Mage Knight 2.0 Case Report
By Typhon

So a few weeks ago, Draddog calls me up. He brings up one of the first articles ever written for MKRealms, dealing with Rebellion distribution. I remember it fondly, it took forever to find someone who had 5 cases of boosters back then. The article was pretty popular as well. So Draddog says to me, "Let's do that again, I'm going to ship you some cases, which you can audit and write something up." He's even going to let me keep a few pieces! So a few days later I find 2 cases of Mage Knight Boosters and 2 cases of Mage Knight starters waiting for me.

Before we go to far into what's in the boosters, I'd like to comment on a few things. The boosters are really cool looking. Instead of being long and skinny, they are short and horizontal. They have angled tops as well. The art on the boxes is not bad, it certainly is eye catching. The starters have the same type of feel. In the top of every starter, in a little window, is a Kieren Starsdawn figure. I talked to Draddog about this and he said it was so that everyone had at least one Unique, so they should be able to play their with their relics. All I know is I ended up with 48 Kierins after two cases! I'll just send most of those back with the rest that I don't keep!

The poster that comes in the boosters is pretty cool. Instead of it being vertically tall, it is wide, like the boosters. When I mentioned it to Draddog, he said that Kim, his wife, had created it. And WizKids let her go? Sometimes I wonder! Anyway, it has pictures of all of the figures in the set, as well as drawings of all the relics. Pretty darn cool. Interesting as well was the fact that it lists only 36 relics, but I ended up pulling 37, 38, 39 and 40. Again, consulting the "man in the know" he mentioned that those are suppose to be LE's but a few made it into starters by accident. I guess I just got lucky!

First, I looked at the starters. It's hard as heck to open those things from the top, but you almost have to. It's the easiest way to free Kieren, and if you go through the bottom, you can't stand the box on it's head to hold figures. Still I ended up figuring it out. Once open, I was able to slide the rules out, pulling all the figures out with it. After opening 48 starters, it certainly was a help!

The rules package contains the rule book (duh), the SAC, a World Book, ruler, dice, a Relic and a Domain. The rule book is just like the one online. The SAC is actually only the three panel version, and does not contain some of the older abilities. The World Book is really cool. It has an introduction, timeline, map of the Land, check list and then a write up on every one of the new factions. It also seemed to have a picture of each unit that the faction got from 2.0. I checked in with Dradd, and he confirmed that it did indeed. He also mentioned that Kim did all the graphical work for the World Book as well. Anyone in Seattle need an amazing Graphic Designer? WK loss can be your gain! The book is just to darn cool.

Getting back on track here, each starter contains a Relic and a Domain. So if you want to beef up on those, starters are the way to go. From my audit, I managed to pull 18 different Relics out of one case (out of 24) and 16 different Relics out of another. So on average, 17 different Relics out of 24. Not bad odds, and it would give me some to trade. Out of 48, I was only missing 12 total. I did get a ton of Heartseekers between the two cases, 6 in total.

Domains are a similar story. I didn't get all 20, I was 5 short, but I did get copies that I could easily trade for the other 5. Border Town was the most common in my starters, I pulled it 6 times out of 48. Over all, I think I would like to see a few less duplicates in the Relics and Domains, but I can see it being a new process for WizKids, so I'm sure that they are working it out. Draddog did mention that these were some of the first cases off the line (sweet!) so that probably indicates a lot.

Uniques were pretty evenly distributed through the case. I pulled 7 from one and 8 from another, with works with the rumored "around 8 per case" theory. The first case, had only one duplicate unique, General Volkare, which would be easy enough to trade with. I also managed a Horned Hunter, Anunub, Blackwyn, Khan Rava and General Vale. Some really sweet Uniques. The second case had no dups, and it was even better. A Horned Hunter, General Volkare, Anunub, Black Thorn, and Blackwyn were all in there, as well as one of each of the new Draconum! Sweet! Combined, I was missing 6 Uniques out of 16. Not great, not bad either.

Looking at non-uniques, I only was short 19 figures from a full set of nons, in just one starter case. I got a variety of duplicates, none that really sucked to bad. The most common was the standard Atlantean Swordmage and I pulled 6 of him. The second case was even better, only 14 short. This time the standard Khamsin Trooper was the most, at 4. That's not really a whole lot of dupes when you think about it. Combined, I was missing only 3 non-unquies, the Tough Orc Warbeast, the Tough Khamsin Artillerist, and the Standard Dwarven Mechanic.

I've certainly seen a lot worse distribution out of WizKids cases, so this really showed me some promise. The starters were really great, only once in a while would I look at a starter and thing "hmm, I couldn't field any of that together". Most of the time there was a good mix of big damage, high speed and specialist. Very nice indeed.

See the next post for the rest of the report!

Now I really can't wait to get it... pitty I'll have to wait forever till it gets to Brazil.

Thanks for the input. It looks like starter will be a nice way to go in limited numbers. With the marquee being sealed this can help determine which combination for players to buy up. thanks for the info

It really does look (er...read) great. The only question I have though is concerning the SAC. Typhon mentioned that some of the old abilities are missing, is this because those old abilities have now been folded into faction abilities? Just something to think about when it says 1.0 is compatible with 2.0. Is there a name for the set besides just Mage Knight, i.e. Mage Knight Revolution or something like that.

Good unbiased article.

wait... he said out of 16 uniques?
16 uniques?
wow.
that makes certain uniques harder to pull.
that= I go to ebay for Varatrix. and play with lady luck some other time!

*Drops out of his chair backwards from excitement!*

Thanks Typhon for the article, and thanks to Draddog for giving you the chance to do that.

Man, I am sooooo excited for 2.0, only two days! It's really really great to hear that you were missing so few nons from only one case! That and the figure you pulled the most of, you only had like 6 copies! I can remember pulling something like 15 *warrior sprites out of one case, and more dwarven thunder gunners than anyone could EVER want.

But that is awesome, I really can't wait now.

16 uniques! woo!

I want to be Draddog's friend!!!
His closest best friend!!!

Anyway, I'm real excited because I'm getting a case of booster and my buddies are getting a case of boosters, so I'm looking forward to seeing what I'm going to pull.

Scrag104, I believe you answered your own question. Some of the abilities have been turned in sub-faction abilities and others are now on the dial; however, the old abilities are still playable. They simply didn't put them on the SAC because no figures in the set had any of those abilities.

I CAN DIG IT!!!

Good read. Nice to hear from Typhon. Always enjoyed his posts back in the day.


As for opening 4 cases and not getting complete sets of anything? thats nuts! At least it makes trading fun again.

Thanks for the report.
Sounds like some good, some bad. Good mix of figures, low duplicates = good. Relics not really being as hard to get as early reports were making it sounds = good.
Having the 1.0 abilities not included = very, very bad. Big blow against compatibility, and now I need to print out and have 2 different reference sheets around. I at least hope they make a seperate PDF on the WK site with just the SAs that aren't on the 2.0 card.
Heads on spikes = just my personal taste, but bad. Indicates they are driving to a more immature market.

That's what the other base sets have had as well. More nons, so more uniques as well.
Its still a bit insane...it means to buy enough to even be able to trade for a full set you need to spend about $750. And they say Warhammer is expensive.

For a full army of warhammer youll spend upwards of 30 bucks a unit, factor in large armies and you can if you pay retail shell out 3000 for figures, factor in also paints, supplies, ands the like and factor in another good 200 to 500 dollars if your avid.

Expensive my back teeth Stromknight, you were just trying to find another so called chink in the 2.0 armor.

Your other points are also moot. I like heads on spikes and psycological warfare is important. and they already said 2.0 is a brand new game, geesh, they provide this wonderful report about 2.0 and you go on the attack. Sit back and enjoy it. its gonna be a fun game.

Word Grathel, Word.

Anyway, the distribution is far, far better than any case I've ever split with my brother and we've been splitting cases since sinister.

I still say this is a great report, and fell out of my chair again when I came back to this thread, it's too good!

the Starter ad says a Relic, and a Random Relic, Domain or Terrain - so now we find out it's only a Domain?? hmm, that I'm not thrilled with, I would like to see 1/3 of those boosters have an additional Relic and 1/3 chance for terrain...other than that, the distribution is just what I expected and what I have seen for the last 3 expansions (which I got 2 cases each of), 8 uniques a case, whether its starters or boosters...can't wait to open'em up, looks like the big 3 might be pretty rare! but soemone's casse wioll have doubles of each I'm sure!

Nice report, Typhon.

It looks like distribution isn't going to be bad at all. And we just learned the names of two more uniques that will show: Blackwyn and Deathspeaker Aeradon. Time to update that "Piecing the Puzzle" thread.