Very Briefly

Dragons of Etchinstone (Joe Klipfel) is a solo 18-card game playable entirely in-hand whose mechanics and theme will be quite familiar to fans of the classic board game Mage Knight.

If you love Mage Knight but can’t often find the tablespace or the time for it, a game like Dragons of Etchinstone is a most satisfactory, travel-sized itch-scratcher.

Briefly

  • As with most in-hand games, you can easily save the current state of your game in-between turns.
  • The exception to the “ease of play in hand” is when you’re confronting the end game dragons, but if you have a small surface the size of a lap or an airline food tray, you’re good to go.
  • You should be comfortable doing basic arithmetic (mostly adding, a little subtracting here and there) in your head.
  • The PNP version is heavy on the colored ink usage and can clog up inkjet printers. A print shop or getting the game in print instead is highly recommended.
  • The rulebook is listed at 30+ pages, but the pages are sized to fit on a mobile device and be readable. The gameplay loop is very smooth, and the reference card is actually helpful.
  • There are multiple difficulty levels, which is much appreciated, from casual to standard to “don’t try this.”
  • Here are the analogs in Dragons of Etchinstone (DOE) that draw inspiration from Mage Knight:
    • Every DOE action card is split into 4 sections, 2 on the front and 2 on the back. Each section has an action that can be used plain or imbued with an element for a more powerful effect.
    • DOE cards serve multiple purposes, but the one that sticks out the most is that they can be used similar to how the mana dice and crystals were used in Mage Knight to empower cards.
    • You will need extremely clever card play in order to win the game.
    • DOE isn’t only encounters but still has journey segments, preserving and compressing the more interesting elements of traversal in Mage Knight into challenges.
    • The monsters you encounter in DOE work similarly to the tiles you would pull for dungeons and other features in Mage Knight, without the fussiness of keeping track of stacks of different tiles.
    • The four different end game bosses each provide both the stage of a final traversal push and, of course, the final battle – an excellent climax and showdown.

Lục Bát

Nostalgia costs me
Far too much in table space.
Thankfully this game is
A more elegant solution.
A sublime sensation:
Mage Knight, but I can do it
One more time tonight.