Let me preface this review by noting this has been one of the most difficult games to wrangle my thoughts and opinions into some sort of cohesive viewpoint on its value in a collection.
So let’s start on the positives, which includes the theme.
“In Archmage, players take on the roles of talented but inexperienced magic-users drawn towards an epic destiny, a destiny that only one of them will fulfill. A great conjunction of planets is approaching! When the six planets are aligned (and the set number of rounds are completed), a new Archmage will be hailed across the land,” details the introduction to the games in its rather lavishly illustrated rule book.
“The timing of the game’s end is a key consideration, and with the clock ticking, optimizing the efficiency of each journey will be crucial.
“The aspiring mages will have numerous goals to achieve, including: exploring and controlling locations, recovering lost relics, recruiting followers, building their own tower, training apprentices, and casting mighty spells.
“The one who builds the most powerful order of mages (as defined by the breadth and power of the spells known to the mages and their apprentices), and has the most influence over the land (earned by exerting control over the majority of key locations), will be victorious.”
The introduction certainly had my attention as a gamer.
Delving into the box, Archmage is all about creating a ‘Wow!’ factor.
The board has amazing illustrations of mages on each corner, to the point you could hang it on the game room wall and it would look good.
The individual player mats might be accused of being visually loud by some, but the neat cut outs to hold the wooden cubes used to mark important aspects of the game are simply awesome.
The player pieces are wood, a bonus in my books, and the actual mage, and mage tower are not just different colours but unique sculpts, which again is great.
The ‘map’ on the board is made up off ‘pog-like’ pieces that are nicely made, and since they are randomly laid out, it helps with replay.
And there are the cards. The version on the table has holographic/prismatic effects, which are gorgeous visually, although the do mean tilting the cards around a bit if the light if off a tad in order to decipher some of the iconography.
Overall the production quality is top draw. Laid out on the table prior to game one and I was wanting to love this one based on looks and theme alone.
But, and yes there is a ‘but’ with this one, game play sadly does not near match production quality.
The issues in game play are rather extensive actually.
The game plays just too long for the fun extracted by the effort. It is suggested at one to two hours. With four players and set up and after game boxing it will eclipse two hours, and that is about an hour beyond the moment players get bored here.
The boredom arises when you realize a mage can invade your controlled areas and kill off your ‘follower’ with impunity. There is not even a roll of dice to give the follower a slim chance. There is no tension in battling at all, for the attacker, or the beleaguered defender.
Next you find your range to explore tends to be restricted.
Yes you can tour off across the board without care, as a mage cannot be killed, but so much of what you need to accomplish in Archmage requires you to end your turn in your Mage Tower, so you need to stay close to home.
The spells, those encapsulated on those beautiful cards, were also largely disappointing in game play. Mages by nature should be wielding magic for flavour alone, but the spells here, while critical to collect for victory points, rarely seemed useful in terms of game play.
It all adds up to a beautiful package that once opened was found to be a rather empty box in terms of gaming experience.
Check it out at www.starling.games/archmage
Thanks to fellow gamers Jeff Chasse, Trevor Lyons and Adam Daniels for their help in running through this game for review.
