Wizard War

This is a post-fact description of “Wizard War,” which was more of an exercise in learning GWT and never seemed playable enough to put out for alpha testing. 

Wizard War is a competition between four wizards who use spells and magically created servants (Golems) to take over towns and cities in the surrounding countryside.  The game is an attempt to merge a deck building game like “Dominion” with a secondary map that includes units and placement (kind of like the two tier strategy in “Glen More”). 

The game consists of four types of things:

·       Movers:  Your wizard and golems

·       Cards:  One of four elements, water, fire, earth and air, or a mana card

·       Spells: Which give you additional capabilities; these may be free or may require cards to activate

·       Locations: Towns, Cities, and Keeps

Movers

Movers are your units for acquiring locations and taking actions.  Only one mover may be in a location at a time; if you attempt to move to a occupied location, your move fails.  Each mover can do one order (aka action) per turn.  That may be to move, to acquire cards and put them in your draw pile, purchase spells, move cards from your draw pile into your hand or vica-versa. There are spells that give you additional Golems, which allow you to capture more towns.  Towns = Victory points! 

Movers can also attack movers in adjacent towns.  Golems are eliminated by attacks unless they have spells to deflect them.  Wizards are damaged each time; after four “hits” the can no longer take any action other than to move.

Cards

Cards are the currency of the game; with them you can purchase or activate spells. 

You have your hand and your draw pile.  Your hand are the cards you can play, so you can only do actions who’s cost comes out of your hand.  The number of cards in your hand is limited to four at the beginning of the game, but you can increase that with a spell.  The draw pile are the cards you’ve collected to date.  When a card is drawn from the draw pile, it’s selected at random.  There are other spells that allow you to select a subset of the cards, increasing your chance of drawing what you want. 

Spells

You purchase spells with two mana cards; once you “know” a spell, you can cast it as an action (by you or your golems).  Some spells have a card cost; you must have the cards in your hand to cast the spell.

There is one additional spell that gives you victory points, but it requires eight cards, so you must build up to it!

Locations

Locations include Towns, Cities, Mystical Areas, and Keeps.  Towns have one resource card to pick up.  Cities have two, but you can only pick up one at a time.  Resource cards are replenished if the town/city is left empty. 

Keeps are “safe” spots for the owning wizard; you cannot be attacked in your keep, and you regenerate one point each turn up to the maximum of four points to absorb attacks, and you can take actions there.

Mystical Areas are healing locations.  You cannot be attacked in a healing location.  If your wizard is in one at the end of your turn, they regenerate one point.  Golems cannot enter mystical areas.