So in a fit of nostalgia I went ahead and ordered 8th edition Wiz-War without waiting for further feedback. It arrived today and I went through the unboxing and rules-reading, and played through a game. Here's a short review.
Wiz-War, 8th Edition
Designed by Tom Jolly and published by Fantasy Flight Games (reprinted in 2012 after 15 years out-of-print).
Overall: 8/10. Fun game play, high replayability, and quality components, let down by a bit of unnecessary over-complication.
First, some background. I last played Wiz-War while a high school student in the mid-80s. We played it quite a bit, and I remember it as a conceptually simple, but complex in play game that was hilarious in execution. Game material was quite basic -- a couple of cardboard map boards, some colored pawns and rocks as tokens, and a deck of simply printed cards. The fun of "Take that, you dirty rat!" gameplay outweighed all criticism of its production values. The challenge was in seeing if the new version of the game would live up to my memories -- a daunting challenge if there ever was one.
For those unfamiliar with Wiz-War, here's a brief outline of the concept. Each player controls a wizard, who has a section of maze containing two treasures. The goal of the original game was to steal two opponent's treasures and bring them back to your "base", or be the last wizard standing as you kill off the other wizards; the new game is won with two "victory points" scored either by killing an opposing wizard or getting a treasure back to your base. You have a hand of spells, up to seven, represented by cards, that are drawn randomly and placed into play on your turn to move, attack, and affect the terrain of the board. Spells also allow "interrupts" to defend against other attacks or neutralize spells in progress.
Opening the box of 8th Edition Wiz-War reveals some impressive production value. Gone are the simple screened 6"-square map boards and printed text cards. Instead, every item is full-color, made of high quality materials. There's a full color 20-page rulebook (much longer than I remember); four 10"-square color two-sided map boards; four plastic wizard figures with color bases, plus monster figures; a d4; 168 magic cards; four "portal" bases; and two sheets of thick punch-out cardboard counters, which assemble into four hit-point wheels for the wizards plus a dazzling array of individual object markers, treasure markers, and other tokens. It's all very attractive, but a bit overwhelming in the quantity of different counters. (Well, OK, it's nothing near the complication of the number of counters in one of my other favorite games,
MBT, but it certainly confused my wife, who'd never been exposed to the game before.)
The rulebook explains each of the components of the game in detail with useful graphics as well as sidebars to augment the basic text. The magic cards are no longer the simple text cards of yore; today they look like the complex cards of many other fantasy card games, with coded icons in each corner, a colorful illustration, and the description of the spell or item in question. Again, it's a bit complex -- I found myself repeatedly referring back to the rulebooks to decipher the icons, and I think it would have been simpler to pick up if the icons were replaced by text, though I do think with a few more game repetitions the icons will become second nature. The format will probably be second nature to modern card game fans (I am, admittedly, not much for card games).
Game play was quite similar to what I remember, though it took a bit of flipping back and forth in the rulebook to refresh my memory of play. There are some examples in sidebars, and I helped that I still remembered the basic flow of the game; an outright novice could probably have benefited from a multi-turn example of play added at the back.
The initial game started slowly as we felt out the sequence. There are three phases: a time phase that resolves spells with variable duration; a play phase in which the wizard can move up to three spaces, attack once, and play any number of other "neutral" spell cards; and a discard and draw phase for hand management. The game picked up speed as we became familiar with the spells and how they interacted (reading speed helps, particularly at the start of the game with multiple cards to read and an initial strategy to develop). A few things were different from the game I remember -- a limitation on cards in the hand plus spells in play; the fact that effects on the game board must be "maintained" rather than staying permanently (like the creation of stone blocks and walls in the maze); the use of "items" like magic stones that are carried around to provide other effects; and the ability to transform your wizard into another form such as a werewolf or gnome.
The provided counters are matched to various spell cards to represent effects on the game board (damaged walls, created walls, blocks, bushes), carried objects (stones swords, treasures, etc), and time durations of spells. Frankly, I found it a bit more complicated than it needed to be -- many of the objects could be more easily replicated by simply placing the spell card in front of you, and simpler tokens could suffice for most of the other placed items. The effect of the various counters is visually pleasing but it did slow the game to go hunting through a pile of counters for the "right" match to a particular spell.
The bit of counter confusion aside, after a few turns the game became the Wiz-War I'm familiar with: back-stabbing, spinning the board, dropping your opponent into pits, walling her up behind a created stone wall in the dead end of a labyrinth, grabbing a treasure and sprinting for home but then getting blasted, dropped, and fireballed before trying to teleport away to safety. The spells are all relatively simple but the combinations can be quite complex and fun ... provided your group likes a bit of an antagonistic game and can maintain their sense of humor and thick skin (a trait my wife, drafted to be my playtest dummy, lacks, so she found the game a bit frustrating).
After the first run through, we applied some of the "optional" rules from the back of the rulebook, which were actually base rules in the original Wiz-War, and the result was almost exactly the game I remember. Adding "Uncluttered Mind" (spells in play do not count against your hand) gives players more options each turn; "deadly treasures" (wizards die if both their treasures are placed on opposing wizards' bases) forces players to balance both offense and defense; "permanent creations" (created items do not have to be maintained) makes sure the battlefield stays fluid as walls and the like are created, and means that the "hat" counters to track who created an item are unnecessary; and "treasure hunters" (eliminates victory points for killing wizards) brings back the goal of "get the treasures or be the last one standing". The game picked up speed; our first game went about an hour with a lot of reading and rules review; the second was 45 minutes, and I can see games as short as half an hour with clever play, or much longer if the "extended play" rules are put into effect.
Overall, optional rules in play, this was the fun, exciting, highly variable beer-and-pretzels game I remember, with the added benefit of improved visuals, though the additional visual appeal does add some unnecessary complexity to the game. I'd definitely recommend this to a gaming group who wants a fast-paced competitive game that can be played quickly with high replay value. It isn't suited to groups who are seeking a cooperative play experience, who are easily offended by having their play thwarted, or who do not like games where players are eliminated in the course of play.
Review cross-posted to Amazon.com,
my blog, and BoardGameGeek.com.
