Wiz War

Ugh. This game. This game.

So, a long time ago, I played Wiz War. The 1983 version, but I don't remember which edition. It was a silly game where each player was a wizard wandering through a maze, collecting treasures, casting spells, and trying to mess with the other players. The mechanics were a bit clunky, but it added to the charm. The spells worked together in a variety of ways, and silly things happened every game.

All of the spells were cards that you drew from a deck. Some of the cards were just numbers. You could use these numbers to move further, and some spells needed to use a number to deal damage (like deal X damage or something). Wiz War was out of print for quite some time, and I liked the general feel of it, so I decided to make a similar game with different mechanics.

So the theme was the same; you're a wizard, there's a maze, you collect treasures, you cast spells, you mess with the other guy. The maze was done quite a bit differently. In Wiz War, the game was made of a few 5x5 boards randomly put together, usually making a 10x10 grid. In my game, it was random tiles that made a 10x10 grid. Some cards could push entire rows or columns of the maze around, similar to the Ravensburger Labyrinth series.

The wizards weren't just generic wizards; each wizard was its own character with their own unique spells or abilities. The abilities weren't that game-changing. They were mostly just thrown in for a bit of extra flavor for each character. Your character choices mostly mattered for which spells you can use.

In Wiz War, everyone draws spells from the same deck. In my game, everyone builds their own deck, like Magic the Gathering, or other CCGs/LCGs (mine being an LCG). Each card had a certain element associated with it (like fire, for example), and each character could only have certain elements in their deck. There were some generic cards that anyone could put in their deck, along with the few unique abilities for each character.

A major difference to how the cards played is that most spells needed a number, and every card had a number. The 'better' cards had lower (less powerful) numbers, and the less useful or more situational cards were the ones with the high numbers. All movement required a number card to be played. Because of this, the pacing of the game is much faster, and you burn through your deck quickly.

.... but then in comes Wiz War 8th Edition in 2012, published by Fantasy Flight. And... wait... what's that? What is that? Right there... at the bottom of the card there.... Is that seriously an energy number on the card? Ugh. This game.

So, yep. I scrapped my game. While there are some major changes to it, that alone just makes it way too similar to 8th edition, and there's no way I'm going to try and make a game that similar to something FF released this year.

And I know that only some cards in 8th edition have energy values on them, it's still a key element to my game which was supposed to be unique. Now instead of 'Hey, you know that old Wiz War game that hasn't seen the light of day in a decade? Here's something really similar!', it's become 'Hey, you know that game Fantasy Flight released this year...?'

Meh. One day. Maybe.