PnP Wiz-War - Part 4: Finishing touches

In addition to the base game, I also printed out the community expansion. This adds many more cards to play with and lots more tokens to cut out. As of now I have not integrated any of the community expansion cards into my deck. Most of them are on the complex end and many of the basic support cards are missing to make a usable expansion. In particular, number cards (27.5% of the normal deck) and Pick Lock (3%) are not included in the file. I used Ilya's source files to add the community expansion symbol to some number cards and pick lock cards, which will let me tweak the deck. I will probably just select my favorite cards from the community expansion and balance them with numbers, Pick Locks and some other simple cards from the original game after some plays.

For the tokens I followed my previous method. First I pasted one set of each token to a big sheet of matte board.

So Many Tokens...

Once affixed, I sprayed with my ink fixative and allowed it to dry overnight. Then I scored the tokens and cut the outline of each strip and attached the back label, except for the creatures. These I fully cut out because I wanted the creature names to be on the same edge on both sides. With the original game, I could rotate 1/2 the labels before printing in the source files. Unfortunately, I don't have the source files for the full community expansion, which meant I had to do it the old fashioned way. Once the backs were attached, I sprayed them with my ink fixative. Then sliced them apart.

Community Expansion Tokens

This completed all the game components. In addition to the pieces, one also needs the rules. At the time of this post, there isn't a super good version of the rules to print and use. The core rules can be found on at Wiz-War.com along with a good card FAQ. Sadly the formatting on that site sucks. The first few pages of Kwanchai's Wiz War Redesign have the rules from the website formatted nicely. Unfortunately, there have been a few player made updates to clarify the rules. In particular, the distinction between Line of Sight and Line of Movement, which is present on Ilya's redesign, but not in the core rules. So in addition to the core rules, I strongly recommend having Ilya's Quick Reference on hand. It doesn't have the complete rules, but enough to get you started and fill in some of the clarifications to the core rules. I had mine laminated.

Quick Reference & Rules

I also found some great storage options for my copy. At my local hobby store, there was a square box which was perfect dimensions to hold all the boards & warps. I also purchased one of the small plastic dividers for all the different tokens. For the cards, I used one of my Magic: the Gathering boxing I had lying around. This is the complete set.

Completed Set!

One last thing, you will need a 4 sided die to play the game. Every reference in Wiz-War to a die is to a 4 sided die. This can be found at any gaming store.

King of the Hill

During International TableTop Day I had a chance to try out Illuminati at one of my good friend's recommendation. The game has some very cool and thematic mechanics. Plus the satire and crazy conspiracies you can create make it a very flavorful game. Unfortunately, the end game is a bit to reminiscent of another of Steve Jackson's games, Munchkin. Until the end, the game is rarely adversarial. As soon as one player is about to win, all the others dog pile him or her to prevent it. This happens to the next two or three people who try to win. The winner is decided then by being the first player to be in position when all the other players' have exhausted their resources. This creates a very frustrating and confrontational end game to otherwise light games.

I think this is a separate phenomenon than King Making, or a losing player making the deciding choice between two contenders for first. Games like Settlers of Catan have King Making. Often there will be a just two players with a good shot a winning. Then actions of the third or fourth player will ultimately determine who wins, either through trades or placement of the robber. These players can simply impede progress or aid in another player's progress, it is impossible for the King Makers to actually tear you down and remove points. In Munchkin, it is very likely that the efforts of the players will result in losing a level or completely wipe out the gear one acquired. Further, the efforts of all the players will be coordinated as most will stand a decent chance of winning if they tear down enough other players.

The best analogy that I have come up with is playing King of the Hill. The objective is simply to be the only one standing at the highest point of some hill or other terrain feature. The game is rough as people will physically push and throw each other down. You can even have multiple people team up to pull one person off the hill. Contrast this with King Making, which is more like a duke peddling influence to frustrate his least favored candidate.

The problem with King of the Hill environments in games is not the underlying analogy game. King of the Hill is a fine game and something like Smash Up implements it well. The problem is having this rough and tumble situation evolve at the end of a game. In Smash Up, you are told that it is a free for all to capture bases. But Munchkin wants to be a game about killing monsters in funny ways. It is purely an emergent result of player behavior that the game ends with King of the Hill. Essentially all the play until level 8 or 9 is set up for the final King of the Hill match. This is not explained by the rules nor generally expected by the players, which is where the game fall flat. That King of the Hill is not an intentional part of the design and isn't integrated into the flavor of the game breaks player expectations. Any game that does something counter to player expectations runs the risk of being frustrating. Especially if the violation of expectations happens in a very rough and tumble way.

PnP Wiz-War - Part 3: Cards

Last time I finished with all the pieces for the Base game and the two official expansions. This left me able to do take really nice staged pictures. Like this one:

5 Player Board in Action

Unfortunately, I can't actually play the game without the cards.

Instead of doing standard print and play using Ilya's files, I ordered custom cards through an online service. I knew that I wanted nice cards that would stand up to lots of use. And didn't trust myself to get the cuts correct on standard card stock.

After doing some research, I settled on PrinterStudio.com. They do custom cards of many sizes. I went with standard Poker Cards. It is just over $20 for 234 cards with the premium linen finish. (The linen finish is like $1 extra, so I went with it.) If you print all the cards (Base game, 1st Expansion, 2nd Expansion, Community Expansion) you will need 2 sets of 234 and one set of 54. This leaves you with 20 extra slots for anything else you can dream up. I added 2 custom cards, 8 pick locks and 10 black cards. You can skip the community expansion and fit everything in a set of 234 and one of 54. This is about $30.

To use the website you must first have a separate image for every single card. They should be formatted as 822x1122 pixels for this service. The easiest way to do this is use Ilya's source files and a free trial of Corel Draw. You can then select the card and export as a .jpg. After exporting simply expand the canvas to the correct size and add a canvas color to match the border (xFFFF00 is what I used) in your favorite editing program. This works for all but the community expansion. Ilya's is not complete. If you contact Black Canyon on BoardGameGeek.com, he can send you the community expansion properly formatted. Or you can just send me a message and I can send you everything bundled up.

Once you have the files, it is simply a matter of uploading them to the site in batches of 30. Then autofilling once they are all uploaded. The one wrinkle is the site doesn't really like files with the same art so you have to manually copy all cards that have duplicates manually. It is just drag and drop, but still a bit tedious with all the number cards.

The site often runs deals on shipping or simply larger orders, so be sure to search around for codes to reduce the final price.

PrinterStudio gave me an estimated delivery of about 7-10 days. The cards arrived at the early part of that window. They were in good condition so lets check them out.

Why is Buddy an Attack?!?!?!

Overall I am very satisfied with the cards. They are clearly of good quality and all the colors are nice and crisp. My only complaint is there is some inconsistency across the card packs. I ordered 3 sets, 2 of 234 and one of 54. One of the sets of 234 has a slight yellow-green hue and is cut a little more off center than the other two sets.

Can you tell which one is miscolored?

Honestly the difference in hue is not the big. If you are not a perfectionist, like me, you should have no issue mixing the cards. Even if you can tell the difference when studying them, given lower lighting and focus on the game it shouldn't be noticeable.

If PrinterStudio had given me consistent hue and cutting I would give them a 5 out of 5. But I can only go with a 4 out of 5  for them. And only for PnP. If you are doing a game to sell, I advise a test run first.

Now that I have over 550 Wiz-War cards, who wants to play with me?

PnP Wiz-War - Part 2: Tokens

Last time I finished the boards and other foam core pieces. This left me able to build magical dungeons to play in like this:

5 Player Board Setup

Unfortunately, I have no pieces to move around the game board. So that is the next step in the construction.I have to build the absolutely massive number of tokens present in Wiz-War.

For the tokens I was looking for about 2mm thick cardboard. They needed to be stiff and actually have some size to them so they are easy to pick up. What I ended up with is 1mm matte board. You know the stuff that is used to edge paintings. It is definitely a nice rigid material for tokens. The downside is 1mm is a bit thin to pick up. Also matte board is HARD to cut. I went out and bought the special Zirconium coated Exacto blades to speed up the process and tear the label paper less. Definitely a worthwhile upgrade if you are using matte board. Other options are illustration board (matte board with a different coating) or chip board. Sadly I couldn't find those in the hobby shops I visited.

I think that I screwed up my first batch. And being the smart cookie that I am used the treasures as the first batch. Essentially I pasted them close to the edge. Then cut out the outline. This left me with no registry marks for accurate cutting. Overall the pieces look OK, but are a bit irregular. Which is not good for things that are used all the time.

Treasures and walls

With the next batch I tried something different. Instead of cutting out all the pieces I pasted of one side of the labels to the matte board.

The rest of the tokens for the Base game & 2 released expansions.

Then I scored between all the tokens. This allowed me to use the registry marks for more regular tokens. It is important not to cut all the way through yet. Then I cut out the outline of each row of tokens. This let me affix the back side label to the row and provided good guiding marks. Once the back side was on, I flipped the labels and used the scores to separate the tokens. This worked MUCH better and resulted in very regular tokens.

For the large block of walls I didn't do them double sided. So I just cut the inside lines first. Then did the outer edge so everything pops out in one nice bunch.

Sticks & Stones will break your bones

Creatures & Environmental Effects

Wizards, Treasures & Home Bases

Unfortunately, I am not done with tokens. There are still the community expansion tokens. Plus I think I will re-do the treasures because the are a key game piece.

PnP Wiz-War - Part 1: Foam Core

One thing I have been meaning to do for awhile is make a Print and Play (PnP) version of Wiz-War. The most recent, and nicest looking, re-design of 5th edition I have found is Ilya's which is posted at BoardGameGeek.com. 5th seems to be the most popular version to PnP as it was the last iteration by Jolly Games. 6th and 7th are simply 5th with minor graphical updates. I have never done PnP before, and am not that good at crafts so making my own copy of a board game is going to be a challenge.

The first step was printing out all the boards, token, and other game pieces (excluding cards & rules) on full sheet labels. (Base game, 1st Expansion page 1, 2nd Expansion page 1, Community Expansion Part 1 pages 1-3, Auto-warps, Wizard HP) This allows you to just stick them to your backing without worrying about glue. It is really the simplest way to go about making pieces. The one catch with this game is the pages are formatted A4 which is slightly bigger than letter. Most stores only sell full sheet labels in letter size. My advice when printing is to choose the Actual Size option and just look at every page in the print preview to ensure nothing is being cut off.

A big recommendation I have seen when researching this topic is to use an ink affixative to preserve the printed images. Also it seems that ink jet printer's color can be faded by the sun, so needs UV protection. I used Krylon UV-Resistant Clear Coating Matte for this project. As of now I am still experimenting with it so not sure how necessary this step is, but will go over what I have done, will do and have learned.

I sprayed a few coats on the sheets before mounting them on my chosen backing. Then used another few coats once mounted and cut. This makes the pieces look nice, but they are grainy to the touch. Plus I found a fine white powder from handling them, which is a bit annoying. I think that I used too much on my first pieces and didn't give it enough time to dry before handling. I would spray VERY thin coats, you shouldn't see any wetness, and leave them to dry for a good few hours. Plus I would only do 3 coats or so. One before mounting and 2 after mounting.

For this project I choose 3/16" Black Foam Core for the mounting material on my boards, auto-warps and HP trackers. A large sheet of this will provide you with exactly enough space to mount these things. Before mounting I cut most of the white space off. This way the pieces didn't take as much room and I could save the tokens for another material.

Being the perfectionist that I am, I used a decoupage tool to ensure no air bubbles and a flat mount. It is probably overkill, but an option for those who must have it perfect.

Once mounted I used an exacto knife and metal ruler to cut through the foam core, using the nice registry lines Ilya included. This take about 4-5 passes per line to ensure a smooth cut. For the player boards and Wizard HP trackers the results are quite nice.

I am less impressed with the small warp markers and auto-warp markers. The foam core is hard to cut in a circle and doesn't like to be cut starting from an edge. Which makes it hard to cut small pieces and anything else fancy.

I also STRONGLY recommend that you have a vacuum on hand. Foam core is pretty messy and leaves lots of particles lying around, especially with the smaller pieces.

One last cool thing that I found is a storage case which holds all 8 boards and the auto-warp pieces perfectly.

As I complete more pieces of the game, I'll continue this series. Next up will be the massive number of tokens for this game.

Medium determines design: Magic & Hearthstone

I recently started playing Hearthstone, Blizzard's new free to play CCG. It is extremely similar to Magic: the Gathering. The designers of Hearthstone admit to being heavily influenced by Magic. What stuck out to me were the differences and how closely these design decisions were influenced by the medium. Unlike Magic Online, which is just a port of Magic from paper to digital, Hearthstone makes use of many features which are easy to implement in the digital world, but extremely hard in the physical.

The primary example of this is how creatures/minions are affected by damage. In Magic all damage is erased at the end of the turn. This simplifies the record keeping and means that counters can be used for other things without over taxing the player's mental resources. Hearthstone takes the opposite approach with damage on minions, it persists over turns. Because the game is digital, this is extremely easy to implement. A simple number that counts down is sufficient. Plus, the game can actually change the number on the card itself, which is impossible in a paper game. This means all the relevant information is compactly displayed. The truth is that neither of these decisions are "wrong" for designing a game, but the limitations of a medium push design in a particular direction.

Another interesting deviation that is completely due to the digital nature of Hearthstone, is the persistence and creation of cards which are not in one's deck. A common mechanic in card games is to have Token Creatures, essentially creatures not represented by actual cards. Usually used to summon multiple creatures with one spell. In Magic, there is no assumption that one has cards to represent these. People usually use whatever they have on hand, like pennies, as the physical version of token creatures. This means that Magic cannot have the token creatures returned to your hand, deck or sit in a graveyard. So token creatures simply cease to exist once they leave play.

Contrast this with Hearthstone, where they can become physical cards if such a minion is returned to your hand! The returned token has a mana cost and can be played just like a normal minion. The truely amazing thing is these token minions often only exist as cards when returned in this manner. The game creates cards out of nothing to maintain the consistency of effect, which physical games literally cannot do without much greater expense.

This creation of cards shows up in many places in Hearthstone. Such as the Bananas you get in the tutorial missions. Though there is one case that actually violates one of the cardinal rules of Magic design. You can never have an opponent's card in your hand, deck, or library. This is another practical matter as it ensures that people always have their full deck at the end of a match. Plus, most use card cases which tend not to match across players. Hearthstone has no such issue as the decks are just reset after every match. The Priest even has a few cards which copy the opponent's cards from the deck or hand. In addition it is possible to bounce your creature into your opponent's hand if they have it on their side of the field due to some mind control effect.

I really like that Hearthstone is embracing the medium is it built in. It forces the game to be qualitatively different from the physical card game predecessors.  What really excites me is seeing how they continue to leverage the differences in the mediums to create unique cards and effects in future expansions.

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