Deck Distribution and Optimal Play in Wiz War

I have been thinking more about why the 8th edition of Wiz-War feels so different from the 5th. Some of it is clearly because they took out some of the more devastating spells, like Buddy or Swap Home Bases, and toned down some mechanics, like the new stun mechanic instead of just losing a turn. So there are far fewer of the higher end spells. But Fantasy Flight also cut out the lower end. Not by just removing traps, but also combining the 2s and 3s with other minor spells. This flattening of the power level has a dramatic effect on optimal play.

In the 5th edition, there were a lot of cards that tended to just clog up your hand, 2s I am looking at you. But discarding to draw was a actual risky decision. While there was a chance of getting an actually amazing spell, there was also a chance of getting something far worse. It was often the correct play to keep mediocre or situational cards and try to maneuver into position. This encouraged creativity and truly memorable plays.

8th edition Wiz-War has no traps and essentially every card has the same basic power level. So burning it for a minor advantage is optimal because you know you will get another card about as useful from your draw. This leads to plays like using the Werewolf transformation just for the extra point of movement and dismissing the spell on the turn it is cast so another can be used at the destination. This sort of play would never have happened under the 5th edition where the transformations were powerful in their unique abilities.

Part of the issue is the combining the 2s and 3s with spells. Usually these numbers were essentially trash as were the spells they were placed on. But you still couldn't burn through them too fast by discarding or boosting your speed because getting stuck with no numbers to boost spells was crippling. Now players have more flexibility because if they burn a 2 or 3 now, odds are there is another coming attached to a spell that might be useful. The added flexibility of the cards actually reduces the space of rationalizable choices because there is no real resource trade off. So it is almost always correct to burn the cards for a marginal advantage to inch ahead of the other players.

This combining of the 2s and 3s with other cards is probably a contributing factor for requiring that maintained spells cost against your hand size in the 8th edition. Essentially people have too many possible cards in their hand. The combining the 2s and 3s with minor spells probably doubled hand sizes. Now we not only have 1 card where we might have had 2, there is also less fear of cycling through cards so we see more during the game. Without mechanisms to fill hand slots the shear number of options people have would get out of hand. Which would lead to both decision paralysis and the game becoming even more about shear efficiency. Not to mention less board clutter as people have fewer creations out at a time.

Honestly the most potent cards are now some of the stones. Especially those that give a minor buff to cards or movement every turn. These allow the player which posses them to do that one extra thing every turn. Which builds up to a huge lead over the course of a game. In a recent 2 player game, the turning point was when I used strength to rip a speed stone from the other player. This minor shift in power resulted in very divergent paths on what we were able to do and me winning simply because I could cover more ground.

Overall I am disappointed by how balanced the cards are in the new 8th edition of Wiz-War. This balance makes the game one of pure efficiency instead of the traditional chaotic good time. In addition, the extra options on the cards through the combination energy actually reduces the space of correct play. I think that fewer options and more variable card power would result in a more interesting game due to requiring the players to be more creati

Review: Wiz-War 8th Edition

I finally got a chance to play the 8th edition of Wiz-War. Some of my friends had a homemade copy of the 5th edition which was a blast to play. It was a very light game. The purpose was to kickback, relax and hopefully have some awesome stories to tell. The minimalistic design of the older version really emphasized this as the cards had no art and the tokens simply had the name of what they were. All the visuals were inside your imagination. I was really excited to play the new 8th edition because of how great the previous version is.

Overall my reactions are mixed to the game. It is still a fun game to play, but it doesn't capture the spirit of the 5th edition that I was hoping for. Granted, I only played the 8th edition with 2 players and this game really shines with 3+. But I think that I got a good taste of the modern mechanics to make a decent judgement.

What I liked was there was still an emphasis on being creative with spells. Things that manipulate the board were especially fun like Rotate Sector or Destroy Wall. The creation elements were a bit lack luster by comparison because of the new maintaining spells rule. But this can be easily corrected using a variant or two at the end of the rules.

The flavor of the game also stays very true to the original. All the new, fancy art and high quality pieces really bring you into a fantasy world. Nothing really seems out of place for a wizard battle royal. The card art has a lot of anime influences. But this is not a bad thing as it reminds you not to take the game too seriously.

My main complaint is this game is not swingy enough. While most modern games aim for balance by having nothing really overpowered, the strength of the 5th edition was balance achieved by extremely overpowered cards. Essentially all the cards that were not utility cards in the 5th edition were extremely powerful. It wasn't hard to torch someone within an inch of death. But the balance came in they would be able to return the favor in the not to distant future. In the 8th edition, all the advantages and cool plays build on marginal advantages over a number of turns. Doing something to absolutely wreck another player is much harder now. Overall the cards are at a more uniform power level and the counters are more prevalent than in the 5th edition.

I think this leads to a less memorable play experience. It is still very enjoyable to build up small advantages until the win is inevitable. Especially trying to do it under the nose of other players who have the same goal. I love Magic: the Gathering for this type of play, but am not really looking for it when I break out Wiz-War. I would prefer more swing and randomness. This generates much better stories. No one remembers the time that you kept a card advantage over your opponent and just won because you had more actions. But everyone remembers the time you were fried almost well done, but managed to teleport to safety and then fry the offending player with lightning to return the favor a few turns later.

There is still a lot of strategy and creativity in the latter type of play, just far less planning due to the chaos that multiple players can unleash. It feels good to not have to feed the Spike in me all the time. Sometimes Timmy wants his time with the massive attacks and flashy tricks. And the 5th edition of Wiz-War was just such a game. While I like the new 8th edition, there is just too much room for Spike to come out. Hopefully, this is less of a case when playing with more than 2 players. But I think that with the flattening of the spells' power Spike still has ample room to come out an play.

EDIT: There is a fan art version of the 5th edition with both official expansions and a community expansion which looks really nice on Board Game Geek. I recommend that those interested in making there own copy use that over the scans linked previously.

Money in Catan

One of the people that I play Settlers of Catan posed the question on whether one could introduce gold as money, not any of the gold variants in the expansions, into the game so that people actually use it to trade with. This would remove one common friction to trade, namely there won't have to be a double coincidence of wants. In addition, it would serve as a good economics lesson on how money works, despite being inherently valueless. Unfortunately, I don't think it is possible to graft money onto Settlers in a way that makes prices endogenous. The structure of Settlers makes trade non-essential and any additional frictions would completely shut down trade.

Before going into detail on the issues, I would like to formalize how gold would be added to Settlers. Gold's purpose is solely to be a medium of exchange. This means that there will be nothing to buy from the game for gold, only the other players. So any gold that enters the hands of the players will never leave. As we want the players to use gold instead of relying on barter, all trades must have just gold on one side of them. To remove the loophole of players swapping gold back and forth to simulate barter, we will further restrict trades to only be the active player. Things like can more gold be generated or how much gold each player starts with can be left up in the air and isn't really important for discussing what goes wrong.

I think that most people who have played Settlers notice that the end game tends to turn into a game of solitaire. Once you have your production upgraded enough through cities and settlements, there is usually no need to trade with other people. How ever you have built will generate the necessary points to win. Even early game, trade is not essential with things like sufficient diversification in starting resources and 4:1 with the bank. This means that if trade becomes more difficult it will vanish from the game.

How difficult trade is really depends on who you are playing with. Some groups trade a lot, others never do anything that is not 2:1 or better. In the former case, trade might still exist with gold due to the high level of reciprocity already present in the group. Though there is the added layer of trust needed that people will trade back for gold on your turn, which makes trade less likely by making it more risky. Those who are already stingy traders will completely shutdown because gold is literally a worthless resource and they will not trust that anyone will trade back for gold.

In addition to the trust issues, gold is extremely undesirable in the late game. It doesn't help you to win and no one is trading, so there is no need of a resource to facilitate trade. In this way gold becomes a hot potato and anyone left with more gold than he started with is the sucker for giving up actually useful resources. I would expect that this would cause gold to hyper-inflate as the game progresses. If there is a way to generate gold, one might see trade later in the game as enough exists to pay the exorbitant prices. But in games with no gold production, trade will cease when prices exceed the available gold.

Given that adding gold to Settlers would not achieve endogenous prices, is there any game out there that we could graft gold onto to get them? While my knowledge of games isn't perfect, I would highly doubt such a game exists. Mostly because this endogenous price requirement seems like it would have to be a core game mechanic to function, not something grafted on by hobbyists. Though I do think that it is possible to create a game with money and endogenous prices. It would have to encourage or require specialization so that trade is necessary and benefits both parties. But not a cooperative game like Arkham Horror where any prices are simply mechanisms to get the appropriate items to each player. I think something like a vertical production chain or a medieval king's council could have the desired features.