The Mandalorian: Adventures Board Game Components Overview and Impressions

Star Wars is a hot intellectual property right now – with the recent launch of a bevy of Disney+ shows, there are brand new lines of toys, board games, video games, and more. Another thing that is hot right now? Cooperative board games, so it makes good sense for there to be a cooperative Mandalorian based board game for folks to sink their teeth into. But before we even get this to the table, let’s talk about the quality of the production!

So often, big IP titles like Star Wars don’t always get the best production treatment. Despite Disney loving to have lots of oversight over things that use their IPs, there is still a ton of stuff pushed to market that is meant to make money, not necessarily be the best product ever. From the second I opened The Mandalorian: Adventures game, you knew this was meant to be a mass market experience, which isn’t bad. It’s just something to be aware of.

Honestly, this is a game that begs to have a bunch of miniatures to represent both allies and enemies. Using miniatures within the included book-board (ya, that’s a thing, I’m making it a thing) would have been phenomenal. Unfortunately, miniatures would have driven up the price of this game significantly, and pushed it into the niche marketplace where most board games live, as opposed to the mass market shelves of your local big box store. So miniatures are out, and cardboard standees are in.

The only way to make a standee “premium” is to produce it in acrylic rather than cardboard, but again, that probably doesn’t make sense here. And the cardboard used throughout the components – whether the threat tokens, the characters, etc. – are nice and thick, and feel good to use. They nestle nicely into the included clear plastic bases, and are very usable. And since they are just made of cardboard, they pack away nicely as well.

The game includes a nice cardboard insert as well. It is quite obvious that this insert is made from recycled cardboard – that’s right, no plastic in sight here! It’s not the most aesthetically pleasing insert I’ve ever seen – think about the cardboard your computer peripherals come back into – but it’s versatile and holds all the pieces well, with some room to spare. So often I complain about boxes not giving you enough room for components, but in this case, the box could actually be slightly smaller – no storing this sideways on your Kallax, everything will fall out!

The card quality is just OK in my opinion, again another cost cutting measure to make this game as accessible as possible. I would honestly sleeve these cards if you plan to play through the entire experience more than once. The included board-book is phenomenal. There are two pages of comics to read between each scenario, and then a beautifully detailed board for each of the game’s missions. Most of the scenario specific information is nicely printed on the page, and we never had issues understanding what anything meant, or where spaces started and stopped. Elevation, doors, etc. are also nicely labeled and clear.

The Mandalorian: Adventure is obviously a mass market game, but it doesn’t necessarily have a mass market feel. Outside of the game cards – which again, I wish were just a bit nicer – this is a great production and one that I think many will enjoy when they have it out on the table.