Publisher: Cryptozoic Entertainment
Ages: 13+
Players: 2- 6
Difficulty: Easy
Play Time: 30-45 minutes
Cost: Around $30

Will YOU be the next Ultimate Battle Wizard!?!

We first saw this game on popular YouTube series, Tabletop, from Geek & Sundry, and as a particularly magic loving bunch, we decided to pick it up! This vicious card game consists of brutal spell casting to blast your opponents to a lonely afterlife, but bestows creative cards that provide a bonus to those who bite the dust. With artwork that is reminiscent of the more bizarre episodes of Adventure Time and blended with a saucy vocabulary peppered with swears, Epic Spell Wars provides one hell of an experience.

So, how do you play?

The rules themselves are pretty basic. You draw a hand of eight spell cards and each player then creates a spell. Spells are made by combining up to three cards: a beginning (source), middle (quality), and an ending (delivery) card. The bottom of the card states which is which, but it’s pretty easy to tell what order to play them in, because the borders and ribbons on the cards match up.

Combine dealt spell cards into three-piece combos (all spells need a Source, a Quality, and a Delivery) and read your spell aloud in your best wizard voice. Each ‘ingredient’ has its own effect, and resolving each one properly casts your absurd attack on your adversaries. Tiny details such as matching your ingredient card’s symbols boost the results of your mystical assault, but what if you weren’t dealt enough ingredients to make full spells? As the rulebook states: Make it up! Use your hero’s name for a missing Source, a colorful adjective for a missing Quality, and any magical sounding word, like Invocation for a missing Delivery. Other cards are Wild Magic cards which allow you to draw an ingredient you’re missing and Treasure cards which, surprise surprise, give you a treasure that can hinder or help you in the quest to be Last Wizard Standing. Simple enough, right?

You win by defeating all opponents and collect two Last Wizard Standing token, but don’t fret, my fellow dead wizards! Even if you get eliminated, you’re not out of the game, because the game itself is played in multiple rounds of duels and dead wizard collect Dead Wizard cards which grants you powers for the next round..

With eight different characters to choose between, and two expansions, Epic Spell Wars is a game with just the right amount of replayability. We do stress that due to some of the more colorful language and innuendos, it probably isn’t something for the kids to play!

Leia Calderon
Editor
@ladyvader99