bish

I knew I’d play this game with my kids as soon as I saw photos of it on the web. We pre-ordered and we’re so glad we did! The components are wonderfully made and the look of the boards, cards, and books are really top notch. A LOT of care went into making this title.

The game itself is sort of pitched as a dungeon crawler / story game that’s approachable enough for kids and broken up into chapters. I’ve gotta tell you, it’s really tough to get a chapter finished before the hourglass gets to the chapter end marker for even veteran gamers. I’ve played a few times with the kids, once with friends, and probably 5 times attempting to solo a chapter… those dice, while attractive, are mean, vengeful cubes of despair. (Hoping the extra sets I just bought from PHG will be easier on us).

The story that’s woven into each chapter is engaging and got my kids excited. The idea of rescuing one of the characters in chapter 2 before getting to use her was an incredible hook for my daughter! The basic mechanics of moving, battle, searching, etc. are straight forward enough. What really sets this game apart is not just how diverse each chapter is… but how gameplay varies incredibly from tile to tile within each chapter.

Just the other night I was able to use a fork to launch a grape at a couple of Elite Rat Warriors on a table. After successfully killing one, I then used the fork to launch one of my mice onto the table top to finish off the other. How epic is that? And that’s just in chapter 3! I can’t wait to see what’s do-able in our adventures in the later chapters… and future expansions that PHG is already dropping hints about.

While the rulebook looks great, the organization seems a little off to me. The first few games took a lot of flipping back and forth to see how certain situations would affect our next actions. It’s the one thing ‘lacking’ in my mind. Overall, this game is really worth the price of admission. There’s so much fun stashed in this box – you can’t lose! Well, you will lose, to be sure… but you’ll enjoy yourself while you do.

I played a few matches of this game for the first time last night. I had an old CCG buddy come over and we had a good time.

I really dig the ********* ‘feel’ of the game. In the 2 player matches we played, it’s definitely got a quick pace to it – which is great. This isn’t one of those games where you set up to an amazingly intricate move late in the game. If that’s what you’re looking for, look elsewhere. No, this is definitely ‘wham-bam-and no thanking any ma’am’ because I have a feeling Battle Wizards just aren’t that polite.

The overall product has great polish. The game text on the cards adds great flavor and we didn’t run into too many that made us work to understand what they do. There were a couple portions of the game that weren’t entirely clear after reading the manual. i.e. We weren’t sure if the surviving wizard resets to 20HP at the end of a game or just leave the HP counter where it was at the end of the game… before starting the next one in the match.

Update: Have learned that, yes, the last wizard standing does indeed reset to 20HP at the beginning of the next match.

We both enjoyed it and will be playing again… hopefully with a larger group.