A few months ago, Asmodee and Unexpected Games released a new board game from Corey Konieczka and Josh Beppler called The Mandalorian: Adventures.
The game has you and your friends taking on the roles of Din Djarin and other beloved characters from The Mandalorian playing through four story missions to protect The Child. A huge thank you to Asmodee for providing me with a review copy. All thoughts below are my own.
The Mandalorian: Adventures allows players to experience the thrills of the hit Disney+ series on their tabletops. Navigating unique maps and missions, players must cooperate to accomplish their goals and avoid defeat.
Recognizable characters and enemies bring the action to life, and an optional hidden traitor mode ensures no two plays of The Mandalorian: Adventures will ever be the same.
Featuring a novel game system that will be intuitive for gamers and easy to teach, you can dive into the world of The Mandalorian and start playing right away!
To prepare for this review, I played the first two missions to get a feel for the gameplay and how it felt. The best way I can find to describe it is a legacy-lite board game.
There is a story that progresses through the missions with new aspects of the game unlocking along the way just like your typical legacy board game. However, the missions are much shorter (less than an hour) than other legacy games I’ve played and there are only four story missions to complete.
That said, the development team did provide a set of rules for sandbox play which adds a lot of replay value which is something that I feel most legacy games ignore. It also feels easier in general than other legacy games because the missions actually feel doable.
That said, there are rules provided if you want an easier or harder experience. Another thing I’ve noticed is that so far I have not had to destroy any game pieces which, once again, boosts the replay value.
Another nice touch for The Mandalorian: Adventures is that before each mission, there’s a brief comic to set up the story for the mission. That said, if you’ve watched The Mandalorian, you know the story.
From what I’ve seen, the game just follows the story of the first season of the show. It’s still fun to play though, especially when you want to play in sandbox mode as you can imagine various what if situations utilizing other characters you may love.
I also want to note that The Mandalorian: Adventures has a different approach to the board. Instead of a standard folding cardboard rectangle to serve as the game board, the book that houses the story comics also has the game boards for each mission included as well.
This not only creates a good experience as you read the comic and then turn the page to the game board, but it also helps with organization in the game box which I appreciate with one fewer piece while allowing for more variety of board layouts each mission.
As you may have picked up from other board game reviews, I have become very adamant about inserts. Game inserts are an underappreciated aspect of board game design.
Many would say it doesn’t matter what the insert is like, but those who know understand that a good game insert makes a game feel so incredible and polished. The Mandalorian: Adventures does have a game insert and it’s good. It’s not an amazing insert by any means, but it functions well and is organized well.
One thing I would have liked would have been maybe one more separation of pockets to better separate the disruption tokens from the damage tokens, but it’s not a big deal.
One aspect of The Mandalorian: Adventures that I am torn on is the player count. On the box it states that the game supports 1-4 players which is true. The catch is that for the first two missions, there are only two characters to use which creates a less than ideal situation unless you are using sandbox mode.
There are rules of how to play with more players than characters, but it involves sharing the characters which just sounds like a lot less fun to me. Looking ahead, I did see that the last two missions do have four characters to choose from, alleviating this problem, but I do wish that there were options provided for when you do have 3-4 players on those first two missions.
On the flip side, if you are playing by yourself, there are rules for you to play as two characters instead of one. I have not tried this, but it does seem like a decent set of rules for solo players.
How is the actual gameplay though? At the end of the day, this is arguably the most important question for any game. Honestly, I was surprised by how much I liked playing The Mandalorian: Adventures.
When I read over the rules, I was worried that it wasn’t going to be very fun nor worth the $50 as it seemed to just be another legacy board game. On your turn, you take two actions by playing skill cards. The actions include Move, Attack, Intel, and Plan. However, some skill cards have special abilities that can be used when the card is placed in the indicated action.
Often, this translates to a stronger/different take on the action such as the Mandalorian’s Whistling Birds which activates on the Attack action and lets you deal 5 damage spread across different enemies instead of a standard amount of action against a single target.
Another aspect of this action system I like is that skill cards have different numbers that essentially determine how strong the action is when played. If you play a skill card with a 2 on Move, then you get to move two spaces, but a 4 lets you move four spaces. It’s simple and allows you to strategize since you don’t always want to just play big numbers.
The way that this is all balanced is that when the total power of skill cards (and disrupt tokens) is five or greater at the end of your turn, then you have to resolve an Event card which is how the enemies interact with you.
Further, if the total is six or greater, then you first have to perform the mission-specific crisis (listed on the board) and then you resolve the event. You never really want events nor crises to resolve, but they are inevitable and so it is up to you and your group to determine the best way to play your cards to manage the negatives while you work to accomplish the mission goal.
At the end of the day, I am enjoying The Mandalorian: Adventures. While I wish there was a better attempt at addressing the number of players in the early missions, it has been fun to play 2-player.
I think this legacy lite format is actually really nice with the rules for a sandbox mode and no permanent alterations to the game pieces really helps more casual gamers feel like the $49.99 price tag is more justified.
They even have additional content on their website! I would like to see more games apply a similar model. If you like The Mandalorian and board games, I think you’ll greatly enjoy this game.
