Wizards Cup

• Designer: Seiji Kanai
• Publisher: Pandasaurus
• Players: 2 
• Age: 12+
• Time: 15 minutes
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

Tonight starts the Wizards’ Cup, a magical dueling tournament held once every century. As the king of a country, you will select the six best wizards from your kingdom and decide the order in which they will compete. Yes, your role ends there, and all that remains is to watch your trusted wizards battle it out.

In Wizards Cup, you want to build the best team you can, anticipating how your opponent might attack. Each player starts with a set of 18 cards (the sets are identical to each other).  The deck is shuffled and each player reveals one card at random that must be one of the wizards on their team. Players then choose five more wizards, arrange five of the six wizards into a deck, and then place the sixth aside in a waiting zone.

Some cards have elements on them (2 each of 5 types that defeat each other in a non-symmetric pattern as shown on the player aid), while 8 cards have diamonds on them – and they do not interact with the elements.  Each card also has a value from 1 to 10 on it.   Many of the cards have special powers on the bottom of them (some are immediate, some are permanent, and some are triggered when the card is visible on top of the discard pile). 

Each player reveals their top wizard and places it in the duel zone, then you see who wins. Resolve wizard powers first, then (if needed) compare the elements on these cards (e.g., light beats shadow, nature beats water); if they share the same element, compare values.  If there is a tie on value, both cards lose!  The losing wizard heads to that player’s discard pile, then they draw the next wizard from their deck to go against the opposing victorious wizard. Keep resolving duels until a player has no cards remaining; the other player claims a victory token. 

Each player can then swap one wizard from their six with an unused card, after which they again create a five-card deck (with a waiting card) and duel. Whoever collects two victory tokens first wins.

My thoughts on the game

I have generally liked auto-battling card games as evidenced by my love of Challengers.  Wizards Cup takes that concept, adds a smidge of deck building to the process but also shrinkifies the entire game so that it can fit in your pocket and play in about ten minutes.  Sure, you can only play the game 2p; but if you’re looking for a little mano-a-mano battle, this will fit the bill.

Here, each player is given the seed to their deck (which their opponent also gets to see) and then chooses the other 5 cards to make up their intiial set.  When I first played the game, I felt like maybe there wasn’t a lot of strategy here – but as it turns out – there is more than first meets the eye.  

Many of the cards have specific strengths/weaknesses that you must consider.  For instance, if you know my first card is LIght card, it might make you think twice about adding Shadow cards to your own deck (as the Light card will automatically win against those Shadows).  On the bright side (see what I did there), three other elements can beat the Light card – so maybe those should be included in your deck.  

Of course, I know that you are thinking that, and so maybe I add in high ranked Void (diamond) cards which work outside of the whole element system.  But you know that I know that you know those things, and then you’re thinking about putting in the low valued Void cards which have special powers to help them win against the high ranked Void cards…

It all comes down to out-thinking your rival.  You can see all the choices that they have as the two player decks are identical.  So, starting from that since piece of information, you need to plot your strategy to best the opponent.  And, of course, as you only use five of your six chosen cards in your deck, you could totally use the revealed card as a bluff and not include it at all in your deck!

Once the battle starts, the game is admittedly on autopilot.  The cards will play themselves out in the order set by your and your opponent.  But… once the round is over, there is another round of thinking and double thinking to be done.  You can only change one card out of the six in your deck – but now you know what your opponent has brought to the fight.  You can try to change one of your cards to better suit that threat.  You could again bluff and leave things the same.   

If you had dominated with a particular card, you could choose to leave it in.  Or, take it out and go a completely different direction – probably targeting the cards you expect your opponent to put in their deck to deal with the previous threat… You also get to re-organize the order of the cards in your deck, and sometimes getting a particular card in play at the right time is the only change needed to make a deck win.

Games play out rather quickly, and once the players are familiar with the cards, it doesn’t take long at all to set up the decks and let them fight it out.  It doesn’t take long for someone to win two battles – and you’ll probably find that you’re ready to shuflle up the decks and go at it again.

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it!
• I like it. Dale 
• Neutral.
• Not for me…