Wizard War
A downloadable game
Wacky Wizard Action
You sit alone at the tavern, fumbling through the faded decks of cards you found in that crumbling tower. Its iconography confounds you, with its colorful illustrations of ancient sorcerers, marked with numbers, letters, and four strange-but-familiar runes: simple sigils representing ♠ necromantic conjuring, ♥ curative sorcery, ♣ whimsical charms, and ♦ treacherous alchemy.
You look up and discover that you are no longer alone. A bony old man across the table leans toward you and rasps, "Where did you get those old cards, child? Wizard War is no ordinary game. I’ll have to give you a demonstration.”
Before you can reply, you find yourself standing atop a tower, high above a vast, scorched field, with another tower perched at the opposite edge. A cackle fills the air: "It has been many seasons since I last did battle upon this blasted heath, so I may be a bit rusty! But I, Alfaquizzic the Cantankerous, will treat you to the duel of your life!"
Bring Your Best Deck
Wizard War is a "tradingless" strategic card battler for two players. It's inspired by classic trading card games like Magic the Gathering and Yu-Gi-Oh!, but all you need to play it is this PDF, two decks of standard Poker cards, and some dice and scrap paper.
Wizard War is designed with accessibility in mind. Because the ability to play with any deck rules out printing text on the cards, any rules too complex to have memorized after a few games are limited to a small handful of printable reference cards, making it as convenient as possible to play without needing to flip back and forth in the rulebook.
Four Houses of Power
In the world of Wizard War, the cards you play summon spells and champions from four rival houses of wizards, each with their own history and struggles.
Forge a pact to borrow spells and soldiers from the Nefarious Necromantic Militia ♠, the Witch Doctors of Medicine ♥, the Fairie Princes of Pranks ♣, or the Mad Money Mages ♦. Use their strength to defeat your opponent in a duel of wits and force them to move their tacky eyesore of a tower far away from your glorious wizardly spire. This blasted heath ain’t big enough for the both of you.
What You'll Get
This digital edition of Wizard War includes everything you'll need to play the game, excluding two standard decks of cards and six six-sided die. It comes with printer-friendly and tablet-friendly versions of the rulebook, along with printable reference cards and the all-important Wizard Names Appendix™.
The 36-page core rulebook supports three modes of play:
- The base game, a 1v1 strategic card battler
- System-agnostic guidelines for adapting Wizard War to your TTRPG campaign as a Gwent-style minigame
- "Sorcerous Spat," a zany RP module with optional rules and prompts for playing Wizard War in-character as two wizard neighbors who hate each other's guts
The Kickstarter version of Wizard War included a physical edition and the option to purchase one to two fully-original decks of playing cards featuring pixel art by Ross Holmes, one of Wizard War's developers. These may be available again in the future, but for now, owners of the digital edition will still be able to play with these cards using our "browser version," a custom playingcards.io room which includes all card art, all reference cards, and widgets for tracking life and resources.
Purchase
In order to download this game you must purchase it at or above the minimum price of $8 USD. You will get access to the following files:
Download demo
Comments
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Is there any tutorial videos? The free demo is kinda confusing. Ex. "Both players draw a hand of 5 cards (unless this is the first round)"... So what can you do?? Plus, half of the spellbooks aren't there because you need to.. spend money on the actual thing you want, plus extra crap you might not want. Other than that, this seems like an interesting game. Would be 10/10 if not for the problems above, so currently it's 8/10.
And I'm so sorry if I came off rude, I'm just genuinely confused.
Hi SusBa, you do not seem rude. Apologies for the delayed response. In the first round, players draw 7 cards, which is described in the first round section. The reason more cards are drawn on the first round is because on subsequent rounds players are likely to already have one or more cards remaining in their hands from previous rounds. On the first round, you go through the typical peace phase-planning phase-war phase cycle of play.
The free demo only includes two of the playable "spellbooks" which are each associated with a card suit. The game itself does cost money, but the digital version is available for a fairly low price!
Hey, is this game playable with a single deck of cards, or did I pretty much waste my purchase on your "single deck" option on KickStarter? I don't understand the point of offering one deck if I need two, this has sort of ruined the entire thing.
Yeah, so it looks like you sold half a game. Thanks a lot for trying to be tricky with your prices, I now own an incomplete game that is no longer in print.
How far in did you read before coming to this conclusion? I'm sorry for your bad experience but am baffled by the hostility, especially because the game is very, very clear that you can play it with just the PDF, the printable rules sheet, and any two decks of regular Poker cards.
The deck that came with the kickstarter is not required to play the game. It is a custom deck of cards with art based on the game. Even the extra RP mode in the back can be played without the Wizard War deck, because all of the Tower cards are available on the printer version.
If you do actually want to play the game, I hope the process of taking that photo didn't damage it too badly.
Would be interested if physical copies ever get printed again or if there's any laying around!
We'll have plenty of physical copies left over after we complete kickstarter fulfillment... watch this space in March! :D
If you are still interested in a physical copy, please let me know! We can ship within the USA.