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Game Review

Wiz-War
Classic Edition

Chessex
Game © 1997 Jolly Games
3 player game in play

2-4 Players30+ minutes


Concept:

Wizards fight over treasure in a labyrinth. Protect your treasures while stealing two from other wizards.


Gameplay:

The board is made up of four pieces -- one section for each player in the game. Two sections for two players, three sections for three players, etc. Initially each player chooses a section, orients it, then places it face down so that the map obeys the pictures in the rule book. All of the sections are then turned over so the map is "randomly" generated.

Each Wizard starts at the center of their section. Their two treasures are placed on specially marked places. The dice is rolled to see who plays first. Seven cards are dealt to each player.

On his/her turn, the wizards may do the following:

  • Move.

  • Attack once.

  • Use as many "NEUTRAL" or "COUNTERACTION" cards as necessary.

Normally movement is limited to 3 spaces -- unless a number card is used to add to movement. It is possible to move some, cast a spell, then move the remainder of your allowed movement.

As the players are wizards most of the attacks are spells -- each spell describes what it does on the card. Spells automatically hit unless they are counteracted. Players start with 15 life points, spells can do up to 6 points of damage at one time.

Your turn ends as soon as you pick up any object -- like a magic stone or treasure. Treasures are like any other object in the game, except that you may only carry one at a time.

Your goal is to bring two of your opponent's treasures back to the center of your sector, but if your two treasures are captured -- you are out of the game.

Some game pieces...


Winning Conditions:

  • Capture two of your opponents' Treasures.

  • or
  • Kill all the other wizards.

sample spell


Our Opinion:

Thumbs Up!The Zombies gave a hesitant approval to this game. It is similar to Magic: The Gathering -- where wizards cast spells and try to blast each other -- the difference here is that there is a physical maze blocking the players from all out combat. We all enjoyed this difference in Wiz-War.

Our one complaint was with the rules. The rules are quite complex and take time to understand all of the exceptions. We opted to quickly read them, then tried to play the game. The rules are written in a style where keywords are CAPITALIZED -- this is okay for helping players look up the sections about a specific topic, until you realize that every paragraph seems to have at least 3 keywords. The text gets weighed down with CAPITALIZED words and is hard to read. Further, the game makers decided to produce a small booklet for the rules rather than space out some of the sections for legibility. There is a lot of information crammed into the 8 page booklet.

The Rules were not all bad -- with patience, we found that every one of our in-play questions was answered in the rules, and the CAPITALIZED words did help us look upu our answers faster. Our second and third games played much smoother and were quite fun.

Now that we are familiar with the rules, Wiz-War has the appeal of being able to quickly be opened and played -- an advantage it has over "Magic" is that players don't have to provide their own cards and spend hours learning combinations of spells. With Wiz-War, you can open the box and start casting fireballs willy-nilly (well, almost willy-nilly... first you have to find the spell.)

This game is a good game for fantasy lovers and disenchanted (no pun intended) "Magic" players.


Where to buy:

Any local Game store -- Our copy was found at a Wizards of the Coast outlet store.



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