If you’ve ever wanted to experience what an acid trip is like without actually taking drugs, then I’m here with a slightly, and I do mean slightly, more family-friendly alternative – Epic Spell Wars.
Epic Spells Wars is a game that looks like a drug-fueled fever dream and feels as chaotic as picking up a wand on the side of the road and instantly being expected to know how to use it.
And most importantly, Epic Spell Wars is a game that is not for children, elders, or mothers, because it’s a game that comes in like a high Ozzy Osborn and doesn’t apologise for it.
So to start at the beginning, where every good story starts, Epic Spells Wars is a collection of games, each playable on its own or can be meshed together for a bigger, bolder and more chaotic time.
In Epic Spell Wars, each player at the table will take on the role of a wizard participating in The Epic Spell Wars. These wars were not caused, as many battles are, by a woman. Instead, they exist as a way for wizards to show off their awesomeness as they challenge each other to apocalyptic displays of doom, death and showmanship.
During the game, two to six players will take turns blasting each other with ridiculous and explosive spells created using cards from their hands. The game is played over a series of rounds with the exact number depending on how long it takes one wizard to kill the others.
Spells played will wear down your opponents and hopefully keep you alive. The last wizard alive will receive the coveted Last Wizard Standing token. Then the cards are all shuffled, and the bloody carnage begins again. This will repeat until one player has two Last Wizard Standing tokens and is named the ultimate winner.
The beauty of Epic Spell Wars isn’t just in its psychedelic-inducing art but also in how easy the game is to get to the table, teach and learn. To start, each player will choose a wizard playing board that speaks to them to play as during the game.
They’ll make this choice purely based on the art, as all the characters are mechanically identical. After each player has their wizard playing board, they will set their starting health to 20 HP (health points) and draw eight cards into their hand from which they will create their spells.
All the spell cards in the deck fall into one of three categories. They are Source cards (the first card in the spell), Quality cards (the second card in the spell) or Delivery cards. (the final card in the spell). Spells can consist of anywhere from one to three cards, although some abilities might cause spells to be longer.
Cards will also have either arcane, elemental or dark glyphs on them. These are important and will often bolster your spell’s damage by letting you roll more dice for matching glyphs.
To play the game, players will all secretly look at their hand of cards and create a spell they want to use by picking anywhere from one to three cards. Now the number of cards you choose to play is essential because if you play a complete spell, you’re more likely to do incredible damage to all the other disgusting wizards you are forced to battle against.
But if you play only one card, your spell will activate before the other wizards, longer and more complex spells. This system makes for an exciting seesaw; do you want your spell to start first, or do you hope you will hit harder?
Once each Wizard has chosen the cards they want to use, they put them face-down on the table, and when everyone has done that, it’s time to reveal the spells.
Turn order is decided each round by the spells that have been revealed. Spells with the fewest number of cards will start, but if everyone plays three card spells, then whoever’s spell has the lowest number on their delivery will go first.
Now that turn order has been locked in for the round; it’s time to do what you came to and slaughter some wizards. Each player will, in turn, announce the full name of their spell to be able to cast it. So, for example, your spell could be Midnight Merlin’s Mind-Altering Brain Suck, which you would need to say out loud to cast.
After that, the player will resolve the effects on their cards, one at a time, from beginning to end. Once the entire spell has been resolved, play passes to the next player in turn order, who reveals their spell, announces it out loud and resolves their cards.
This system will continue until everyone has had their turn or until only one wizard is left alive. If a player is killed during a round, it’s not the worst thing.
Dead players will spend their turns collecting Dead Wizard cards instead of playing. When the next round starts, and they are dealt back into the game, these cards will offer them specific boosts and improvements to help them out and give them the advantage to try and seek their revenge.
A word of warning, if you or your group of friends don’t enjoy playing games heavy on luck, then Epic Spell Wars is not the game series for you.
While Players can spend their turn attempting to craft the best spell they possibly can, if the luck gods refuse to smile upon you when it’s time to roll dice and activate effects, it’s pretty much tickets for you – regardless of how well you planned everything out.
However, if you’re the type of person who likes a little chaos in their lives, maybe you don’t smell the milk before using it, perhaps you commit to dinner plans without checking your load-shedding schedule, or maybe you get on the highway in the morning traffic without first checking how much petrol you have left. In that case, the rush of playing Epic Spell Wars is hard to beat.
It’s a wildly chaotic, psychedelic festival of luck-based fun. It’s also a game that can take anywhere from fifteen minutes to an hour, depending on how many players there are and how much luck everyone has on their side.
Epic Spell Wars is also a card-based game with as much replayability as it has terrible puns. Because of the wide variety of spell components, unique effects on the cards and the heavy reliance on luck, there is little chance that two games of Epic Spell Wars will ever be the same.
The entire rule book for Epic Spell Wars is less than three pages, including pictures, and you can go from never having played it to having a blast in less time than it takes to read this review.
Once you have the flow of the rounds down, it’s up to you to read your cards and put together the most devastating combination possible to murder your fellow Wizards – as one does.
