Mageling: Rise of the Ancient Ones – a solo preview

The bows of the Evertree should be a safe haven for all. Yet, rumours of a deadly cult operating from the Shada Swamp have its eternal limbs shuddering – shadowy waters, glowing fungi, dimensional tears and murderous cult members fill spread out from hence. It is time to venture out and stop these evil forces from doing what they have set out to do – stop the rise of the ancient ones!

Name: Mageling: Rise of the Ancient Ones (2023)
Designer: Joseph Butler
Publisher: Familiar Games
Play type: dice activation, engine building, card drafting, resource management

What the game is about

Can you escape the clutches of a mysterious cult while the rise of the ancient ones draws ever closer? Battle enemies, defeat your foes, and grow more powerful as you build up your spell arsenal – your Grimoire. In Mageling, you use dice to gain energy to buy cards for your Grimoire – which you can activate with dice as well. In doing so, you look at what’s available in the market (called the ‘Nexus’) and try to build a Grimoire with the best available combos, trying to make it through five different locations before you run out of time.

How the game works

Rise of the Ancient Ones is actually two new game experiences in a single box. Or one and a half, more likely. First of all, it enhances the gameplay of the base game of Mageling – a more detailed write-up of which you can find here. Like I did the last time, I will focus just on the game’s solo mode. Please note you can also play Mageling cooperatively or competitively.

In Mageling, you will need to traverse across five locations to beat the game. Meanwhile, you will encounter various foes and spawns that will hamper your progress. You need energy and mana (energy that goes away at the end of your turn) to progress, which your dice and cards provide. Of course, to buy cards, you need mana and energy too! Mageling is essentially an engine-building game where you need to balance time spent building the engine with revving it and progressing through the game.

In the base game, there’s even a campaign where you draft a card after winning a game to store in your personal reserve and where games get progressively more challenging.

Samples of the new arcane dice in this expansion.

Things to look for in this game

As the game isn’t finished yet, instead of giving my overall opinion, I’ll make a note of significant additions and what I think of them.

Arcane dice – better dice

The new dice are the most eye-catching addition to this expansion, but when you take a closer look, you’ll see these have the exact same faces as the regular dice. What gives? Arcane dice can be acquired through cards (either by rolling or by putting them on a specific value) and are dice that stay with you until you decide to use them, or until the end of turn. So yes, this means they could go towards ‘do X for every dice with face Y’ effects.

Game board with moon track

The expansion now comes with a playmat that functions as both a game board and a timer, unlike the base game, where you had to use cards to do the same. The so-called moon track is your timer, just like you used to do with gems and ancient one cards. I think this is an easy upgrade over the base game; not just because of the choice for an actual playmat, but because it streamlines a lot of things about Mageling you can easily forget when you’re in the thick of things.

Same game, different ancient ones

The playmat is double-sided; this way, you can still play the base game, but with a new set of ancient ones to face. And besides, no game has gotten worse when you add a playmat to it.

Potions and urns are bound to certain locations. As the game progresses, not all of them might be available anymore.

Potions and urns for one-shot effects

These are one-time-use items with a wide variety of effects and boons. You can acquire them in various ways, and just like arcane dice, they stick with you until you decide to use them. Different card effects mention them, so you can combine them to perhaps, say, double the effect of a potion or trigger its effect without discarding it. A set number of potions and urns is placed on the game board during setup.

Enchantments upgrade your cards

Have you ever looked at your cards and thought, ‘I can do better!’? Well, now you can – enchantments are cardboard tokens you can put on cards in your Grimoire to add a permanent extra effect to it whenever you activate it. Of course, in combolicious fashion, this isn’t instead of its normal effect, but in addition to.

Monsters to deal with

Do you know the spawn tokens that could pop up and prevent you from progressing? This time they brought their bigger brothers to take your lunch money. They’re nastier to deal with, but at least they provide you with some benefit upon defeating them. Oh, but don’t think you’re rid of the spawn – they are still around.

The sorcerer – your personal stalker

You didn’t think that was it, did you? Another enemy lurks as you progress on the moon track: the sorcerer. Who are they? Why do they have a grudge against you? Whatever the case, the sorcerer presents other obstacles for you to defeat if you don’t speed up enough – either a damage token if they enter your space when they move or a monster if they’re behind you.

Powering up the radiance track

The most significant addition we haven’t talked about is the addition of the radiance track to your starting setup. You can spend one unused unique die to increase your power (represented by your power orb). Every time you do, you get to activate one of your power cards for every dice there. You get one of those every time your power orb goes from 2 to 0. Every mage has a unique deck of power cards that really help differentiate the individual mages even more. The number your power currently is is called your brightness. When a game effect mentions X, it means your current power (0, 1, or 2).

Treasure as end-game reward

One of the things I didn’t like about the base game of Mageling was the way you are rewarded for winning a game before proceeding to the next in the campaign. After having spent an entire game building your engine, you got to keep one card – which you got to pick from four randomly drawn ones. That system has been replaced by treasures; powerful effects that feel like they can be better leveraged than a randomly drawn card that you don’t actually start the game with, but you still need to pay for.

New monster cards. Don’t they look terrifying?

Conclusion

Mageling was, and always will be, a game about combos and synergy to me. This expansion adds a healthy dosage of both to your games without ever going too far. That’s a valuable thing! The game comes with many new elements, but it never drowns you in them. When I first opened the box, I was amazed at how quickly I was playing, given the size of the box and what at first seemed like a lot of new components. I have encountered a few minor issues with this expansion, mainly regarding balance, but I have communicated those with Joseph, and I fully believe the final game will be better off for it. 

While the expansion is obviously still in development, as far as I’m concerned, this is all but a must-have for your base Mageling game – whether you are looking for more cards or an entirely new way to play the game. It adds so much content without making it feel bloated – it was a touch of genius for designer Joseph to not cram everything in the base game but make a clear distinction. This way, you can ease into the new content from the gameplay you know and love, or you can go off the deep end and immerse yourself in the beautiful and challenging new campaign.

Did you like what you see? Mageling: Rise of the Ancient Ones goes live on Kickstarter on February 21st. Check it out here!

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