if I fight a fortified enemy in a fortified location like a keep mage tower or city well this enemy would be considered double fortified and in this case neither ranged nor siege attacks would be effective so let's look at a couple examples of the ranged siege phase first we'll start with combat against an unforgetable aged and siege attacks together for example let's say gold expounds a Minotaur with an armor value of five in a monster den gold excuses his you temp crossbowmen for the ranged attack of two and then powers up a crushing bolt with a green mana dye from the source to play the siege attack three these attacks would combine for a value of five and gold eggs would defeat the Minotaur before it even has a chance to strike him back this enemy token would get moved to the discard pile and gold eggs would get the for fame as noted in the red banner at the bottom of the Minotaur token and then because he was in a monster den he would put one of his markers on the adventure site to mark it as complete and he would collect the additional reward of two random mana crystals following the instructions as noted on the monster den information card let's look at another combat example but this time with a fortified enemy so going back to Gold X's encounter in the monster den let's see what would happen if gold equipped worm instead of the Minotaur that we saw earlier well the Crypt worm is a fortified enemy noted here with the tower icon so all of gold exists attacks will not work in the ranged siege phase of combat the only attacks that will work in this phase are sea attacks and since the only siege attack that gold exhale out of his unit's skills or in his hand is the crushing bolt and that would need to be powered up with a green mana dye he could take from the source he chooses to pass on this phase since he would only be able to provide three points of damage versus the six required to defeat the Crypt worm he would then move on to Phase two of combat and we do two phase two is called the block phase if the enemy wasn't taken down in the range siege step the enemy attacks you with the attack value as seen in the left side of the enemy token the icon under the attack value is the attack type and the fist means that this enemy uses a physical attack and all blocks work against this type of attack we'll cover other attacks after we cover the basics so with the enemy attack you have the option to either block the attack or not block the attack to successfully block you add up the block you play from the cards in your hands that provide block on them play any card from your hand sideways to provide one block use block skills that you possess or activate any unit you control with block abilities if the block you put together from all of this equals or exceeds the enemy attack value the enemy does no damage to you and you move straight to phase four the attack phase if you aren't able to block the full amount of the enemy's attack value the enemy would still deal the full amount of damage so don't play ineffective blocks as they have no effect on the damage dealt before we look at assigned damage let's look at a couple examples of blocking Goulding's is it a sin to the prowlers since this is a marauding work token he decides to initiate combat with it since it is adjacent to him he skips the range siege phase since he doesn't have any ranged or siege attacks and moves on to the block phase the prowlers have an attack of 4 so gold explains the card determination from his hand and powers his card up with a blue mana dye he takes from the source this way he can use the stronger block 5 from this card and this successfully blocks the prowlers so they don't deal damage let's rewind the last example and show that gold explai the card determination without powering it up for a block of 2 and then played stamina and march sideways for one block each this would provide the four block needed to successfully block the prowlers attack as well and gold exceed skip phase 3 assigned damage and move right into phase 4 which is the attack phase if gold eggs decided he did not want to block so he could instead use his remaining cards to attack the prowlers then he would move directly to phase 3 assigned damage you would assign damage if you didn't block the attack in phase 2 then you assign damage equal to the enemy attack value you would assign this to your unit's hero or both to do this you first decide if you want to assign damage to any of your unwanted units first and then you assign any remaining damage to your hero next if you have no unwanted units or don't want to wound any of your existing unwanted units then you can just assign all of the damage to your hero let's look closer at how you assign damage to your units so you can assign damage only to unwanted units that you control and it doesn't matter if the unit is spent or not that means if you've already put your command token on them for the round or not the main point with units is that the unit can't be wounded more than once and if the unit is unwanted you can only assign damage to them once per combat to assign damage to one or more of your unwanted units you first place a wound card on top of your unit and then subtract the unit's armor value from the value of the enemy's attack if the value of the armor is greater than the enemy's attack then the unit absorbs all of the damage and you can move on to the next phase of combat but if the armor value of the unit was less than the enemy's attack you would either have to assign the remaining damage to another unwanted unit or you can apply the remaining damage to your hero a hero can be wounded repeatedly whereas a unit can only be wounded once when your hero takes damage you add a wound card to your hand and subtract the armor value as seen on the left side of the level token on your hero card if there is still damage that needs to be assigned you would repeat this process until there's no more damage left to assign so let's look at a couple of examples Gold eggs assaults an unconquered key at night which reveals a swordsman as its defender gold extent have any siege attack to strike first remember he can't use range because keeps are always fortified sights so he looks at the cards in his hand and units that he controls and sees that if he puts together a successful block he won't have enough attack to take down the swordsman so gold exceeds to take the six damage ooh first he wounds one of his units and selects his spent peasants remember you have two wound units first he places a wound card on the unit and subtracts the unit's armor value of 3 from the swordsman attack value of 6 this leaves 3 more points of damage to assign gold exceed units so he assigns the remaining 3 points of damage to himself he takes a wound card to his hand and then subtracts his armor value from the remaining damage his level token choses current armor value is two so this takes the remaining damage down to one even though there is only one point of damage left to assign he still has to take another wound card to his hand to take care of the one point of damage now that all six points of damage have been assigned gold eggs can move on to phase four the attack phase for another example let's back up and start the fight with the swordsman over again and say that this time gold extent have any unwanted units to assign damage to so in this case he has to assign all of the damage to his hero so he takes a wound card adds it to his hand and subtracts his armor value from the damage this takes the damage that still needs to be assigned down to four he then takes another wound card and subtracts two more damage this takes the remaining damage down to two he takes one more wound and subtracts two more from the swordsman's damage and this reduces it to zero watch the number of wound cards added to your hand during combat this doesn't count wound cards you started the combat with though if this number equals or exceeds the hand limit as printed on your level token five in the case of gold excite your knocked out when you are knocked out you immediately discard all non moon cards from your hand so if you do get knocked out your units could still continue to fight and you could use your skills if you have any and oh yeah if you have to continue taking wounds which I hope you never get in that situation you can still take more wounds to your hand even though you're knocked out phase four is called the attack phase after the enemy attacks you now have the option to either attack the enemy or not attack the enemy you've made it this far I hope this battle wasn't all for naught to successfully attack you add up the attack you play from your cards in your hand that provide attack on them even ranged or siege cards count in this phase even if the enemy is fortified you can also play any card from your hand sideways to provide one basic attack you can use attack skills that you possess you can activate any units you control with attack abilities enemies we're looking at now have no resistance we'll talk about resistance a bit later for enemies with no resistance you can combined ranged siege fire ice or cold fire attacks for your attack phase and add all of these different attacks together if your attack equals or exceeds the enemy armor value you defeat the enemy and collect the fame as indicated at the bottom of the enemy token sometimes an enemy defeat even earns you additional rewards and lets you place your shield token on the site always check location cards to see exactly what happens after a successful combat if you aren't able to put together an attack for the full amount of the enemy's armor value the combat is over you would leave the enemy token in locations such as unconquered keeps mage tower city's monster dens and spawning grounds but you would discard the enemy token in a tomb dungeon or monastery some of what happens if you do or don't defeat the monster token is hard to remember at least it is for me so I recommend using location reference cards and the walkthrough guide as a reminder let's look at some attack examples so let's rewind a bit to the example where gold exploxer swordsmen during the block phase now he gets to attack he plays the card rage from his hand for an attack of two and then plays a card swiftness and powers this up with a white crystal from his inventory to provide the ranged attack 3 remember you can combine these different attacks so this gives him a total attack of 5 which equals the armor value of the swordsman Gold expect aureus and collects the for fame and discards this token he would also now place his shield token on the keep to show that he owns it for another example let's say gold accent's ette of cards units and skills he has just finished the assigned damage phase against the swordsmen because he decided to save his resources for the attack now that it is the attack phase gold expends his u10 crossbowmen for the round to use their attack 3 ability he uses his freezing power skill for a siege 1 attack Andy plays threaten sideways for one additional attack to equal a total of 5 which again takes down the swordsmen if he wasn't able to put together a successful attack he would retreat to the same space he came from when he entered the keep so now that you have the basics of combat down you might have looked at some of the other tokens in the box and said Pete what are all these other symbols and colors for on these other tokens well if you feel you're ready then we move on to show you the greater world of combat otherwise just review the last section again all enemy attacks we've dealt with so far have been physical attacks enemies with physical attacks have the fist icon beneath their attack value like our beloved friends the prowlers swordsman and Minotaur we saw earlier now it's time to look at three other types of attacks that your enemies can possess and you can too but we'll wait just a bit to talk about that the three new attacks are fire ice and cold fire you'll start to see enemies with these attacks when you reveal mage tower drew Conan or city enemy tokens enemies with fire attacks have this red fiery icon under their attack value enemies with ice attacks have this blue Icee looking icon and enemies with cold fire attacks have a red and blue icon under the attack value on their token when your enemies use these attacks against you there are some blocks that will be fully efficient meaning 6 points of block stop 6 points of attack and other blocks that are only half as efficient meaning 12 points of block would be needed to stop 6 points of attack if you don't block these attacks the damage still equals just the attack value so let's look at what's efficient and what's not so if your enemy uses a fire attack against you only an ice block or cold fire block will be fully efficient against it fire blocks or just basic blocks will only be half as efficient for an ice attack only a fire block and cold fire block would be fully efficient and if your enemy uses a cold fire attack only a cold fire block would be fully efficient against it so the moral of the story is a cold fire block is fully efficient against all types of other attacks although they're really hard to get the opposite element is fully efficient for either a fire attack or an ice attack and if you ask can I use fire ice and cold fire blocks against physical attacks the answer is yes all blocks are fully efficient against physical attacks now when you're blocking against an enemy with fire ice or cold fire attack you can also combine fully efficient blocks with half efficient blocks let's look at a couple of examples to get the gist of what I'm talking about here gold exulting a mage tower and is now in combat with the ice mage who's defending it gold extent have any siege attack to defeat him during the range siege phase so he has the option to block the ice mages ice attack of 5/2 block gold excuses his guardian golems and activates their fire block for ability with a red mana token he got earlier in the turn this reduces the ice mages ice attack down to 1/2 block this remaining point Gold explai stew cards from his hand sideways for a basic or physical block - since a physical block is only half as efficient against an ice attack Gold eggs had to play two points to block the one remaining point of ice for another example Gold excites the fire golem who has a fire attack of 3 and since he doesn't have any ice block or cold fire block he uses the card determination powered up with the blue mana crystal he had in his inventory to use the block five and then place one card sideways to bring his block up to six since this type of block is only half as efficient six points successfully blocks the fire attack three the fire golem throws at him now that we understand different enemy attacks let's look at something else new we haven't seen yet resistance if you see these small black red or blue Pentagon icons up by the enemy armor value this means that the enemy has a resistance to a certain type or types of attack but it doesn't mean the enemy is completely resistant to a certain type of attack I'll explain the black resistance symbol means the enemy has a resistance to physical attacks this means that all of your physical attacks like attack 4 or ranged attack 3 or siege attack 2 our only half is efficient against this enemy and by half is efficient that means that if I attack using physical attack I would need an attack of 2 to reduce the enemy's armor value by 1 if the enemy has the red fire resistance icon all attacks that have fire in the title are only half as efficient against this enemy if ice resistant with the blue icon ice attacks are only half as efficient as well now watch out because enemies who have both ice and fire resistant are resistant to ice fire and even cold fire attacks enemy resistance applies during the ranged siege phase and the attack phase and one more thing if an enemy has fire resistance not only our fire attacks halved but if you activate any non attack or non block effects from a red card or from spells and units that take red mana to activate those have no effect against fire resistant enemies likewise the same is true for ice resistant enemies if you activate any non attack or non block effects from the blue card or from spells and units that take blue mana to activate those have no effect against ice resistant enemies let's look at an example of resistance gold excision combat at a mage tower with an ice golem who has an armor of four and has physical and ice resistance during his attack phase gold excused as a fire bolt that he powers up with a red mana dye from the source to get the ranged fire attack three and then uses the card rage for an attack to the ranged fire attack three is fully efficient against the ice golem and that takes his armor value down to one since the attack to from rage provides physical attack this is only half as efficient but enough to reduce the last point of armor so gold accessories and collects the five fame places his shield token on the mage tower and collects a spell from the spell offer so that's how resistance works for your enemies now let's look at how resistance works for your units if you see the same resistance icons next to your unit's armor value it means that unit has specific resistance to whatever the icon shows physical fire or ice resistance your units have is valuable during the assigned damage phase you can assign damage up to the unit's armor value without wounding the unit if the damage exceeds the armor value then you would wound the unit and continue to assign damage normally so if our beloved swordsmen were unblocked during combat the six physical damage they inflict would need to be assigned Gold X controls the guardian golems with an armor value of three and tada physical resistance we assign all six damage to the golems three points of damage gets assigned to the golems without wounding them and then we place a wound card on the golems and assign the three remaining damage to them you may have noticed that some enemies actually a lot of enemies have additional icons on the right side of their enemy tokens what do all these mean well I'll cover them here but you may not remember all of them so you can refer to the last page of the rulebook as reference for these and many of the other things we've looked at already let's look at the three enemy abilities that add additional damage effects and these make for a really good reason you'd want to block these enemies these are brutal poison and paralyze if the enemy has this skull looking icon it means it deals brutal damage when this enemy deals damage the damage value is doubled this means a brutal attack of three can either be blocked by block three or it goes through as six points of damage the green drop icon means the enemy deals poison damage poison damage Delta units means that the units take to wound cards instead of just one and also would need to be healed two times to remove these wounds if the poison damages is applied to your hero then for every wound card you add to your hand you also add one wound card to your discard pile poison is delayed and will sicken you next round when you shuffle your discard pile the statue icon is paralyzed this icon reminds me the 80s era Clash of the Titans where the head of Medusa turns to Kraken into stone when I look at this one when enemies with this icon deal damage to a unit the unit is automatically destroyed and put back in the box if this damage is dealt to your hero you would discard all non boon cards from your hand and then take wounds as normal the only attack you could muster in the next phase would be with skills or unwanted units now let's look at two icons that don't have to do with damage the first is this airplane looking bird icon which is called Swift and means that the enemy is twice as hard to block an enemy with Swift at hack of three can either be blocked by block six or if you choose not to block it just does the normal three damage to you in the next phase the next icon we'll talk about is debatable whether to special ability or not as you'll see it actually replaces the attack icon as it is the summon attack ability when you fight enemies with this ability if you don't defeat the enemy during the ranged siege phase of attack you actually draw a brown enemy token for just the block and assign damage phase then you discard that enemy and attack the original enemy for example gold excites an orc summoner and doesn't have enough ranged or siege attack to defeat it in phase one so he draws a brown enemy token and has the option to either block the attack of the werewolf with a swift attack of seven meaning he would need a block of fourteen or else he takes seven damage and Goulding's decides not to block and assign the seven damage three to his peasants and then four to himself adding two wound cards to his hand because his armor value is still only two after assigning damage he discards the werewolf by the way no Fame is awarded from the werewolf and then he attacks the summoner orc using his card rage and determination for an attack of four learning how to deal with multiple enemies at once should now be a piece of cake since we're at this point when dealing with multiple enemies you resolve each phase of combat with all enemies before moving to the next phase however the ranged siege phase and the attack phase allow you to either group enemies together to handle them as one giant enemy or you can attack each one separately now you may want to attack enemies as a group if you have a really powerful attack that would be wasted fighting enemies one-on-one the restriction when attacking enemies as a group though is that if one of them has resistance or fortification all enemies have to be treated as if they have this resistance or fortification - if you attack enemies separately during the range siege or attack phases then you would deal with each one just like we did in the examples where gold extended me at a time during the block phase for every enemy you did not defeat in the range siege phase you first decide which ones you'll block and which ones you won't for those you block you deal with and resolve each blocked enemies separately just as gold extender in our examples when he blocked one enemy then in the next phase you deal damage from all of the enemies you decided not to block to your units first and then to your hero for example gold exposed to a hex on the board with ancient ruins since there has been a day around since this tile was revealed the ruins token is already flipped face-up to show us that if you explore the ruins you'll have to fight both a brown and purple enemy at the same time to receive the spell and for mana crystals gold exes feeling pretty confident and decides to end his movement here and enter the ruins his brown token reveals a werewolf and the purple token reveals an illusionist in Phase one he doesn't have enough range or siege attack to defeat the werewolf and even though it looks like a ranged attack three could take down the illusionist this enemy has physical resistance so the three points of ranged attack would only be half of what is needed to defeat this enemy remember unless there is fire ice or cold fire in the name of the attack all attacks are considered physical since there's nothing gold excandesco time this should get interesting with the abilities these enemies have since the werewolf has a swift attack of seven it would take a block of 14 to successfully block so gold exceeds not to block the werewolf and save his cards for the attack phase then he moves on to block The Illusionist since this is a summit attack he draws a brown enemy token and reveals a gargoyle that he decides to block remember all you have to do is deal with either the blocking or dealing of damage with the summoned enemy gold excuses the block - from his guardian golems and the block three from his foresters for the block five needed to successfully block the gargoyles he discards the gargoyles and then moves on to the deal damage phase to take the seven damage from the unblocked werewolf he decides to assign his foresters for damage and then assigns the remaining three to his hero and takes one moon card to his hand since the illusionist has physical resistance and the werewolf does not gold exceeds to fight them both separately he uses a red mana dye from the source to use the flame wall spell to defeat the illusionist and then he uses his red mana crystal to use the stronger power of improvisation which requires him to discard a card from his hand to use the attack five so he discards swiftness and strikes the werewolf with the attack five since he defeats both enemies he gets a whole bunch of stuff he collects 9 fame from defeating the enemies marks the ruin space with one of his shield tokens chooses a spell from the spell offer two ads at the top of his steed deck and then gains the white green red and blue mana crystals to add to his inventory so thanks for watching I know that's a lot about combat I tried to make this comprehensive enough and maybe too comprehensive so you can dive in and just play now but I didn't want to provide every little situational nuance of the game I'm hoping it works for you please leave me some feedback in the comments and remember if you like the style of how to play video please let your friends know about my channel and remember to Like and subscribe thanks again and see you next time

Channel: Modern Cardboard

Views: 61,080

Keywords: Mage Knight Combat, Tabletop game, Tabletop, How to play, tutorial, learn to play, instructional, boardgame, board gaming, WizK!ds, WizKids, Vlaada Chvatil, Mage Knight, Combat, Fighting, Enemy Combat, Resistance, Fortified Enemy, Ranged Attack, Assign Damage, Attack, Block, Enemy Abilities, Multiple Enemies, Unit resistance, Enemy resistance, Enemy attack types, Board Game

Id: Ir3mq1Cmfdk

Length: 35min 27sec (2127 seconds)

Published: Sat May 09 2020