I thought I would give you a quickie review of this game. First off, the game comes well packaged. The box is sturdy, and should last for several years. The dice look good, and the symbols, though not elaborate, are very pleasing, especially during gameplay. The counters are nice, but a little limited (I'll go more into this later).
I have played this game with both a single, and multiple opponents. Gameplay is simple. You choose the type of wizard you are going to be, as well as the elements that you will control. On your turn you roll the dice. Depending on the type of wizard you are, you score points based on the symbols that come up (both positive and negative points are possible). This score represents the amount and type of mana that goes into an area called the channel. I like that the initial dice roll is just the start. After this roll, if you have a positive score, you can go for a chance roll, and if successful, and brave, you can go for a further cosmic roll. The game blends a good combination fo luck and strategy (not skill, really). You are trying to have the most mana at the end of 6 turns, so your choices are dictated as much by the scores as the probabilities.
A single opponent game plays very differently from a multiple opponent game. With one opponent, there are fewer situations where you will feel the need to do all three rolls in a turn. With nultiple opponents I find that you do this far more often. I also will warn you that with multiple players it is very likely that you will run out of some of the counters. I feel there should have been about 50% more counters than received. To be honest, though, this could be because we were not casting spells as we could (Did I forget to mention that you can cast spells that affect dice results and mana flow?)
Overall I find that the game is a lot of fun. It is not a "heavy" game, and for that I am glad. It is a bit of simple fun that has nuances that I am sure haven't been discovered yet. I haven't even fully investigated the spell casting component of the game.
Pros: Quick, fun, portable
Cons: Too few counters (in my opinion), some people may not like the chance nature of the dice.
I will post more when I think of it.
Jason
Last edited on 2007-03-14 07:56:46 CST (Total Number of Edits: 1)












