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I’ll be honest, I’ve been sitting on this one for a little while. Life has gotten in the way a little bit and delayed by putting out the publisher highlight for a little while but when I put this one out, I was surprised by the level of enthusiasm I got from the group. Just to show how popular this publisher was with the bloggers, I didn’t even get a chance to put my own nomination in. (For the record, it would’ve been Rock Paper Wizard, a D&D styled reimagining of Rock Paper Scissors, where players cast spells with their hands to screw over their opponents and get the most money.) WizKids is the publisher today, founded back in 2000, and quickly rising up thanks to the popularity of their first game, the original collectable miniatures game Mage Knight, which continued to be a flagship product for the company with the board game release in 2010 (more on that later). The company almost vanished from the gaming zeitgeist in 2008, but was saved by current owners NECA the following year. What have they done since then? Well, sit down with a cuppa and let's see what we think are their best publications.
Marvel Remix Wizkids - Hannah Blacknell
I think it is safe to say that the majority of the planet knows Marvel. Most of us know the big hitters - your Iron Man, Incredible Hulk, Captain America, with the new Marvel films coming out all the time we also know Ant-Man, She-Hulk, Doctor Strange. But do you know much about the really obscure ones? The villains who featured in a few comics in the late 90s? Perhaps Squirrel Girl or Killmonger? If you are a Marvel fan, even just a small one, I don’t think there is a better accessible quick Marvel game than Marvel: Remix.
This is a reimplementation (not just a reskin) of the hit game Fantasy Realms. During the game you are working to try and craft the best hand possible. Each turn you will draw a card (either blind or from the face up market) and then discard a card. That is it really, you try to get the dross out of your hand and replace it with mega scoring synergies. The game continues like this until there are 10 cards in the face-up display when the game will abruptly end. I say abruptly because you will unlikely be totally pleased with what you have in your hand, there is likely to be one card that doesn’t really work for you, bmut you will make the best of what you have.
Your hand must contain at least one villain, it must contain at least one hero (blue card) or ally (purple card) in order to score. Fail this crucial task and you will wind up with zero points. Then each card will have an innate score and many will have conditional scoring text at the bottom of the card. This could refer to a particular card by name, or perhaps a class of cards like location cards, or it could refer to the symbols down the left of each card. You will be trying to create synergies between your cards and maximise your points. Some villains will make your life very tricksy, but with so many cards available that you will never get more than ¾ through any deck, there are a lot of unknowns. You really have to work with what you see rather than hunt for what you want.
Super Skill Pinball 4-Cade - Favouritefoe
I am no pinball (WizKids) whizz. I never haunted those arcade tables, tilting and bumping ball bearings around in a crazy cloud of noise and sound! But I have seen plenty of them, and it looks like a wild ride!
And from what I have just experienced, minus the sirens and bruises (well, that is unless you’re having a really intense gaming experience!), WhizKids with their Super-Skill Pinball 4-Cade has done a pretty good job of capturing the experience!
Super-Speed Pinball 4Cade is a dry-wipe roll and write which comes with 4 different “tables”. Each one has a matching “backglass” sheet for keeping score of all the stars you’re smashing out. Play is simultaneous and takes place over 3 rounds. Two dice get rolled each turn. You pick one and then you’re off. Each time you go up and down, you’ll be crossing off boxes using the dice you picked, and the point is to score as many stars as possible before your pinballs get gobbled up!
Gravity is a beast in this game, however. Just like the arcade, your ball is going to want to drop down through the sections. But there are point scoring, combo generating paddles, spinners, bumpers, bonuses, and places you can and will hit on the way down. And sometimes, rebound right back up to the top again! Because, as with all good roll and writes, you’ll be triggering chains that lead to combo moves. And in this game, the number of points you can score eeks out into hundreds. So, you are definitely going to want to maximise your time on the table! And true to theme, you can tilt and nudge, as well as have multiple balls in play at once!
The gameplay is multiplayer solitaire and there’s a good range of difficulty in the included tables. We really enjoy Super-Skill Pinball 4-Cade. In fact, we are already looking at Ramp It Up for even more pinball fun!
Mage Knight – John H
Mage Knight, by the legendary Vlaada Chvatil, is the father of fantasy adventure games, and to my mind while it’s 12 years old it knocks the spots off any of the other legion of adventure games and dungeon crawlers I have played. Better than Gloomhaven, better than Descent, better than Swords & Sorcery ... and so on.
Ok, so it’s not strictly a dungeon crawler, but rather an overground hex-based fantasy exploration/monster hunting/RPG. Your eponymous Mage Knight will roam an under-lored fantasy realm exploring locations, vanquishing monsters and levelling their way to herodom. At it’s core it’s a deck building and hand management game. You are going to take your slightly asymmetric starter deck and play cards to traverse the landscape; fight monsters in dungeons/castles/ruins etc; recruit followers; learn advanced skills and arcane spells and become an increasing badass, looking to discover and destroy the end of game stronghold/boss monster before the time limit runs out.
I love this game for a number of reasons. I really enjoy crafting my deck – finding ways to add exciting cards to my supply by levelling, learning and recruiting. I delight in the puzzle of trying to get the most out of my cards each turn and how to use mana from dice, tokens and crystals to boost the right card(s) at the right moment – as each card in your deck has a basic and boosted effect.
And I really love the fact that the (blah) narrative in the rules and scenario booklet plays second fiddle to the narrative you end up creating; as your hero starts the game struggling to defeat a miserable orc they end it assaulting cities packed with enemies or vanquishing a general and his whole army.
It’s a rules beast, it’s unplayable with more than 2 or possibly 3 as it takes an age, but if you want to settle in to a few nights of awesome fantasy adventure and can leave it on the table it really is absolutely phenomenal.
Fury Of Dracula (3rd/4th Edition) - Tom Harrod
Fury of Dracula is an epic one-vs-all game of cat and mouse. Four players take on the roles of characters straight out of Bram Stoker’s novel. Whether you’re Lord Godalming, Dr John Seward, van Helsing, and Mina Harker, you’ll get an asymmetrical ability. Meanwhile, the fifth player is the nefarious villain of the piece – Dracula. The four humans are trying to hunt and kill the vampire as he hides throughout Europe. The creepy count attempts to thwart their progress by spreading evil everywhere he goes.
This is an enthralling point-to-point movement battle. The vampire hunters can travel by road to adjacent cities, and by train to farther-flung locations. Dracula, though, only travels by road – but his current destination is secret. The Transylvanian terror plays corresponding location cards face-down into a trail. This represents his current location, and where he has been. On each turn, Drac slides the cards down one place to the right, as he moves. If ever a hunter arrives in a city among the face-down cards in the trail, Dracula has to reveal it. Now the chase is on! The players can now start to try and figure out where Dracula might be, based on where he was...
Dracula also gets to drop traps in each city as he departs, with which the hunters have to tackle. If they ignore his traps and that card slides off the edge of the trail, they ‘mature’. This means a bigger and even-worse trap occurs, spreading evil across Europe! If Dracula can get his Evil-O-Meter up to 13, it’s game over. Meaning, the hunters have to try and track him and his traps down, and then kill him for a victory!
As is WizKids’ style, Fury of Dracula comes with five pre-painted minis. There’s loads of cool cards that help the hunters, and others that help the vampire. And with rounds in the game split into night and day phases, Dracula is more powerful at night. The hunters, as you might imagine, are stronger during the day. It’s not a short game (usually three hours), but if you’re a fan of gothic horror, then Fury of Dracula is a must.
Quarriors – Rob Wright
WizKids Quarriors… come out and plaaa-aaay! Quarriors, from gaming design legend Eric Lang, is essentially the godfather of all the Dice Master iterations but has a bit more emphasis on the mechanic and less on the collection aspect.
Quarriors plays up to four and pits players against each other to be first to get to so many glory points (adjustable according to player number). To do this, players have to have their ‘quarriors’ survive a whole round and be retired for points.
On their turn, players draw six dice from their bag (you start with twelve) and roll them to either get resources or assign quarriors to the field. The resources can be used to buy dice from the market (one per turn) and these can either be portal dice, quarriors or magic dice. The portal dice allow you to draw extra dice if the correct face is rolled, quarriors are there to fight for you and bring you points if they survive their battles and magic spells allow you to do funky things like boost your quarriors or take down your opponents’ quarriors.
You only start with weedy Assistants as your quarriors, so you will probably want to get some more beefy quarriors. Beware though, because each quarrior will have an activation cost, which will be taken from your resources – so do you field your quarriors, or recruit to your ranks?
Once new dice have been purchased and sent to your discard pile and the cost has been played to field your quarriors, you then fight against all the other players fielded quarriors in turn, using the total attacking score from all your quarriors. If their defence isn’t up to scratch, off they go to discard, but if they hold out they stay on the field, hopefully to score some points later.
Part deck-builder, part dice game and really swift to play – a bit of a lost classic, IMHO. It can be a bit janky and Dice Masters definitely finessed it as a two-player, but this is, as certain content providers would say, a real blast to play…