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PLAYING MAGE KNIGHT ON VASSAL

Okay, so, I know people have been staring at the module wondering how it works. Here's the deal. To play Mage Knight on Vassal you'll need a computer with Java installed, and you'll need to go get Vassal from over here. You'll also need the module itself, located here.

Start it up and you'll get this screen (but with no games listed):



Choose File -> Open Module, and choose the Mage Knight module. Vassal will pop open a progress window and start indexing files, for faster graphics loading once you're in game properly. For MK this will take some time! Finally, you'll get this:



This is the main game window. If you're connecting to an online game then you'd click the double arrows button third from the left. For our purposes, just choose File, New Game.



Pick your player. If you're just playing Solo then use one of the regular characters. Observer cannot move any pieces around, that's purely for online stuff. If you want to run a game, or otherwise have access to multiple decks, then choose Game Moderator but see the NB later on.



Then pick your board. If you're playing with Volkare, remember that you'll need to pick the Open board. Otherwise, you pick your board based on the number of players and how much space you need, according to the general setup rules.

The main window will activate, the map will appear, and the header bar will change. We'll get to that later, but for the moment, look at the bottom of the main map:



Those New Game buttons are used to run macros to set up the rest of the game. Based on the number of players you're using (players+2 if no volkare, players +3 otherwise), click one of them. The module will churn for a bit, then things will update. For solo, let's click 4:



You'll see that the module has now reduced the amount of dice available, rolled them, and given you a new set of buttons. I've marked a couple of useful buttons that it's helpful to know about, but remember any dice can be rerolled or specifically set with a right-click menu anyway. Now, choose the game type you want. In our case we want to do Volkare's Return, the standard solo game. Click that and the module will churn a little more...



At this point, the board is set up. You can now right-click the tiles, choose 'flip', and drag tokens out of the stacks to populate keeps/orcs/whatever. When you need more tiles, you drag them from the stack in the bottom-right, flip them, and populate them.

Next, let's look at the top bar and what it looks like now.



You'll see that Tovak is lit up because we chose Tovak. If we click his character board, we get to this mildly confusing screen:



Take a moment to drag your figure onto the map, and if you want then drag your token out to the 1-6 spaces below the mana source.

By and large everything in Vassal is done by dragging, but the Mage Knight module includes a ton of automation. You could just drag cards out of your deck to your hand, but if I click the little draw 5 arrow, the system will give me a message saying I've done so. If I then go to my hand by clicking the appropriate button on the top bar...



There's my hand of cards (zoomable). Now I'm good to go, so I pick my tactic, drag it onto my board, determine what tactic Volkare's going to use by random draw, and go to Volkare's window:



Hit the appropriate button to give his deck that many wounds and then shuffle it, then dump his tactic wherever you like on this screen. If you like, also fill out his army.

Now you're good to go! You can discard cards via the right-click menu for that card, you can draw more from your board, you can move mana dice around and reroll them from the right-click menu. If you buy things, just drag them out of the offer onto one of the other boards, be it your hand or onto your deck on the character board. The module keeps track of the order of the decks, so placing a card on top of a deck is consistent and it will be the next card to be drawn. You have to keep track of most things manually yourself, but it's not hard to figure out from there. When it's Volkare's turn you go to his window and drag out a card, moving him appropriately.

When you reach the end of a round and your deck is empty, go to the Offer.



You're looking at the buttons in the centre-middle. 'Refresh Offer' will fill in gaps if you've taken a card from the offer. If it's the end of the round, you click one of the buttons underneath, depending on how many spells or advanced actions you want to remove from the game. (Lost Legions brought in a variant, where during Solo play you may optionally remove up to 2 Spells / Advanced Actions at a time.)

Important note: If you are playing as Game Moderator, discard everyone's cards by moving them to their discard piles manually, and discard their entire deck before you end the round! If you're playing multiplayer, make sure people only discard their own cards, and discard their entire deck before you end the round!

The module runs many macros based upon who clicks the option, and doesn't particularly care about ownership beyond that. If you right-click-discard a card in a multiplayer game, it will go to your discard pile, regardless of whose card it is. If you're Game Moderator, you'll have four options, all titled 'discard'! If cards are remaining at the end of the round then the module will think you are the one discarding them all. This will mean you steal someone's cards in multiplayer, and Tovak will suddenly own them all if you're game moderator.

That's about it. Anything else is easy to learn through experimentation.