GeekNights Tuesday - Wizard

MrPeriod

Tonight on GeekNights, we review Wizard, which was the GeekNights breakout game of PAX Australia 2014! In the news, there was officiating/game drama at the Dreamhack Winter CounterStrike tournament (leading to some debate in the forum), and Tekken fans are mad about a new character in Tekken. Also, be sure to come see us at PAX South!

• THE WIZARD!!!!
• Kinematic Dress

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Jasper

So I went and found my old, never used account to say
"But Rym & Scott, that's not a new game, its a variant of Oh Hell!"
Then I kept listening and you checked wikipedia.

So many variants on that page - never really thought about looking the game up...
I play with a different scoring:
if you make your bid, get [10+bid] points,
if you bid 0 and make it, instead get [5+number of tricks] points,
if you dont make your bid, go bust - 0 points (no negatives tho).

Also, I didn't hear you mention the "screw the dealer" rule: the number of tricks bid cannot equal the number available, which means the last to bid (the dealer) cannot bid for the remaining tricks in the hand, and at least one person will lose out each round

I like my scoring a lot - it emphasises successful bids a lot more than the Wizard version, and a miss by 1 is still a fail. Also 0 bids are encouraged in larger hands, when it is actually a challenge to make 0 - a successful 0 bid on a 12 card hand is worth the same as a successful bid of 7.

Time to play some cards and check out new rules for me, then.

Dazzle369

Verlan Dress by Frances Bitonti and New Skins Workshop students




2013

The practical limitation with SLS anything is cost, because lasers aren't cheap.

Apreche

Jasper said:

So I went and found my old, never used account to say
"But Rym & Scott, that's not a new game, its a variant of Oh Hell!"
Then I kept listening and you checked wikipedia.

So many variants on that page - never really thought about looking the game up...
I play with a different scoring:
if you make your bid, get [10+bid] points,
if you bid 0 and make it, instead get [5+number of tricks] points,
if you dont make your bid, go bust - 0 points (no negatives tho).

Also, I didn't hear you mention the "screw the dealer" rule: the number of tricks bid cannot equal the number available, which means the last to bid (the dealer) cannot bid for the remaining tricks in the hand, and at least one person will lose out each round

I like my scoring a lot - it emphasises successful bids a lot more than the Wizard version, and a miss by 1 is still a fail. Also 0 bids are encouraged in larger hands, when it is actually a challenge to make 0 - a successful 0 bid on a 12 card hand is worth the same as a successful bid of 7.

Time to play some cards and check out new rules for me, then.

It's a lot easier to make zero when there are four Nars in the deck. It's also nearly impossible to shoot for zero with a wizard in your hand.

pence

Rym's thing of the day has been stuck in my head for years.

Calling upon the powers of the ancients, the Wizard conjures a sacred fire, and casts his foe into the molten maw of an insatiable Gort.
Thanks, Gort.

More good songs about Wizards:

pence

Pedantic classification point: Tichu is more specifically classified as a climbing game, and the only bad thing about it is you need exactly four people to play it. :P

We should play a few hands of Bottle Imp sometime. Cards are 1-37, and a 'bottle' with a demon in it starts at 19, sitting in the middle of the table. Highest number wins, but highest number under the bottle's number is trump. Caveat: you also have to take the bottle. If you end the hand with the bottle, you get none of your points, and additionally get negative points.

Rym

I've never actually played Tichu. I was just going on what Scott said. ;^)

Coldguy

Rym said:

I've never actually played Tichu. I was just going on what Scott said. ;^)

If only someone mailed you a copy of it to try to see if Scott was wrong...

The trick games that have a good rotation with me are diamonds (with a very heart like mechanic) and Insidious sevens which is more wizard like with card passing. I don't remember if they have a reneg rule or not, been a while since I can convince anyone to play that.

I seem to have a higher tolerance to trck tacking games due to not growing up in the midwest and my grand parents tough me how to play cards using various rummy and casino games.

ninjarabbi

I looked up Sentinels of the Multiverse and man you guys were right about the art. That's like some old-ass webcomic or newgrounds flash game shit right there.

sK0pe

I use to play a bunch of hearts with family and on my PDA back when they were relevant. The flexing of those muscles was lots of fun in this game.
The mind games played are lots of fun, hard to find as competent players as we had at PAX Aus though. Playing with new players or those that aren't familiar with trick taking games is too easy as Rym eluded to.

One of my favourite strategies is to make the person who bids too safe or has control to win hands that they don't want.

The comebacks are also great later game.

Linkigi(Link-ee-jee)

I'm very glad that the first thing I thought of on seeing the episode title was the Merrie Melodies cartoon. Also, this episode made me really want to play some fuckin' Spades. We should do some card games at the next PAX/MAGFest I'm at.

Starfox

Deluxe: $12 on amazon. Regular: $6 on amazon. Deluxe worth it or no?

sK0pe

Starfox said:

Deluxe: $12 on amazon. Regular: $6 on amazon. Deluxe worth it or no?

Get this one.

Starfox

Why that one? It's 10 bucks.

sK0pe

Starfox said:

Why that one? It's 10 bucks.

When I posted it was $4.99.
It also has the original artwork which is better than the basic deck of cards version (which you can just make anyway).

Koeniou

I'm at my parents place for Christmas and Bane and I taught them Wizard last night. Other than some confusion between the green and blue suits (my dad is blue-green colourblind) they loved it. I think we're probably going to be playing it every night for the rest of the trip.

Bane

I think the thing I love about Wizard is that it's good no matter the # of players. Plenty of games suffer from being sub-optimal around certain player numbers, but Wizard feels the same no matter the number.

I also really enjoy the number of variants you have the option of playing with.

I'm in the process of creating a virtual adaptation of Wizard on BoardGameArena. It's mostly functional, but I'm tweaking a few things here and there to make sure it has good UI. It's currently using standard artwork (just coloured numbers) but I will be changing that later on

Bane

Starfox said:

Why that one? It's 10 bucks.

It adds theme, which means when you show it to hardened board gamers they aren't going to be like 'it's just a shitty card game' and when you show it to newbies they will be intruiged by the art design (even though it's kinda bad).

Also, it has the Scorepad of Truth and the Scroll of Wisdom.

VichusSmith

If I could give this a grade, I'd say it's just below the cards that you'll see before a That Guy with the Glasses vcast.

Coldguy

VichusSmith said:

If I could give this a grade, I'd say it's just below the cards that you'll see before a That Guy with the Glasses vcast.

I am sorry but you lost me on that comment.