Embark on an enchanting adventure in 3 Magi, a captivating game that follows the three wise men on their legendary trek across the desert to meet the newborn King.

Players assume the roles of the Magi. Manage resources, skillfully craft gifts, navigate the terrain with the help of the navigation board and encounter characters that may aid the Magi’s mission.

As the Magi, players must gather and combine resources to craft gifts for the King, each worth victory points. Players travel across desert tiles, entering iconic locations such as “Jericho”, “Jerusalem”, “Herod’s Palace” and “Bethlehem”. The tiles have unique actions allowing players to choose a particular route and resolve actions. Use the navigation board for bonuses & extra actions. Manage & combine your cards on hand to further your Magi in the game.

3 Magi offers a unique gaming experience, weaving together elements of resource management, worker placement, card hand management and crafting. Immerse yourself in the timeless narrative of the 3 Magi as they seek Jesus the King.

Disclaimer: The publisher provided the prototype copy of 3 Magi. The opinions expressed in the review are completely my own. The components, rules and everything you see are all WIP at the time of writing.

Review:

Overview:

In this game you recreate the journey taken by the 3 wise men on their legendary journey across the desert to meet the newborn King., as players assume the roles of the Magi. You must manage your resources, craft gifts and navigate the terrain with the help of the navigation board and encounter characters that may aid the Magi’s mission.

The rules (still WIP at the time of this review) are nicely done and clear and very explanatory, with plenty of pictures and examples of play and of things like how and when cards will score points. The current pdf version is a lot better than the printed rulebook I got with my prototype but this is the beauty of WIP rules, these things can easily and quickly be updated as often as is required.

Set-up is quite simple as the board is not very big, and is made up of hexes, most of which are placed randomly with the main cities being the only constant placements for each game.

Your own player boards are also easily manageable and quick to set up, and within 5 to 10 minutes you should be ready to start.

As mentioned earlier the theme of the game is based upon the journey of the Magi to meet the newborn King.

The mechanics are similar to those I’ve seen in other games in so much that you have multiple player pieces on the board, in this case Camel meeples, and you must keep them ‘linked’ together by all of them being in adjacent hexes but you can’t have two of your own on the same hex, apart from the Bethlehem hex, which is the last hex you attempt to occupy.

3 Magi is essentially a worker placement and hand management game.

Each player starts with 3 camel meeples or MAGI, and on a partly fixed / mostly random hex layout playing area you take turns moving your MAGI across from Arabia to Bethlehem, potentially stopping en-route in Jericho, Jerusalem and Herod’s Palace, taking any and all the actions (if able) shown on the hex you land on.

These actions are;

• Gain a Specific Resource card
• Gain a Resource card of your choice
• Craft a Gift
• Meet a Merchant
• Advance a Celestial Body
• Play a Card

In a bit more detail the above actions equate to

The Gain a Specific Resource symbol allows you to collect a card from the top of the deck shown as a symbol on the hex you have moved on to. This goes into your hand, where there is no hand limit on the number of cards you can have.

The Gain a Resource of your choice symbol allows you to choose which of the 3 resource decks you take a card from.

Craft a Gift means you can spend resource cards from your hand to take one of the gifts from the Gift row, and add it to your play area. This gift will give you VP’s at the end of game scoring.

The Meet a Merchant action allows you to take a merchant card from the row of cards, and either resolve the effect immediately if it shows a lightning bolt symbol, or place it to your player area for ongoing or end game benefits.

The Advance, a Celestial body symbol, allows you to move either the Sun, Moon or Stars token around its appropriate track on your player board, which at certain points will gain you immediate / ongoing benefits.

The Play a Card action allows you to play a card from your hand into your player area, which will give you either end of round VP’s, or ongoing / end of game benefits, depending on the card type.

Each round is made up of 3 ‘Sun Phases’ in which each player moves one of their MAGI forward onto a new hex with the restriction that all 3 MAGI at the end of any movement MUST always been in hex to hex contact with each of them being on a separate hex, as at no time other than arriving at Bethlehem must 2 or more MAGI of the same colour occupy the same hex. MAGI of different colours can occupy the same hex at any time, and this will occur more times than not (or at least they did in the games we played). 

At the end of the 3rd Sun phase, the Moon phase happens for each player in turn order, where each player can (if they wish / are able to) play a card, activate their navigation board bonuses and lastly score any night card scoring objectives.

The navigation board is where you will move your 3 celestial markers on their own circular tracks each time a hex action or card ability allows you to do so, and will gain you both immediate and ongoing benefits.

The rounds will continue until one player reaches Bethlehem with one of their MAGi and then the end of game scoring will commence, adding in at this point all points gained from crafted gifts and any other cards / bonuses you have accumulated. The winner is the person with the most points, with ties being broken by most crafter gifts. If these are also level then the victory is shared.

The artwork and components, like previous games from the publisher are of an extremely good level and quality, with the cards, boards, tiles rules being extremely well done, and the rulebook has once again plenty of pictures and examples of gameplay to answer most of the queries we had (which were only a handful) and as this is still under development I’m sure it will again be an easy to follow read at time of final publication.

You can check out the Kickstarter page as well as the publishers own site and social media pages for more examples of how the game looks and plays.

As I said earlier, this for me is another solid game from the publisher and at the time of writing i believe the Kickstarter campaign is still ongoing and has reached its funding goal, so this will in due course be delivered to backers and be available for purchase in retail to those who may have missed out on backing it.

If you’re looking for a nice worker placement game that doesn’t hog the table, and yet still delivers on flavor and theme, then 3 MAGI might just be what you are looking for, but don’t wait too long, because if you miss out on this game where you move your camel on it’s journey to Bethlehem, you might just get the hump. 

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