Wizards and Co. is a perfectly workmanlike design. It comes from the minds of Flaminia Brasini, Virginio Gigli, Stefano Luperto, and Antonio Tinto, also known as Acchittocca. Unlike many of their other games, which are often mid-weight to heavier-weight euro puzzlers, this one is a battle to the death to get gems.
And when I say “battle to the death” I mean “battle to have the highest sum.”
A donut hole in a dungeon’s…uh…donut?
Depending on player count, there are several dungeons available to fight over. Each one gets two artifacts (tiles that give bonuses and buffs if a player wins them) and an enchantment tile, which modifies the rules of that dungeon for the current round. The dungeons have gem icons and cursed gem icons running around the periphery, and that’s what you’re really after. Wizards love gems.
Players have a deck of 10 cards, which are drawn from a larger pool of available minions. Players have the same deck of 10, and there’s quite a few combinations of powers and options. The game starts with everyone shuffling the 10 and a starting hand of 2 or 3 cards, depending on turn order. Then utilizing a system I like that’s similar to Oasis, players play 1 or 2 cards face up in legal places around the dungeons. They may also play 1 card face down, or no cards at all. Depending on what you do, you draw 0-2 cards afterward. Essentially, the more you do to affect the game state, the fewer cards you get to draw. You have no discard pile, you will be returning cards to the bottom of your deck when you get them back.
Hobb-clobbering
The cards will sometimes have effects immediately upon playing them, but others wait until it’s time to resolve a full dungeon. Basically, this happens when the available slots are filled. When this happens, the player that filled the slot gets a little marker token (the player to their left will begin the next round). Starting with the gargoyle symbol on the dungeon, all cards resolve in order. Sometimes this changes the final total, but whoever has the most strength gets to pick one of the artifact tokens, and second place gets the other. Also, each minion that remains collects a gem from the slot they’re positioned in. The player who triggered the battle gets to keep the enchantment tile, which is worth a point at the end.
Speaking of points, you’re looking for sets of different gems. The bigger sets, the more points. But, you don’t want to collect those cursed gems, because they’ll cancel out your good gems. Dungeon tiles keep re-entering the game flipped over until you run out of enchantment tiles, which triggers the endgame.
That’s it!
Clean and tidy
I appreciate games that do what they set out to do and avoid potential design pitfalls. Even if Wizards & Co. isn’t my favorite style of game, I can get behind the design choices. Games that feature quasi-blind confrontation and tons of individual powers can sometimes be overwhelming, but in this case, players are kept on a level playing field. Everyone has the same cards (though you can occasionally win a special card), so you must strike a balance between conservative play and aggressive gambits, and there are enough turn order shakeups to prevent a rich-get-richer-because-they-were-first-or-last problem.
The game wraps up quickly, and the various minion cards are fun to experiment with. Overall, a fine effort from this design team, even if it’s a little lighter than my tastes typically swing.
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