Let's talk about... Wiz-War

Colorcrayons wrote: The 2 movement point activation cost has proven to be more important than the damage itself, which was originally unintended yet proved to give it a good bite. Once it was cast on a wizard who was down to 8 points and was on their way to home base with a treasure. They burnt the Doll themselves, by directing it through a Wall of Fire twice, so that they could continue to progress quickly. The Doll isn't all bad though, that same player in an earlier game won by killing 2 other wizards by Flame Breathing them with the Doll.

This seems backwards. I wouldn't have run it through the flames, that just makes me eat all the damage right now. I'd have neglected to activate, run like hell, and taken the damage one by one over the turns. Am I missing something about "attacks itself"? I'm assuming that the doll can still only attack itself six times before it's just a pile of stuffing.

I like the Doll a lot more than Slow Death, even though they share the same design space since the Doll offers you the illusion of choice.

Slow Death is rough, but you can win without cards. Walking Death is the worst because it's very very hard to win without moving. Both of them monumentally suck for the recipient. The one downside of making Vudu Doll an attack is that it opens it up to a whole pile of potential Counteractions. The damage-based ones obviously don't apply, but a lot of the "cancel spell" ones still do. Given that a Neutral Vudu Doll is probably best used as a damage doubler with an area-effect spell, it's probably better to err on the side of caution and leave it as an Attack. It should see more intended uses that way.

Thanks for the nice words, but you're doing all the work here. I'm going to have to print a set of your deck when it's done.

Not only that but if he refrained from forcing the Doll through the wall of flames, he would have had more movement points to spend that turn. In his fluster he chose... poorly. *turns to dust*

That last bit about attacking itself is a bit cramped. I've been struggling with how to get that in there and the part about following the most direct path cramps that. But you're not missing anything. It gets six self-inflicted behaviors before it poofs.

That is why I am not going to revisit Walking Death. Not every classic card deserves a comeback. Slow Death is mean. Even Cruel. It can still be worked around as you mention. Besides, you can still keep drawing cards in hope that you finally can dispel it or such, so all hope isn't lost.

I went through the counter consideration and there's not a worry about the cancellation. Curses should all be attacks anyways, as that is the very nature of the idea. To cause lingering annoying effects on the victim. Hell, I even made a Rebuff Curse spell that reflects specifically curses back to the caster for that extra spicey "HAHA! Fuck me?!? NO!! Fuck yooo, muthahfuckahhhh!" effect.

Ok, I was wondering if I misunderstood something, since it seemed totally clear to me. Your player screwed up, then.

You definitely don't need every old card back, and some of them were really quite nasty. That was part of the fun at the time, and I think FFG overcorrected in trying to make every card "balanced". But any card with Death in the name in the classic deck was easily among the top ten most powerful cards in the deck, and tended to put a stamp on the game really fast. Catching a Slow Death before you've even seen a Counteraction was less than fun.

I just posted a note about the undercurrent of pun humor running through the old set on your blog post over at BGG (those should really be cross-posted to the front page here...). Slow Death as an effect would likely be called something else if Sudden Death didn't also exist. A lot of cards just barely hang together based on their name, especially in the fan-made cards.

I was taking a glance through your deck gallery, since I have a little more breathing room recently. It's really coming together, and looks great.

I have no clue how to cross-post here. Or what needs to be done to make articles or anything like that. I assume its just a cozy corner of folks who know each other and produce content amongst themselves. *shrug* I see Barnes and such remarking about how he or others have invited to folks to make articles, so the assumption that the party is 'invite only' seems to be a safe bet at least.

[edit] I have figured it out. I guess I should explore other options on this site instead of always mashing the trash talk button. My bad.

I started that blog since it seemed I was just clogging the board here. I needed more input. It has been successful, in a way. Jay Little is lurking and I have access to Kevin Wilson locally who is a kind chap more than willing to give input on his fave Ameritrash game, should I choose to seek it.

There seems to be little interest here for Wiz-War, or just my input about it. I'm not very good at putting my racing thoughts down in writing anyway, so I take no offense. I only broke my silence in this thread because of my observations about the pathos of the stuffy doll and had to share it.

That's why I posted the link to google drive to all the cards. If people are interested in this part of the project, they can see whatever updates are made there by clicking "last modified".

I like these Wiz War posts.

I think you are doing a supergreat job but I haven't played Wiz-War so I cannot say much. Have you tried posting this at BGG? Perhaps they'll lend you a hand.

I think there's more interest for Wiz-War here than the average game. I think the trouble is that the poster count is so low that three or four people engaging on a topic is "significant discussion". I feel the same way about most of the stuff that gets posted on. A lot of times, it's a single person screaming into the void.

For example, I am never going to be getting into GW stuff. Don't care, not going to buy figures and paint them. Certainly not going to engage in any kind of open play. And yet it's one of the biggest topics of discussion on TWBG now. I just don't post in those (unless I feel like shitposting).

This Wiz-War thread is one of the longest single-game threads since the early days of F:AT, so I think we're doing pretty well.

I'm glad the BGG blog is working out, and sad that their blog subscription is so shit. Seems like it would be useful content for the TWBG front page as well, like an extended series on restoring your car, or house, or in this case "favorite boardgame".

So, after responding to Not Sure in my blog on TOS about old fan-made cards, I had to make this. There was simply no reality where its existence wasn't going to happen.



[edit]

Update for comparison

Not Sure wrote: Seems like it would be useful content for the TWBG front page as well, like an extended series on restoring your car, or house, or in this case "favorite boardgame".

So, I was digging around here, and apparently, this site has a blog feature. I have no clue how good it is or anything else about it since I literally just now saw it while modding my profile. I don't know what that says about my intelligence or the intuitive ease of use for the site, but it likely doesn't bode well for either.

Anyways back to why I am quoting that segment of your post. It's actually funny that you mention that, because I was planning on doing a "This Old House" themed blog while working on the portion of the game involving the board and other bits. The idea came when I was going over plans on how to organize phases of the project, and I nearly signed off one entry with: "Next time on This Old Labyrinth; we'll rip out sections of the stone subfloor of the dungeon so that we can install new lead plumbing leading towards the cistern. This should ease both the draining of any Flood spells that occur during the game, and give the gnomes a break from ridding the walls of mildew growth."

Using Bob Villa images (the pay off probably wont be worth it suck since I'll have to pour through google images of Villa as if I were an obsessed sexual predator, to find image stock to photoshop), and assuming his narrative tone, I'd go through and give my spiel. If anything, that hook would make it a far less dry read.

Maybe I could just start fresh since I am in the very early stages and call it "This Old Labyrinth".

I'll make Not Sure the Norm Abram analog. The far more capable and knowledgeable member of the show that humors Bob. XD

Pac-Man is a good example of a one-off joke, and the fact that it disrupts treasure running is ideal. There's a fine line between the humor in Wiz-War (which is pretty silly, but not full of fandom wank) and Munchkin (which is the opposite). I just felt like too often the fan stuff tended the wrong way.

This points out the shittiness of the BGG blog system. Despite being subscribed to all the Wiz-War titles, and your blog, and posting a comment in that entry, it still didn't put your reply in my subscription list. Makes it hard to have a conversation there.

"Let's visit the monster shop, where Norm is working on planing a Shadow..."

I LOVE
WIZ-WAR
PAC-MAN
COLOR CRAYONS
NOT SURE

Keep on keeping on
Wiz ya later

I was going to edit the Pac-Man post above, but once finished typing, it was better as it's own post instead of an update to a post.

We did some playtesting on the silly Pac-Man creature today. 3 games and some flaws surfaced that were, thankfully, easily fixed.

While its funny to think about Pac-Man busting through a Stone Block like the Kool-Aid Man, it was just too powerful for the controlling mage to run rampant and allowed to be the ultimate-vacuum-cleaner-answer to objects littering the Labyrinth. That wasn't quite the intention that I had with the object destruction effect.

It seems it should not be able to destroy objects that block movement (also thematic for Pac-Man) and should first suffer any effects the object it is destroying, may inflict. Like, go ahead and chew that Booby Trap up, but we need to see if you revealed the real trap and suffer 4 damage first, for example.

So those two added stipulations toned it down to acceptable levels. Along with tightening the attack phrasing. I'm actually shocked at how much of a functional and fun creature it is, beyond being just a nerdy inside joke. I wasn't expecting much from it outside of a few laughs at the card existing, but this might make its way into the card pool.

The male spawnling especially enjoyed it and was very sad to see me light that fucker up like a Christmas tree, by plugging it into a Lightning Bolt that I retrieved from the discard pile through a Revelation .

I'd have argued that since Pac-Man can't be in the same square as a Stone Block, he couldn't eat it.

Walls are trickier, because they're sort of in two squares at once. I guess Pac-Man can eat a Fire Wall, which seems odd. It seems like there's something not quite right on the "in the same square" there about walls, but I'm a bit hungover and can't summon much insight. I'm sure you'll get it honed in testing.

Overall, I like the changes, especially clarifying that Pac-Man suffers the effects. It will make him think twice about eating that Slime Cube for sure.

You're right. I was over thinking it, and the spawnling was arguing that it could eat such objects, when it clearly cannot due to the fundamental fact that it cannot occupy the same space as an object that blocks movement since it.... blocks movement. Oy. I'm not on my A-game right now. :/

Going by strict reading (which is the intent here) he cannot eat objects on the "border line between two squares" since he eats objects that occupy a square.

But taking all of the above into consideration, I can make a better wording for the card that stipulates suffering any effects of an object before stating it destroys it. Much cleaner and intuitive that way.

There is a fairly major issue here though that his effect brings into the light.

Namely, objects that don't say whether they are destructible or not, like Dust Cloud and Prismatic Mist, as two examples.

I've made the distinction in one other card already, but Pac-Man has illustrated the need to address the state of those cards finally.

New players ask the question of whether or not they can be destroyed, while seasoned players simply assume that they cannot due to the lack of statements on the card such as "Thornbush takes 3 cracks to destroy" for example. Mostly because if it doesn't say that it can be destroyed, then we take it for granted that it can't. Just like objects not blocking LOS or movement unless it states such on the card. There is a problem from the very earliest days of this game regarding Permissive vs. Restrictive rules and choosing what the hell it wants to be.

And this is yet another area of inconsistency that needs to be addressed since some cards, like Prismatic Mist states that it doesn't block LOS or movement when it doesn't need to.

See what I'm saying?

Then there is the issue of whether an object is "immune to damage" or is "indestructible" since those two are effectively the same thing, yet one protects against damage inflicted, and the other against destruction effects, respectively. Destruction effects are pretty rare in Wiz-War though, so I can understand why that has slipped through the cracks.

In the case of examples like Dust Cloud and Prismatic Mist, I side with indestructible since it seems that the only way to rid the board of them is through a well placed Dispel or the like.

[edit] I found the pertinent entry.

Wiz-War Rulebook Page 13 under: Damaging and Destroying Objects wrote: Outer walls of the labyrinth, treasures, and objects whose Magic cards do not specify a crack limit are indestructible and cannot be damaged.

So, I am worrying over nothing. [/edit]

Pac-Man has proven to be, at the very least, helpful in reminding me that these card issues need to be taken care of in editing and proofreading this project through serendipity.

I nearly let them slip by.

Boooooo on that outer walls rule. Warping in strange board layouts is awesome. Walls are walls. Knock down as many as you can.