The Mandalorian: Adventures review — Risk mitigation for gunslingers

Expansion review added July 22nd 2025.

The Mandalorian: Adventures from Unexpected Games and designed by Corey Konieczka is a lightweight cooperative adventure game set during the events of the first season of the hit Disney show, The Mandalorian. It’s easy to learn, has a great theme, and plays relatively fast. But is it fun? You’ll have to keep reading… or ya know, skip to the end.

In The Mandalorian: Adventures, you and up to 3 other players will embark on a campaign that roughly follows the events of the first season of The Mandalorian, becoming the iconic characters from the show and telling your version of the story. Let’s start with the campaign. I was quite surprised when I got into the box to see that there are only four missions in the campaign. Rather than a big campaign that you play once over dozens of hours, the campaign in Mandalorian: Adventures is kind of a pseudo-legacy game mixed with an extended tutorial. New mechanics, playable characters, and enemy abilities are rolled out throughout the campaign, leading to the final version of the game that is more of a sandbox adventure. Once you’re through the campaign, you can play any mission with any character and mix in Mercenary Missions to change things up. 

The Mercenary Missions can be combined with any of the maps to change the setup, objective, and rules of the game. Instead of fighting Moff Gideon in the town square, maybe you are dodging a Mudhorn while trying to track down an egg for a Jawa. With the four missions included, you get 16 different missions and map combinations to play through. Some of the mercenary missions also feature hidden traitor mechanics to add another layer of excitement.

Campaigns and sandboxes are all well and good, but you want to actually play the game and have fun, right? Gameplay in Mandalorian: Adventures is simple, fast, and oddly, safe. Safe? Let me explain. There are four possible actions to take on your turn: Move, Attack, Intel, and Plan. Actions are taken by playing a card to one of those action columns on the board. If your card has a 3 on it and you want to move, you move 3 spaces. On your turn, you get to take two actions, but they have to be different actions, and then it goes to the next person. However, the numbers on the cards serve a dual purpose. If at any time the total on the cards in any column is 5 or higher, the enemies activate. If you hit 5 exactly, they will do a normal activation. If you go over 5, you get an extra effect depending on the mission, and then the normal activation as well. Poor planning or going in too aggressively is very dangerous. The enemies can pile on quickly and wipe you out easily if you’re not careful. In practice, that means players are going to try to do everything possible to always hit 5 and not go over. It’s not too hard to manage and means the mission effect hardly ever goes off. I can see how this mechanic prevents the players from just blasting every enemy off the map before they get to activate, but it feels out of sync with the theme. The Mandalorian is a gunslinger. He’s quick on the draw and isn’t afraid to get into a fight. Playing Mandalorian: Adventures feels less like a gunfight and more like risk management. 

That may seem like a harsh criticism, but I still think it’s a fun game. Notably, the speed of gameplay and simplicity of the mechanics make it a great family game night game. You just need to know what you’re in for before you pick this game up. It’s not a gunslinging adventure, it’s a puzzle. Besides the risk management puzzle, there are a few other things that bounce off the theme a bit as well. Notably, the default attack range for melee and ranged attacks is 1 space. There are cards introduced during the campaign that will give you the occasional real ranged attack, but it feels a lot more like chess than a gun fight. 

If you're a solo player, the game includes rules for solo play. Essentially you shuffle two character decks together and just play normally from there. It works pretty well, but can lead to times when you can't activate the character you want because you just aren't drawing the right cards. The numbers and risk mitigation puzzle actually work better as a solo game in my opinion where you can ponder over the best way to proceed without other players wanting the action to pick up. I'm not a big fan of solo board games, so I wouldn't pick this up for the solo mode, but if you're into that kind of thing, it works pretty well. You can also easily just play multi-handed if that's more your style.

The components for the game are a bit of a mixed bag. The mission boards are in a spiral-bound book that makes setup a breeze. The colors and artwork are vibrant with clear icons. The player characters are standees while all of the enemies are tokens. The cardboard is of decent quality and seems like it will hold up fine. The card quality is disappointing. They are quite thin and damage easily while shuffling. Pretty much all of my cards have warped as well, so they don’t sit flat. The box insert is completely worthless if you store your games sideways, but functional if you keep the box flat. The insert is made of recycled cardboard rather than plastic, which is a nice touch for the environmentally conscious. 

At the end of the day, I think Mandalorian: Adventures is a fun game if you like puzzly strategy games and are a fan of Star Wars. It may not be the high-stakes gunfight that I wanted, but I can see it continuing to hit the table at family game night. That said, if you’re not really into Star Wars, I’m not sure this game does anything exceptional that would win you over.

Keep reading to see how the expansion, Clan of Two, changes the game.

The Mandalorian Adventures: Clan of Two review — The complete game

Now with 100% more lightsabers.

Clan of Two expands the Mandalorian Adventures with content following season 2 of the TV show. New characters, maps, missions, events, and enemies come inside the slender box, ready to add to the base game.

The expansion doubles the number of maps available to you with iconic locations and scenes from the show. The introduction of Boba FETT and his devastating rampage through a horde of Stormtroopers is a particular favorite of mine and recreated well within the mechanics of the game. In addition to the 4 new maps and story missions, there are 4 Mercenary Missions that can be combined with any map to expand the potential number of mission-to-map combinations. The missions in this expansion introduce some fun new objectives. As an example, the second mission spawns waves of enemies that need to be defeated and is a blast to just work your way through the masses. Boba FETT and Fennec Shand both shine here with powerful attack-focused kits.

Speaking of new characters, Boba FETT and Fennec Shand are joined by Ashoka Tano and Bo-Katan Kryze. Each of the new characters has a new persistent character ability that can be used pretty much every turn, as compared to the base game characters that have a once-per-game ability. As the action ramps up in season 2 of the show, all of the characters reflect that with combat abilities being a big focus. 

Also new to this expansion is a big pile of event cards that you shuffle into the core set cards. There are more of what we’ve seen before, but also new/optional Dangerous Events that you can use if you choose, as well as some really interesting new ongoing effects. Some events feature ongoing effects that get placed into the action slots and will affect you until that action slot resolves, another event, at which point they are discarded. The additional variation in the events is great for the game, but the ongoing effects add a new layer of puzzle and challenge to the action planning that makes the puzzle sing. Where the core game felt a bit on the easy side, the additional tools on offer in this box make it feel just right, especially when you can dial in the difficulty with things like the Dangerous Events.

For combat, there are a few new enemy abilities to contend with. The E-web trooper shooting everyone in range when it attacks is especially nasty. There are a few others, but the big new addition is Duels. Certain powerful enemies will require you to duel them. When that happens, you flip a card from the new Duel deck and deal with the results. Typically, some amount of damage is blocked, but there will always be an additional effect as well. The enemy might move. Your actions might be disrupted. Your hand of cards could be affected. The Duels make the big boss fights feel distinct from shooting any random trooper and stand out as more cinematic fights.

There is no story deck with the expansion like you got with the core game. It is assumed you know how to play at this point and are ready for the full experience. You can jump in at any mission, but there is also an 8-mission narrative campaign that spans both sets and creates more of a complete dungeon crawl campaign experience. Each mission in the narrative campaign adds challenges and restrictions to tie them all together.

Component quality is the same as the core set. I had issues with cards curling in the core set, but have not experienced that yet with the expansion. Whether that is due to different card stock or just that I haven’t had it long enough, I don’t know. As is typical with expansions, there is a slight mismatch with the ink color on the card backs. Fortunately, as a cooperative game, it really doesn’t have any impact. A more glaring issue is that the new event cards are not cut to the same size as the base game. Again, there is no game impact, but it is noticeable and makes shuffling the cards a bit awkward. I assume this is due to a new printer, so hopefully, new printings of the base game will align with the expansion. 

I wish the core box storage solution had been planned better to accommodate the expansion(s), since it is clear multiple seasons were planned in advance. As it stands, having to deal with organizing and pulling content from both boxes is kind of a pain. I can definitely see myself tossing the inserts and going to bags to get everything in the one box.

Overall, Clan of Two is a great expansion. It fills out the game in ways that make it feel like a complete game. The core game is great, but looking back feels like it needed a bit more content to have staying power. If you like the game, this is a no-brainer. If you were on the edge, Clan of Two might be what tips you over. There may be an argument against splitting this into multiple boxes that you have to buy, but I can understand the seasonal approach that follows the show.