Mystery Wizard from... GMT games?

www.gmtgames.com/p-734-mystery-wizard.aspx

Things going pretty off the rails on the GMT P500 in a pleasing way. I've waffled about P500ing the Triump and Tragedy Sci-fi design. Would like to see more about that.

I have nothing to say about this announcement other than I love how weird and out of left field it is.

Cutesy artwork with anthropomorphic animals and asymmetrical powers.....I'm beginning to see a pattern of the slew of board game releases.

I'm just waiting to be able to rebuy Combat Commander and C&C:A.

Those have been out of stock for a long time.

As a fan of Wiz-War, I'm definitely intrigued!

Is Andrew the son of Volko? If so the design may have been green lit on that basis. Keep the star happy by publishing his son's first solo design.

Dunno.

I'd love to see GMT develop and sell games outside of wargames. They've had a few but not many successes.

Developed by him, so close. Designed by three people he knows.

Seeing how hot ROOT is right now, no doubt GMT is hoping for some similar crossover success.

Gary Sax wrote: Developed by him, so close. Designed by three people he knows.

Ah, my mistake. Misread the box art.

I find it hard to get beyond that atrocious game name. Mystery Wizard? Mystery Meat, more like. The pre-production art isn't helping much, either.

While there's a Wiz-War shaped hole in the current market, that game isn't difficult to find second hand, nor is it commanding the sort of premium you might expect of an out of print classic. So I don't think it's a very big hole.

I want this BECAUSE it’s called Mystery Wizard!

Illustrations and graphic design are appalling though. Looks like that forlorn game down at the shop that no one ever bought since it was first put on the shelf in 1991.

GMT art and design barely passes the low bar of wargames generally but becomes immediately embarrassing when they try to step out of their comfort zone. If they want to seriously compete our break out of their existing customer base, they need some fresh blood to try something new. I know this is all placeholder artwork for the moment, but I don't see how this would encourage anyone to preorder.

Michael Barnes wrote: Illustrations and graphic design are appalling though. Looks like that forlorn game down at the shop that no one ever bought since it was first put on the shelf in 1991.

That's it exactly. I remember so many of these when I was first getting into games circa 2000. One of the only game shops in town was a comic shop that just seemed to have stacks of these games that I can't imagine anyone ever giving a shit about, let alone picking up to look at, let alone buying. The only one I remember by name was the "Sushi-Jalapeno War" which was faded, covered in torn shrink rap, and a smattering of greasy dust that had rolled off of years of anime night patrons. I recently learned that the owner of this comics shop - who was an enormous dick - lost all his money and ultimately his game store due to a pyramid scam. The store lived through the fallow years of the nineties and early aughts only to die as gaming and comics have grown exponentially. Tragic irony lives on.

MattDP wrote: I find it hard to get beyond that atrocious game name. Mystery Wizard? Mystery Meat, more like. The pre-production art isn't helping much, either.

While there's a Wiz-War shaped hole in the current market, that game isn't difficult to find second hand, nor is it commanding the sort of premium you might expect of an out of print classic. So I don't think it's a very big hole.

I don't think it would serve as a replacement. Kinda like how worker placement is a thing and people play a variety of worker placement games.

I'd play it side by side Wiz-War, presumably.

I have to agree with count orlock on the graphic design. I feel even if the game is good, I'll be forced to redo the whole thing myself to meet even an amateur standard. I'm almost done with 250+ Wiz-War cards, and that prospect makes me grimace.

Sekigahara is the only game I've ever bought as a P500, and while serviceable, there is a distinct lack of creativity that could have elevated Sekigahara. Had I still owned it, I feel I likely would have certainly gone through the effort to redo the cards.

Dominant species is another example of really crappy design ethos.

But I think GMT is a really good company, and I want to continue to promote their excursions outside of wargames. I'd love to give them more of my dollars.

Well, who knows what the production artwork will look like? The work on SpaceCorp seems excellent. Other games less so. I've bemoaned GMT box art before, so I won't bother doing so again, but I agree that as long as Gene/GMT are making such a big deal about new design/development talent, they might as well get some new art and graphic design talent as well. But I backed. A nice thing about P500 is that I can still back out.

Y'all buried the lede, by the way: GMT has finally announced a date for the fall 2016 sale (week of 10/16).

Resurrecting this thread because true wizards never die.

I lamented the lack of Mystery Wizard on my shelf on Twitter. This caught Raf's attention. Now we're actively shilling it because (at least this is why I'm doing it) it's the farthest damn thing from the majority of the market right now.

Will it ever hit 500? Dunno, it'd need 200 other likeminded folks and it's been up there for almost a year. But dammit, I want to play the ridiculous ugly wizard game. It's just so CHARMING.