I cannot describe to you how incredibly difficult it was to put this deck-building strategy game down and write a review about it. Mahokenshi is a game that developer GameSourceStudio put a lot of thought and effort into building an addictive and meticulous card game adventure. While my reviewing resume is light on variety with card games, mostly restricted to a 1v1 version of them, this game expanded my palate in the genre and introduced me to a hexagon strategy game balanced with card action.
For me, Mahokenshi was more than I thought it might be. Even though at times it was brutal and unforgiving, it did so with the intention of longevity and not feeling totally beaten by it. In other words, it’s a challenge, but a healthy challenge.
On that note, let’s dig right into this.
Tabletop Deck Building
Either I’m stupid (possible) or the genres of tabletop and deck building create a peanut butter/chocolate design together. I never knew that there were games out there that combined both. Typically, and this is speaking strictly from a Magic the Gathering video game background, there is a sprinkle of story and adventure, but most games like these are driven by card-flipping competition. Mahokenshi is not that type of game. Well, it’s half that type of game.
Mahokenshi’s backbone balances out tabletop/hexagon moving action with some RPG elements and a heavy dose of deck building. The former of the bunch allows you to move around a hexagon board using ‘energy’ (you start out with 4/4 energy points) to traverse environments (mountains, forests, open ground) and to use a finite number of cards. Each open-ground movement is one energy point. If you go mountainous routes, which are sometimes perceived shortcuts, then you use more than one energy point. So, moving around a map is something you must plan and thoroughly think about.
Now, each card that you pull and use is also an energy point. The cards come in a variety of flavors, which we will discuss later, but they also play into how you move on the map. If you think about it, this is where the bulk of the game’s strategy comes into play. You must decide the best way to get to resting points, sometimes villages (to purchase or purify cards), kingdoms (to obtain buffs), or places where you meet and greet people to obtain gold, cards, or buffs. How you move and what you use those energy points on is what makes this game cognitively complicated but in a good way. There are multiple ways to approach your tabletop movement and multiple ways to decide how you’re going to spend those points per round. Regardless of decision-making, the game is built for you to explore, build yourself up, and then find enemies to take down.
When you meet enemies, it’s turn-based back-and-forth fights where your cards come into play. And there are a shite ton of cards that you can use to do battle. The game throws in a healthy variety of cards to build your deck up with. These cards could be defensive, offensive, buff, or movement cards. The latter of the bunch is important when you’re playing a level that requires you to move back and forth between enemies. For example, there was a level where you must defend villages on the map for 35 rounds of play. That sounds great, right? It’s hard as hell. For this particular mission, you have to move back and forth to prevent oncoming enemies from taking down a village. It only takes two turns for the enemy to do so – one turn to establish themselves in the village and another to take it down. In other words, you must be quick with your movements. To do that, you must obtain and use wisely the movement cards. These cards could be three spaces for the cost of one card and no energy points or could be a card that could get you one space and only cost one energy point. Depending on the situation, you must decide on how this is done, which plays into the strategy component of the game. It’s honestly a breathtaking way of throwing missions at you and asking to find the best method of success. There are different tiers of success that equal out to XP points at the end of a victorious round.
The variety of offensive, defensive, and buff cards is extensive. There are offensive cards that can be quite powerful but require you to give up health to use. There are defensive cards out there that will protect your tail quite well but will cost you additional cards in your hand. And there are buff cards that will cost you energy or health points but buff you up to use the offensive cards. There is a lot of crisscrossing with cards that create some moments of intensive strategic thought on what the best method of approach is for whatever particular mission you might be on. But it’s all good. It works. It makes the game more engaging and fun, which is what you want from a tabletop card game like this. And since the cards are pulled at random, every restart means that the mission is different.
Staying with mission types, the good folks at GameSourceStudio did a bang-up job of throwing in a nice variety of mini and main missions. The mini-missions are typically very short stints but nonetheless difficult. For example, there was a mini-mission in that I had to take down a cult before they overran villages. The cult was spread out on the board and sadly active. There was another mini mission where I had to make a run for a castle, get there, and then face the attackers that were following me. The enemies in that mission were huge brutes that did some great damage. The joy of that mini mission was trying to find the best way to avoid attracting a large number of brutal enemies. That was a challenge. Even the mini-missions in Mahokenshi are intense and worth your time and effort.
The bigger missions were a hoot. These missions typically stretched across big lands. For example, there was a big mission that asked me to take down a sorcerer that was trying to take over five villages. If they took over five villages, and they moved fast, then the mission was a failure. If you got close to the sorcerer, they would insert cursed cards into the card deck that took health or other points away. Those cursed cards cost one energy point to get rid of in the round. The sorcerer dished out two at a time. You can’t let those sit in your decks. On top of this, the sorcerer also conjured up enemies that were brutes. To say this was a complicated mission would be an understatement but it never felt out of reach or overly frustrating, which was impressive.
The only knock I have on this game is the finite variety of enemies. I wish there was a bit more out there, as it seemed spent after completing the second mission of the game. That isn’t to say the enemies aren’t engaging or challenging, I just wish there was a little less repetitiveness. Now, having said that, the way they move and how they formulate attacks against you is brilliant. The brutes come at you headfirst, the sorcerers keep their distance, and the rest of them are a hodgepodge with their actions. That amount of variety of moves helps to alleviate the lack of a huge cast.
Enemies aside, let’s talk about environments. The levels consist of a lot of good and bad. The good is collecting coins from chests, obtaining cards from certain spaces to add to your hand, and collecting level-restricted buffs such as adding more energy points, strength, defense, and/or health. The small villages, as previously mentioned, offer up good pitstops to add to your offensive/defensive strategy. Occasionally, you will also find healing potions cleverly situated around the map, depending on the mission. This all means that you have plenty of places to go if you need help or want to build up your character or deck.
On the bad side of the tracks, you will run into pits and portals that enemies come out of and you must decide whether it’s worth your time to close them. Going back to the previously mentioned mission above, when I had to protect villages from invaders, those invaders were coming from pits. I had the option to go seal those pits up or I could let them keep coming and survive the 35 rounds. If you want fewer enemies, then sealing the pits up is wise, but it takes you away from the villages (thus, you need movement cards to get back quickly). Since the pits don’t produce enemies quickly, it might have been worth just letting them stay open. Either way presents its own issues and solutions. These pits add to the need for proper strategizing before you launch a mission. It’s all fun.
Now, the RPG side of this game’s tracks are basic buffs and leveling up. You’re presented with 3-4 fighters that can be leveled up. As you level up with each, more buffs are opened up for you to select for any mission. You can hold a finite number of buffs, but they’re nonetheless valuable and useful. Beyond this, there isn’t much on the RPG side of the game unless you count buffing up cards at rest stops on the map. I guess you can count those. Eh, you should definitely count those as RPG elements.
All the above combines into one great piece of gameplay that is addictive as it is massive and difficult. As I previously mentioned, this game does well with putting your brain to the test to concoct strategic ways to beat the missions presented to you. There are a good variety of missions for this game, so you don’t really leave bored.
On that note, let’s wrap this up.
Conclusion
Mahokenshi is a fun game. It contains a healthy amount of tabletop strategy, an addictive deck-building component, and a dash of RPG elements to keep some motivation going. Its gameplay is challenging and brutal at times but in the end, it works more than it doesn’t.
