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Add 6th edition research: rules, cards, and board layouts

Browse Source 
Assembled from the Wayback Machine (Tom Jolly's wizwar.com), BGG, and
fan archives: 5E rules transcription (6E is a light revision), Jolly's
2002 FAQ, ~208-card Chessex-era card pool with mechanics, all six
sector board layouts reconstructed from photos + fan redraws, and
setup diagrams. Gaps flagged for verification against Eric's copy.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
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# Wiz-War 6th Edition (Chessex, 1993) — Maze Board Research
Research date: 2026-08-15. All source URLs are in `boards-sources.md`. Supporting images
(photos of the actual 6e tiles, the 6e/7e rulebook setup diagrams, and clean fan redraws)
are saved in `research/images/`.
## Confidence key
- **CONFIRMED** — verified from two independent primary/near-primary sources (photographs
of the actual 6th-edition components cross-checked against a faithful fan redraw, or
stated on the BGG version page / visible in rulebook scans).
- **LIKELY** — single good source, or inferred with high confidence.
- **UNCERTAIN** — needs verification against the physical copy.
---
## 1. What's in the box
- **6th edition (Chessex, 1993):** 1 rulebook, **4 sector boards**, 2 sheets of tokens,
125 spell cards, 1 die. *(CONFIRMED — BGG version page for "Chessex sixth edition";
corroborated by the rulebook setup diagram, which marks the 5- and 6-player layouts
"2 sets required".)*
- **Wiz-War Expansion Set #1** (originally for 4th/5th ed., reprinted by Chessex 1994 to
match the 6th ed.): 75 spell cards, **2 additional sector boards**, 2 sheets of tokens.
Base + Expansion #1 = the **6 distinct maze layouts** photographed on BGG.
*(CONFIRMED — BGG expansion page; a 5th-edition owner's photo caption: "The Six Sector
tiles. Each unique.")*
- **Wiz-War Expansion Set #2**: 85 cards ("Artifacts"), new tokens/rules — **no boards**.
*(CONFIRMED — BGG expansion page.)*
- **7th edition ("Classic Edition", Chessex, 1997):** 1 rulebook, **4 boards**, 2 sheets of
die-cut counters, 4 stands, 130 spell cards, 1 die. Same 5x5 sector system; its rulebook
adds printed configurations up to 8 players. *(CONFIRMED — BGG version page +
rulebook-page photo.)*
- The 5th, 6th, and 7th editions all use the **same maze layouts** (the 6th re-drew the art;
layout-level identity of 5e vs 6e boards is CONFIRMED by the machine comparison described
in section 3; 7e is LIKELY the same boards — same count, same era, art appears identical
in photos).
## 2. Sector board anatomy (CONFIRMED from photos of all six 6e tiles)
- Each sector board is a **5x5 grid of square spaces** (25 spaces). Total play area is
one sector per player (2p = 5x10, 4p = 10x10, etc.).
- **Perimeter:** each side of a sector is a solid outer wall with exactly **one one-space
opening centered on the middle space of each edge** (i.e., adjacent to row 3 / column 3).
All six boards share this — so however sectors are shuffled and rotated at setup, the
mid-edge corridors always line up with neighboring sectors and with the wraparound
connections at the outer edges of the whole map.
- **Home space ("start"):** the exact **center space (3,3)** of every sector, marked with a
large 8-pointed star. The sector's wizard starts there and returns stolen treasure there.
- **Treasure spaces:** **two per sector**, marked with an octagonal swirl/rosette glyph,
always **diagonally adjacent to the home space on the same diagonal** — at (2,2) and
(4,4) in the canonical orientation used below (photos of some tiles show them at
(2,4)/(4,2), which is just the same board rotated 90°). Each player's two treasure
tokens start on these. *(Glyph meaning is LIKELY from the parallel rule in every other
edition — 8e calls them "treasure start squares" — and the token counts; verify wording
in the 6e rulebook.)*
- **Interior walls:** thick stone walls sitting on edges between spaces (never diagonal,
never partial). Cell boundaries without walls are drawn as thin cracked lines (no game
effect).
- **Doors:** drawn as a wooden plank with hinge/knob circles filling a wall gap. Each
layout has **1 or 2 printed doors** (8 doors across the 6 boards).
- **No other special spaces.** Each space has a small centering dot (decorative). There are
no numbered spaces, portals, or terrain printed on the Chessex boards — everything else
(thornbushes, rocks, created walls/doors, etc.) is tokens placed during play.
- Boards are **single-sided**, black-and-white line art in 6e. *(Single-sidedness:
LIKELY — no photo or listing shows a printed back; the double-sided "classic/new"
boards are an 8th-edition (FFG) feature.)*
- Physical size: UNCERTAIN. A fan who reproduced them printed at 7.5 in square; the actual
Chessex boards' dimensions need measuring from the physical copy.
## 3. The six maze layouts (CONFIRMED, with caveats noted)
**Provenance / verification method.** Two independent sources were machine-read
pixel-by-pixel and compared:
1. **Photographs of the actual 6th-edition tiles** posted to BGG by user louping0 ca. 2006
(files `images/6e-photo-tile1..6.jpg`, BGG image IDs 184445, 184446, 184447, 184665,
184680, 184683).
2. **Jeff Barrett's (jeloba.com) clean 1500x1500 redraws** of "the standard boards from the
5th edition & expansions" (files `images/jeloba-board-1..6.jpg`, recovered via the
Wayback Machine).
Every boundary between adjacent spaces was classified wall/door/open by pixel sampling in
both sets, and each photo was matched against each redraw under all 8 rotations/reflections.
**Every 6e tile matched exactly one redraw under a pure rotation** — three pairs matched
perfectly on every edge, and the remaining differences were exactly the doors (thin light
planks that the photo classifier reads as "open") plus 2 near-threshold edges on the one
skewed photo (tile 4). Conclusion: the layouts below are the 6th-edition layouts, at very
high confidence.
**Caveats:** (a) door positions on layouts D and F rest on the photo + redraw agreeing but
with 2 low-quality edges on the tile-4 photo — worth eyeballing against the physical
boards; (b) which 4 of the 6 shipped in the 6e base box vs. which 2 came from Expansion
Set #1 is UNKNOWN (boards are unlabeled); (c) canonical orientation below is arbitrary —
boards are randomly rotated at setup anyway.
**Notation.** Spaces are (row, column), row 1 = top, column 1 = left. `H` = home star
(3,3). `T` = treasure space. `D` / `==D==` = door. Gaps in the outer border are the
mid-edge openings. "Walls V" lists vertical walls as (r,c)|(r,c+1); "Walls H" lists
horizontal walls as (r,c)|(r+1,c).
### Layout A — photo `6e-photo-tile5.jpg` (BGG pic184680) rotated 180°
```
+-----+-----+ +-----+-----+
| |
+ +-----+-----+-----+ +
| | T | |
+ + + +-----+-----+
| H |
+-----+==D==+ + +==D==+
| T | |
+ +-----+-----+-----+ +
| |
+-----+-----+ +-----+-----+
```
- Walls V: (2,1)|(2,2), (2,2)|(2,3), (3,2)|(3,3), (3,3)|(3,4), (4,4)|(4,5)
- Walls H: (1,2)|(2,2), (1,3)|(2,3), (1,4)|(2,4), (2,4)|(3,4), (2,5)|(3,5), (3,1)|(4,1), (4,2)|(5,2), (4,3)|(5,3), (4,4)|(5,4)
- Doors: (3,2)-(4,2), (3,5)-(4,5)
### Layout B — photo `6e-photo-tile1.jpg` (BGG pic184445) rotated 180°
```
+-----+-----+ +-----+-----+
| |
+ +-----+ +-----+==D==+
| T | | |
+ +-----+ + + +
| H | |
+ + + + +-----+
| | | | T |
+ + + +-----+ +
| | |
+-----+-----+ +-----+-----+
```
- Walls V: (2,2)|(2,3), (2,3)|(2,4), (3,1)|(3,2), (3,3)|(3,4), (3,4)|(3,5), (4,1)|(4,2), (4,2)|(4,3), (4,3)|(4,4), (5,2)|(5,3)
- Walls H: (1,2)|(2,2), (1,4)|(2,4), (2,2)|(3,2), (3,5)|(4,5), (4,4)|(5,4)
- Doors: (1,5)-(2,5)
### Layout C — photo `6e-photo-tile3.jpg` (BGG pic184447); rotate this diagram 90° CW to match the photo
```
+-----+-----+ +-----+-----+
| | |
+ + +-----+-----+ +
| T | | |
+==D==+-----+ + + +
H | |
+ +-----+-----+ + +
| | T | |
+ +-----+-----+ + +
| | |
+-----+-----+ +-----+-----+
```
- Walls V: (1,1)|(1,2), (2,2)|(2,3), (2,4)|(2,5), (3,3)|(3,4), (3,4)|(3,5), (4,1)|(4,2), (4,4)|(4,5), (5,3)|(5,4)
- Walls H: (1,3)|(2,3), (1,4)|(2,4), (2,2)|(3,2), (3,2)|(4,2), (3,3)|(4,3), (4,2)|(5,2), (4,3)|(5,3)
- Doors: (2,1)-(3,1)
### Layout D — photo `6e-photo-tile2.jpg` (BGG pic184446); rotate this diagram 90° CW to match the photo
```
+-----+-----+ +-----+-----+
| | |
+ + +-----+-----+ +
| | T |
+ +==D==+-----+-----+-----+
| H
+ + +-----+-----+-----+
| | T |
+ +-----+-----+-----+ +
| |
+-----+-----+ +-----+-----+
```
- Walls V: (1,2)|(1,3), (2,1)|(2,2), (3,1)|(3,2), (4,1)|(4,2)
- Walls H: (1,3)|(2,3), (1,4)|(2,4), (2,3)|(3,3), (2,4)|(3,4), (2,5)|(3,5), (3,3)|(4,3), (3,4)|(4,4), (3,5)|(4,5), (4,2)|(5,2), (4,3)|(5,3), (4,4)|(5,4)
- Doors: (2,2)-(3,2)
- Note the long east-west corridor through the home row — this board is unusually open
left-to-right.
### Layout E — photo `6e-photo-tile6.jpg` (BGG pic184683); rotate this diagram 270° CW (90° CCW) to match the photo
```
+-----+-----+ +-----+-----+
| |
+ +-----+ +-----+ +
| T | | |
+-----+ +-----+ + +
D | H |
+ + + + + +
| | | T |
+ +-----+-----+ +-----+
| |
+-----+-----+ +-----+-----+
```
- Walls V: (2,2)|(2,3), (2,4)|(2,5), (3,2)|(3,3), (3,4)|(3,5), (4,1)|(4,2), (4,3)|(4,4)
- Walls H: (1,2)|(2,2), (1,4)|(2,4), (2,1)|(3,1), (2,3)|(3,3), (4,2)|(5,2), (4,3)|(5,3), (4,5)|(5,5)
- Doors: (3,1)-(3,2) (a door on a vertical wall)
### Layout F — photo `6e-photo-tile4.jpg` (BGG pic184665); rotate this diagram 90° CW to match the photo
```
+-----+-----+ +-----+-----+
| |
+ +-----+==D==+-----+ +
| T | |
+-----+ + + +-----+
| H |
+-----+-----+ + +-----+
| | T | |
+ +-----+-----+ + +
| D |
+-----+-----+ +-----+-----+
```
- Walls V: (2,2)|(2,3), (3,2)|(3,3), (3,3)|(3,4), (4,3)|(4,4), (4,4)|(4,5)
- Walls H: (1,2)|(2,2), (1,4)|(2,4), (2,1)|(3,1), (2,5)|(3,5), (3,1)|(4,1), (3,2)|(4,2), (3,5)|(4,5), (4,2)|(5,2), (4,3)|(5,3)
- Doors: (1,3)-(2,3), (5,3)-(5,4) (this photo was the lowest quality; verify)
## 4. Board setup / sector connection rules
From the **6e rulebook's back-page "Set-Up Diagram"** (`images/6e-rules-setup-diagram.jpg`)
and the **7e rulebook pp. 8-9** (`images/7e-rules-setup-2-8-players.jpg`). CONFIRMED as
printed; interpretation of the letter labels is LIKELY (verify exact wording in the rules
text).
General procedure (from period rules summaries): boards are shuffled/randomly rotated under
the table and laid out in the configuration for the player count; each player is assigned
the sector containing their home star.
Configurations:
- **2 players:** 2 sectors stacked in a 1x2 column (5 wide x 10 tall). Edge labels:
top sector {top A, left C, right B}; bottom sector {left B, right C, bottom A}.
Matching letters are wraparound-connected: walking off opening A at the top re-enters at
opening A at the bottom; the top sector's right opening (B) connects to the bottom
sector's left opening (B), etc. The 7e rules also show a "two player variant" (B'/C')
with the pairings swapped straight-across.
- **3 players:** stair/L shape — one sector on the top row (offset right), two on the
bottom row. Convex outer openings pair by letter; at the concave corner, the two
openings that face the notch are joined by an "**Aisle Warp**" (drawn as an arc around
the corner — stepping out one opening brings you around the corner into the other).
- **4 players:** 2x2 square (10x10 spaces). Wraparound is straight across: left-edge
openings A,B pair with right-edge openings A,B on the same rows; top C,D pair with
bottom C,D on the same columns.
- **5 players:** plus/cross shape (4 arms + center). **Requires 2 sets** (i.e., more than
4 boards). Opposite arm tips wrap to each other (A-A top/bottom, B-B left/right);
arrows in the diagram show the concave corner openings warping around the corners.
- **6 players:** 3x2 rectangle. **Requires 2 sets.** Straight-across wrap: top A,B,C to
bottom A,B,C; left D,E to right D,E.
- **7 players** (7e rulebook): pinwheel arrangement of 7 sectors with aisle-warp arcs
around the notches.
- **8 players** (7e rulebook): two printed options — a large cross (doubled arms), or a
2x4 rectangle with straight-across wrap.
- **"Relocate Sector" spell card** can move a whole sector during play; the rulebooks show
a resulting offset/staggered configuration and how edges reconnect afterward.
Line-of-sight examples printed beside the 7e diagrams confirm: LOS is blocked by walls and
by board-edge except through the wrap connections (wrap-connected openings are treated as
adjacent).
## 5. Expansion boards summary
| Product | Era | Boards added |
|---|---|---|
| Expansion Set #1 (Jolly Games 1985 / Chessex 1994 reprint) | 4th/5th/6th ed. | **+2 sector boards** (the 2 extra layouts among the six above) |
| Expansion Set #2 | 5th/6th ed. | none (cards/tokens only) |
| 7th ed. "Classic Edition" (1997) | — | base has 4 boards; no separate board expansion found |
| 8th ed. (FFG 2012) | redesign | 4 **double-sided** sector boards (one side "classic" layout, one side new), still one home + two treasure spaces per sector |
| 8e: Malefic Curses (2013) | FFG | **+1 sector board** + portals (enables 5th player) |
| 8e: Bestial Forces (2014) | FFG | none (monsters/spells) |
## 6. What still needs the physical 6th-edition copy
1. **Door verification** on Layouts D and F (photo quality), and a general once-over of all
six ASCII maps against the real tiles (the machine read is high-confidence but the
photos are ~1024 px scans of hand-drawn art).
2. **Which 4 layouts are in the base box** (if the owner's copy is base-only, whichever 4
they have answers it; the other 2 are Expansion Set #1's).
3. **Exact rulebook wording** for: treasure-space setup, wraparound/aisle-warp movement and
LOS, sector assignment, and the 2-player variant.
4. **Physical dimensions** of a sector board, and whether the backs are blank.
5. Any **errata sheet** in the box (the 5th edition shipped one).
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# Wiz-War Board Research — Annotated Sources
Compiled 2026-08-15. Local copies of the key images are in `research/images/`.
Reliability: ★★★ primary (photos/scans of actual components or official pages),
★★ near-primary (faithful fan reproduction, period fan site), ★ secondary (reviews, wikis).
## Primary: photographs of the actual 6th-edition boards (BGG image gallery)
BGG gallery for Wiz-War (game id 589): https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/589/wiz-war/images
Uploaded by BGG user louping0, captioned "6th edition board tile (n of 6)". ★★★, 6th ed.
Direct large-image CDN links (1024 px):
| Local file | BGG image page | Direct image |
|---|---|---|
| 6e-photo-tile1.jpg (= Layout B) | https://boardgamegeek.com/image/184445 | https://cf.geekdo-images.com/VMDIooYhfbvkS57ALIzxsQ__large/img/l78YiL6JIME8erbD4rRmvvTxWgc=/fit-in/1024x1024/filters:no_upscale():strip_icc()/pic184445.jpg |
| 6e-photo-tile2.jpg (= Layout D) | https://boardgamegeek.com/image/184446 | https://cf.geekdo-images.com/RPqgn8DF_VSaiNoE-WuavA__large/img/dLZ49Wq2D1bM2OC-RcRxhV4eE0E=/fit-in/1024x1024/filters:no_upscale():strip_icc()/pic184446.jpg |
| 6e-photo-tile3.jpg (= Layout C) | https://boardgamegeek.com/image/184447 | https://cf.geekdo-images.com/3tVJ9oZRdhDZtc2n-gKlkA__large/img/GqU785i_DvzsITdVAACSPMf6k6U=/fit-in/1024x1024/filters:no_upscale():strip_icc()/pic184447.jpg |
| 6e-photo-tile4.jpg (= Layout F) | https://boardgamegeek.com/image/184665 | https://cf.geekdo-images.com/KAYnAefaanADZxMOsV7PqA__large/img/4MqM9OsPSGZXdnDoL-LWT5dIKjA=/fit-in/1024x1024/filters:no_upscale():strip_icc()/pic184665.jpg |
| 6e-photo-tile5.jpg (= Layout A) | https://boardgamegeek.com/image/184680 | https://cf.geekdo-images.com/9stqhvHtVYQ7DCYwbyDYKg__large/img/uUxbTXaRz0wHXWuTyCP2rL97f1Q=/fit-in/1024x1024/filters:no_upscale():strip_icc()/pic184680.jpg |
| 6e-photo-tile6.jpg (= Layout E) | https://boardgamegeek.com/image/184683 | https://cf.geekdo-images.com/2VZDdWQ8_oe6iQ873XuQ1w__large/img/SWXrwVQ1evrFJM-OiXdw_mJJqQk=/fit-in/1024x1024/filters:no_upscale():strip_icc()/pic184683.jpg |
Setup diagrams (★★★):
- **Back page of the 6e rulebook, "Set-Up Diagram"** (2/3/4/5/6-player + Relocate Sector
example): https://boardgamegeek.com/image/184444 — local `6e-rules-setup-diagram.jpg`
Direct: https://cf.geekdo-images.com/Y1z0ob0hGj-zToQILSLIDQ__large/img/Yh3f4BEFxXULK4U7Bg48dyywuEg=/fit-in/1024x1024/filters:no_upscale():strip_icc()/pic184444.jpg
- **7e rulebook pp. 8-9, "2 player to 8 player board configurations"** (+ LOS examples):
https://boardgamegeek.com/image/740566 — local `7e-rules-setup-2-8-players.jpg`
Direct: https://cf.geekdo-images.com/xwVHbvC9pOT5CxjAGlTyDQ__large/img/u_BpeqSrpNMF_VtpzbRZAJ8_pF0=/fit-in/1024x1024/filters:no_upscale():strip_icc()/pic740566.jpg
Other useful gallery photos: 3-player 5e table setup https://boardgamegeek.com/image/319140 ·
5e + Expansion #1 "The Six Sector tiles" https://boardgamegeek.com/image/396371 ·
6e box front/back https://boardgamegeek.com/image/184442 / /image/184443 ·
6e token/card close-ups /image/261893-261897 · 6e number cards /image/184459.
## Near-primary: Jeff Barrett's (jeloba.com) board reproductions — ★★
Defunct fan site, recovered via the Wayback Machine. His page states: "The first six are
the standard boards from the 5th edition & expansions. The last two are original layouts."
Machine-verified (all-symmetry edge comparison) to match the six photographed 6e tiles
exactly — see boards-6e.md §3. Clean 1500x1500 images, ideal for reading exact layouts.
- Archived page: http://web.archive.org/web/20050311212238/http://www.jeloba.com/wizwar/
- Board images (append `if_` after the timestamp for the raw file), local copies
`jeloba-board-1..8.jpg`:
- http://web.archive.org/web/20070117082134if_/http://www.jeloba.com/wizwar/images/ww-board-1.jpg
- http://web.archive.org/web/20070116110655if_/http://www.jeloba.com/wizwar/images/ww-board-2.jpg
- http://web.archive.org/web/20050524075609if_/http://www.jeloba.com/wizwar/images/ww-board-3.jpg
- http://web.archive.org/web/20070117082125if_/http://www.jeloba.com/wizwar/images/ww-board-4.jpg
- http://web.archive.org/web/20070116110710if_/http://www.jeloba.com/wizwar/images/ww-board-5.jpg
- http://web.archive.org/web/20070116110620if_/http://www.jeloba.com/wizwar/images/ww-board-6.jpg
- http://web.archive.org/web/20070116110718if_/http://www.jeloba.com/wizwar/images/ww-board-7.jpg (custom)
- http://web.archive.org/web/20070117082144if_/http://www.jeloba.com/wizwar/images/ww-board-8.jpg (custom)
- Same content packaged on BGG: "Improved board.zip" https://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/24521/improved-boardzip
(BGG file downloads require a free login.)
## Edition/component references — ★★★
- Wiz-War (Chessex sixth edition) version page: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgameversion/27352/chessex-sixth-edition
— 1993; contents: 1 rulebook, 4 boards, 2 token sheets, 125 spell cards, 1 die.
(BGG blocks anonymous scripted fetches; view in a browser.)
- Wiz-War (Chessex classic edition 1997 = 7th ed.) version page: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgameversion/28612/chessex-classic-edition-1997
— 1 rulebook, 4 boards, 2 sheets die-cut counters, 4 stands, 130 spell cards, 1 die.
- Wiz-War: Expansion Set #1: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/28071/wiz-war-expansion-set-1
— 75 spell cards, **2 new boards**, 2 token sheets; Chessex reprint version: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgameversion/35412/english-third-edition
- Wiz-War: Expansion Set #2: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/38450/wiz-war-expansion-set-2 — cards/tokens only.
- Main game page: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/589/wiz-war
- Noble Knight archival listings (photos of box contents sometimes included):
https://www.nobleknight.com/P/2147384243/Wiz-War-6th-Edition ·
https://www.nobleknight.com/P/2148330144/Wiz-War-Collection-2---Base-Game-6th-Edition-w-Expansion-1
## Rules texts — ★★/★
- BGG file "Doc1.doc — English rules" (era rules transcription; login required):
https://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/4689/doc1doc
- BGG file "Wiz War FAQ.doc" (comprehensive era FAQ): https://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/2537/wiz-war-faqdoc
- 8th ed. official rulebook PDF (FFG; different board system but same home/treasure
concepts): https://images-cdn.fantasyflightgames.com/ffg_content/wiz-war/WizWar_Rulebook%20v1-12%20low.pdf
- UltraBoardGames rules summary (8e): https://www.ultraboardgames.com/wiz-war/game-rules.php
## Fan board recreations / print-and-play (all recreate the Chessex-era game) — ★★
- **"Magic Stone" redesign by Ilya Baranovsky (Ilya 77)** — full modern redesign of the
classic game; Basic Set contains **8 map sectors** + all tokens:
https://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/54028/wizwar-magic-stone-basic-set
(cards: /filepage/48093; Expansion 1: /filepage/54029; Expansion 2: /filepage/60781;
Community Expansion+: /filepage/98753). Note: 8 sectors means it is not a 1:1 layout
reproduction of the six official boards — treat as inspired-by, not authoritative.
- **Kwanchai Moriya redesign** (new artwork for the classic edition):
https://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/35997/kwanchais-wiz-war-redesign
- **Wiz-war in 3D** (fully redone boards, 3D rendered, base + Expansion 1):
https://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/70946/wiz-war-in-3d-minus-the-cards
- Jeloba spell-card label PDFs (Wayback): SpellCards-OriginalDecks.pdf, SpellCards-Additional.pdf,
Number Card Labels.pdf under http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.jeloba.com/wizwar/*
## Digital modules
- **Tabletop Simulator — "Wiz-War" (classic Tom Jolly edition, Kwanchai art), by treetrnk:**
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=408527762 — ★★, digitizes the
Chessex-era game via fan redesign assets.
- **Tabletop Simulator — "Wiz-War Magic Stone Edition + Expansions":**
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=667198893 — ★★, Ilya 77 redesign
of the classic game.
- Tabletop Simulator — Wiz-War 8th edition (FFG redesign, scanned components):
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1913683974 and
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2063767485 — ★★★ for 8e boards only.
- **VASSAL: no Wiz-War module exists** in the VASSAL module library (searched
vassalengine.org library and web; nothing found as of 2026-08).
- wiki.wizwar.net — small fan wiki about the 8e TTS mod; little board content:
https://wiki.wizwar.net/doku.php?id=tabletop_simulator
## Background / history — ★
- Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiz-War (edition history; no layout specifics)
- "A Brief History of Wiz-War", League of Gamemakers: https://www.leagueofgamemakers.com/a-brief-history-of-wiz-war/
- RPGnet review of the 7e Classic Edition (confirms 4 board sections in box):
https://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/classic/rev_815.phtml
- 8e expansions: Malefic Curses (adds 1 sector board + portals, 5th player)
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/147473/wiz-war-malefic-curses · Bestial Forces (no board)
https://therewillbe.games/articles-boardgame-reviews/4787-wiz-war-bestial-forces-expansion-review
## Access notes
- BGG HTML pages return 403 to scripted fetches; the JSON APIs work:
images `https://api.geekdo.com/api/images?objectid=589&objecttype=thing&galleries[]=game&...`,
files `https://api.geekdo.com/api/files?objectid=589&objecttype=thing&...`.
The old XML API now requires authentication.
- Wayback Machine: add `if_` after the timestamp in URLs to fetch raw files; the CDX API
(`http://web.archive.org/cdx/search/cdx?url=jeloba.com/wizwar*`) lists all captures.
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# Wiz-War — Chessex-era Card List (6th edition focus)
Compiled 2026-08-15 from archived copies of Tom Jolly's official site (wizwar.com, via the
Wayback Machine), BoardGameGeek version/expansion pages, and a BGG forum thread on the 6th
edition deck. See `cards-sources.md` for full source notes and links.
## How to read this file
- **All effect summaries below are PARAPHRASED** (condensed into my own words from the
official card database that Jolly Games hosted at wizwar.com). They capture the mechanics
(numbers, durations, interactions) but not the exact card wording. For **verbatim text**,
use the archived per-card scans and the archived card-reference page linked in
`cards-sources.md` — every card in the Basic/Exp1/Exp2 lists below has a scan there.
- "NUMBER" = one of the deck's number cards (2–6) played alongside the spell, used for
damage, duration, charges, etc.
- Types used on the cards: **Attack**, **Counteraction**, **Neutral**, **Neutral/Counteraction**,
**Trap** (goes off when drawn), **Special** (out-of-turn cards), **Object** (physical items:
daggers, magic sticks/wands, magic stones), **Artifact** (Expansion 2 only), **Number**.
"LOS" = requires line of sight.
### Edition / expansion map (what actually existed in the Chessex era)
| Product | Year | Cards | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wiz-War 5th edition (Chessex) | 1991 | ~121 (unconfirmed) | Same small box as Jolly Games 4th ed |
| **Wiz-War 6th edition (Chessex)** | 1993 | **125** (box states) | Big blue box, Phil Morrissey art. Adds a few cards to the 5e base deck (Speedstone, Bomb; Dispel Creation moved into the base deck per Jolly's FAQ) |
| Wiz-War Expansion Set #1 | orig. 1988 (Jolly Games); Chessex "third edition" 1993 (purple box) | 75 | 2 new boards, 2 token sheets, monsters + magic sticks. This is the expansion Chessex sold alongside 6th ed |
| Wiz-War Expansion Set #2 | orig. 1991; last printing 1993 | 85 | Adds the 16 **Artifacts**, "Mad Wizard" rules listing. Marketed as compatible with 5th ed and earlier; most of its content (esp. Artifacts) was never folded into Chessex 6e/7e printings, but the non-artifact Exp2 spells circulate in all fan lists |
| Wiz-War "classic edition" (7th) | 1997 | 130 (box states: spells, stones & hazard cards) | Same blue-box trade dress; base deck grew by 5 cards vs 6e — exact delta not documented online |
The official wizwar.com card database tags every card as **Basic / 1st / 2nd** (i.e. base
deck, Expansion #1, Expansion #2). That tagging reflects the 5th-edition product line, but
per the site's own commentary the "Basic" list matches the 6th-edition base deck (it
includes Speedstone, which Jolly's notes flag as a 6e addition). Two placement caveats are
flagged inline below.
### Known quantities
Per-card quantities are the big documentation gap — no online source gives a full count.
What is known:
- 6e base deck totals **125** cards (box); one unpunched copy examined in the BGG thread
had 121, apparently short 5 cards and over 1.
- From that thread's comparison: **Blunt x2, Create Wall x2, Brainstorm/Brainstone x1,
Dagger x1, Drag x1** in the 6e deck.
- 68 unique non-number cards in the base list + number cards 2–6 must total 125, so the
deck holds roughly 30–55 duplicate/number cards (number cards are the bulk of the
duplication).
- Exp1 = 75 cards over 55 unique names; Exp2 = 85 cards over ~88 unique names (72 spells +
16 artifacts — so either some names were uncounted in the box total or a few cards
shipped elsewhere; unresolved).
Quantities below are `?` unless noted. **Fill these in by photographing the physical deck.**
---
## Base game (6th edition "Basic" deck — 68 unique cards + number cards)
All entries paraphrased; edition described by source: 5th/6th ed (official Jolly Games DB).
| Card | Type | Qty | Effect (paraphrased) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Absorb | Counteraction | ? | Soaks up to 3 points of one attack's point damage; useless vs duration effects |
| Absorb Spell | Counteraction | ? | Cancel one spell aimed directly at you and add it to your hand (not number cards; works even on counteractions) |
| Add | Neutral | ? | Combine two number cards for a single action |
| Amplify | Neutral | ? | Doubles one point- or duration-based spell; two together quadruple |
| Anti-Anti | Counteraction | ? | Cancels a counteraction that directly countered an attack (not escape effects like Teleport/Invisible) |
| Around the Corner | Neutral | ? | Lets one LOS spell bend around a single corner (up to 180°) |
| Blind | Attack, LOS | ? | Target rolls d4 for direction on every move/throw/cast (self-cast spells exempt); duration = NUMBER |
| Bloodstone | Object (Stone) | ? | Permanent: every attack against you does 1 less point (negates Slow Death) |
| Blunt | Counteraction | 2 | Halves damage done to you, rounding up; works on point, duration, or physical damage |
| Brainstone | Object (Stone) | 1 | Draw 2 cards immediately; your hand limit rises to 9; permanent, displayed |
| Buddy | Neutral, LOS | ? | Target may not attack you until you attack them; permanent until then |
| Card Erasure | Attack, LOS | ? | Name a card; opponent discards it if held (counts as your attack regardless) |
| Create Wall | Neutral, LOS | 2 | Adds a permanent one-square wall section |
| Dagger | Object/Attack, LOS | 1 | Thrown for 3 physical damage (no stabbing); anyone may pick it up after |
| Destroy Wall | Neutral, LOS | ? | Demolishes one wall section (doors included); 4 physical damage to anyone adjacent |
| Drag | Neutral, LOS | 1 | Pulls a movable object (incl. wizards/monsters per FAQ) toward you until blocked or in your square |
| Drop Object | Attack, LOS | ? | Opponent drops one object of your choosing |
| Extend | Neutral | ? | Doubles a duration spell's length; play when the spell is cast |
| Fill Square with Stone | Neutral, LOS | ? | Turns one empty square into solid stone (not a wall; not on home bases) |
| Fireball | Attack, LOS | ? | 5 magical damage; if any damage gets through, target's magic stones are destroyed |
| Full Reflection | Counteraction | ? | Sends a spell cast at you entirely back at its caster |
| Full Shield | Counteraction | ? | Stops any spell attack completely (not physical attacks) |
| Go Away | Attack, LOS | ? | Target is driven NUMBER spaces away (as straight as possible) and loses their turn |
| Illusion Wall | Neutral, LOS | ? | Fake wall; each opponent has a 50% chance to be fooled — for them it behaves as real |
| Invisible | Neutral/Counteraction | ? | You vanish; attackers roll d4 direction to find you; duration = NUMBER |
| Jam Lock | Neutral, LOS | ? | Permanently jams one door's lock — nobody (you included) can use it |
| Large Rock | Object/Attack, LOS | ? | Thrown for 2 physical damage; thrower can retrieve and rethrow |
| Lightning Blast | Attack, LOS | ? | NUMBER magical damage plus a stun (target loses a turn unless all damage is stopped) |
| Lock in Place | Attack, LOS | ? | Target cannot move or be moved (even teleport); can still cast; duration = NUMBER |
| Master Key | Object | ? | Opens any door (relocks behind you); reusable; must be adjacent; beaten by Jam Lock |
| Medusa | Attack, LOS | ? | Target is petrified: no movement or casting, but immune to damage; duration = NUMBER |
| Mist-Body | Neutral | ? | Become mist: pass through all but stone; can't attack or be attacked (fire still hurts); duration = NUMBER |
| No Spell | Attack, LOS | ? | Target may cast nothing (stone powers exempt); duration = NUMBER |
| Pass Through Wall | Neutral | ? | Step through one wall (works on fire and illusion walls) |
| Pick Lock | Neutral | ? | Opens an adjacent locked door; it relocks after you pass |
| Power Drain | Attack, LOS | ? | Transfer NUMBER life points from opponent to yourself |
| Power Run | Neutral | ? | Spend life points for extra movement, 1 point per space |
| Powerstone | Object (Stone) | ? | Permanent: every number card you play counts +1 |
| Powerthrust | Attack, LOS | ? | Telekinetic hit: 2 magical damage plus optional NUMBER |
| Reflection | Counteraction | ? | Splits a point/duration spell 50/50 between you and its caster (round up) |
| Relocate Sector | Neutral | ? | Move (don't rotate) one board sector; the map must stay connected |
| Remove Lock | Neutral | ? | Permanently unlocks one adjacent door |
| Reuse Spell | Neutral/Counteraction | ? | Take a spell you just cast back into your hand (not its number card) |
| Reverse | Counteraction | ? | A point-based magical attack heals you instead of hurting; side effects still apply |
| Rotate Sector | Neutral | ? | Rotate one board sector 90° |
| Shadowstone | Object (Stone) | ? | Permanent: physical damage you inflict is added to your own life points |
| Shieldstone | Object (Stone) | ? | Permanent: spend a number card as a counteraction, reducing an effect by its value |
| Shrink | Neutral | ? | You shrink: attackers miss 50% of the time, your movement drops to 2; duration = NUMBER |
| Slow | Attack, LOS | ? | Target moves 1/turn (no boosts) and attacks only every other turn; duration = NUMBER |
| Slow Death | Attack, LOS | ? | Permanent curse: 1 magical damage each time target draws a card |
| Soulstone | Object (Stone) | ? | Permanent: your last 3 life points can only be lost to physical damage |
| Speed | Neutral | ? | Grants one extra turn (play before drawing at end of turn) |
| Speedstone | Object (Stone) | ? | Permanent: +1 movement rate. *Flagged in Jolly's notes as a 6th-edition addition* |
| Stone Dead | Attack, LOS | ? | Magical damage = NUMBER x the count of magic stones the target carries |
| Sudden Death | Attack | ? | 10 magical damage to one person or object |
| Swap | Attack | ? | Exchange positions with any other character; replaces your movement |
| Telepath | Attack | ? | Look through one player's hand, once |
| Teleport | Neutral/Counteraction | ? | Jump up to 4 spaces ignoring walls; ends your movement; as a counter it dodges an attack |
| Teleport Opponent | Attack, LOS | ? | Relocate an opponent to any square except solid stone |
| Thornbush | Neutral, LOS | ? | Fills a square; entering ends the turn, costs the next one, and pricks for 1; 5 damage kills it |
| Thought Steal | Attack | ? | Take two cards of your choice from an opponent (displayed cards included) |
| Trap! | Trap | ? | Goes off when drawn: display it, lose your next turn, draw a replacement |
| Ugly | Neutral | ? | Instantly, everyone in your LOS must retreat until out of LOS |
| Visionstone | Object (Stone) | ? | Permanent: see (and cast) through one wall or door whenever you choose |
| Wall of Fire | Neutral/Counteraction, LOS | ? | Fire barrier across a corridor: 4 magical damage to cross; counters a Waterbolt; duration = NUMBER |
| Waterbolt | Attack, LOS | ? | NUMBER points split as you choose between magical damage and knockback squares |
| Waterwall | Neutral/Counteraction | ? | Flash flood: everyone within 2 squares is washed 2 back (1 damage per blocked square); counters fire spells |
| Wizardblade | Object/Attack | ? | Permanent melee weapon: same-square attack for NUMBER magical damage per use |
| **Number "2"** | Number | ? (multiple) | Powers movement or spells |
| **Number "3"** | Number | ? (multiple) | " |
| **Number "4"** | Number | ? (multiple) | " |
| **Number "5"** | Number | ? (multiple) | " |
| **Number "6"** | Number | ? (multiple) | " |
Note: there is **no "1" number card** in the official list — numbers run 2 through 6.
---
## Expansion Set #1 (55 unique names, 75 cards total)
Chessex sold this as "Wiz-War Expansion #1" (purple box, 1993) for use with the 6th
edition. Adds monsters, magic sticks (wands), and 2 boards.
| Card | Type | Qty | Effect (paraphrased) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Adrenaline | Neutral | ? | Self-cast: two attacks per turn for NUMBER turns |
| Alter Ego | Neutral | ? | A stationary duplicate of you that can cast spells from your hand; any damage destroys it |
| Big Man | Neutral | ? | You swell to fill the corridor: can't be passed or entered, push adjacent figures ahead of you; Shrink cancels; duration = NUMBER |
| Blaster Stick | Object/Attack, LOS | ? | Wand: 3 magical damage per charge, charges = NUMBER, one shot per turn; discard when empty |
| Boobytrap | Neutral | ? | Place 4 face-down tokens, one live: crossing the live one costs 4 physical damage (caster immune) |
| Chaos | Attack | ? | All hands are pooled and dealt back randomly, same counts as before |
| Create Door | Neutral, LOS | ? | Adds a permanent locked door to a wall or corridor |
| Create Pit | Neutral, LOS | ? | Pit: jumpers fall on a d4 roll of 1 (2 damage); climbing out needs 1–2 on later turns |
| Create Skeleton | Attack, LOS | ? | Monster: move 3, punches for 2, takes 4 damage to destroy |
| Create Troll | Attack, LOS | ? | Monster: move 3, d4 punch, 6 hp, regenerates 1/turn; can't carry |
| Create Wraith | Attack, LOS | ? | Monster: move 3, phases through one wall/turn, touch does 2 damage + steals a random card; 4 hp |
| Deja-Vu | Neutral | ? | Search the discard pile and take any one card |
| Democratic Monster | Attack | ? | Monster every player may move 3 on their own turn; 2-point claw; 5 hp |
| Disease | Attack | ? | You become a carrier: entering another player's square deals them 3 physical; duration = NUMBER |
| Dispel Creation | Neutral, LOS | ? | Un-creates any created object or creature. *Also included in the 6e base deck per Jolly's FAQ* |
| Dust Cloud | Neutral | ? | Permanent obscuring cloud in one square; anyone inside rolls d4 direction for moves/casts; blocks LOS |
| Empathy | Counteraction | ? | Any attack on you also strikes its caster; duration = NUMBER |
| Fear | Neutral | ? | Self-cast aura: nobody (even through walls) may come within 3 squares, and those inside must flee; duration = NUMBER |
| Fill Square with Slime | Neutral, LOS | ? | Gel cube: entering ends the turn; spells cast at it stick and ambush the next visitor; washed away by water |
| Fire Imp | Attack, LOS | ? | Stationary imp: 2 fire damage to anyone in its LOS each turn (creator included); killed only by water |
| Gift from Below | Trap | ? | Goes off when drawn: take 3 magical damage (counteractable), then redraw |
| Gift from God | Instant | ? | Gain 3 life points immediately, even above your starting total |
| Glue | Neutral, LOS | ? | An object can't be picked up by others for 2 x NUMBER turns |
| Handful of Tacks | Object, LOS | ? | Not a spell: tacks fill a square, 3 damage to cross; two turns to sweep up; water clears them |
| Heave-Ho | Attack | ? | Hurl a carried treasure; physical damage equals squares thrown; self-cast, so no reflection |
| Idiot | Attack | ? | Target must beeline to their nearest own treasure, doing nothing else but counteractions |
| Illusionary Attack | Attack, LOS | ? | Fake any attack spell; each victim has a 50% chance to believe it and suffer it |
| Interrupt | Special | ? | Freeze the game at any moment and resolve one of your spells first |
| Killer Ooze | Neutral | ? | Acid slick on a floor square: 1 damage to enter and a d4 chance (1–2) to fall for 2 more; only fire kills it |
| Lifesaver | Neutral | ? | You can no longer lose by both treasures being captured; permanent |
| Mad Dash | Neutral | ? | Double your total movement this turn; you can't carry treasure while dashing |
| Mental Force | Attack, LOS | ? | Move an opponent 3 spaces wherever you dictate |
| Mental Swap | Attack | ? | Exchange entire hands with another player |
| Opportunity Fire | Special | ? | Make your attack during another player's turn (they finish any spell in progress first) |
| Permawarp | Neutral | ? | Two linked warp tokens anywhere (not home bases); moving between them costs 1 space |
| Power Attack | Neutral | ? | Burn your own life points to add to a damage spell's total |
| Remove Curse | Neutral/Counteraction | ? | Strips a duration or permanent spell effect off a target, even after it has begun |
| Rewarp | Neutral | ? | Reroute two of the board's outside sector exits to connect to each other |
| Rosebush | Neutral | ? | Permanent bush filling a square: 3 damage to push through; blocks LOS |
| Safe | Neutral, LOS | ? | Locks an item inside an immovable safe (15 damage to smash; lock cards work on it) |
| Shadow | Neutral | ? | A double that moves 3, punches, and carries — but costs you 1 life per turn; any damage kills it |
| Shift Stick | Object/Attack, LOS | ? | Wand: shove target one space any direction — even through a wall; charges = NUMBER |
| Sticky Stick | Object/Attack, LOS | ? | Wand: webs a target (-3 movement, +2 damage if burned); charges = NUMBER |
| Stone to Water | Neutral | ? | A wall becomes a strength-2 waterwall; a solid stone block a strength-4 one |
| Strength | Neutral | ? | Your physical damage doubles and you can wrestle treasures away; duration = NUMBER |
| Swap Home Bases | Neutral, LOS | ? | Trade home bases with a player in LOS (treasure counts must match) |
| Swap Meet | Attack | ? | Force a one-for-one trade of carried items with another player |
| Swarthmore's Enchantment | Neutral | ? | Permanently adds 1 magical damage to a physical object's attacks |
| Thief | Attack | ? | Not a spell: take one non-treasure item from a player sharing your square |
| Thumb of God | Attack | ? | Physically flick the die onto the board; tokens it hits move to where they land; no counter |
| Trader | Neutral | ? | Swap the positions of two loose floor items in your LOS |
| Walking Dead | Attack, LOS | ? | Permanent curse: half a point of damage per space the target moves (Bloodstone negates) |
| Ward | Neutral | ? | Pre-set trap on your own treasure: 3 magical damage to whoever picks it up (played out of turn) |
| Warp Stick | Object | ? | Wand: one wall section vanishes for the rest of your turn; charges = NUMBER |
| Weakness | Attack | ? | Target drops treasure, takes double damage, and can't carry treasure; duration = NUMBER |
---
## Expansion Set #2 (72 unique spell names + 16 Artifacts; 85 cards total)
Boxed for 5th edition and earlier; most of this content — especially the Artifacts — never
shipped in a Chessex 6e/7e box, but the non-artifact spells are part of the standard fan
card pool and some (Bomb; possibly others) were folded into the 6e/7e base decks.
| Card | Type | Qty | Effect (paraphrased) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Alter Reality | Neutral | ? | Replace the board you stand on with an unused one, flipped, random orientation; tokens keep relative positions |
| Animate Object | Neutral, LOS | ? | A non-living movable object obeys you, moving 2/turn; 1 damage breaks the spell; Glue cancels |
| Astral Projection | Neutral | ? | Cast one of your LOS spells anywhere on the board; reflections can't reach you |
| Blink | Attack/Counteraction, LOS | ? | Target teleports randomly 1–4 spaces each of your turns for NUMBER turns; self-cast as a dodge |
| Bomb | Trap | ? | Goes off when drawn: 3 physical damage to everything within 4 squares (around corners, not walls). *Jolly's notes call this a 6th-edition card* |
| Brain Drain | Attack | ? | Target discards NUMBER random cards (lost stones are discarded, not dropped) |
| Burden | Attack, LOS | ? | 1 damage per stick, stone, monster, or artifact the target controls |
| Cease-Fire | Attack | ? | No attacks by anyone (monsters included) for one full round |
| Clone | Counteraction | ? | On dying to damage, reappear at your home base with 7 hp and an empty hand |
| Control Creation | Neutral, LOS | ? | Permanently seize control of someone else's created creature |
| Create Big Black Bat | Attack, LOS | ? | Flying monster: move 10, 1-point bite, 2 hp; can fetch one small item |
| Create Familiar | Attack, LOS | ? | Cat: hp = NUMBER, 2-point attack, move 4, secretly carries one spell to cast later |
| Create Ghoul | Attack, LOS | ? | Monster: 5 hp, move 3; each turn claw for 2 or grow +1 hp or speed |
| Create sub-Wizard | Attack, LOS | ? | Mini-wizard: 6 hp, move 3, casts a 3-point firebolt each turn (which shatters stones); carries nothing |
| Crossbow | Object/Attack | ? | 3 physical damage per bolt; bolts = NUMBER on first shot |
| Curse of the Litter Bug | Attack, LOS | ? | Permanent: 2 magical damage every time target drops or throws an item |
| Curse of the Monster Musk | Attack, LOS | ? | Cursed player attracts every mobile monster; the curse passes by LOS, can't be discarded |
| Decoy | Neutral | ? | Invisible duplicate travels with you; attacks have a 50% chance to hit it instead (2 life to keep it after a hit) |
| Disguise Magic | Neutral, LOS | ? | Your attack is played face-down; defender must commit a counteraction before seeing it |
| Door-to-Door | Neutral | ? | Links two existing doors into a matched warp pair (A-A / B-B) |
| Double Back | Counteraction | ? | Reflects a point/duration spell at its caster at double power |
| Double Barrel | Neutral, LOS | ? | Splits one attack into two half-strength hits that must be countered separately |
| Exploding Door | Neutral, LOS | ? | Blow a door outward: 3 physical damage in LOS on the far side; leaves an open passage |
| Exploding Energy | Attack | ? | Target's number cards detonate: discard them all, damage = half their sum |
| Featherweight | Counteraction | ? | Damage to you becomes knockback instead, 1 space per point; duration = NUMBER |
| Fighterstone | Object (Stone)/Attack | ? | Permanent: your punches do d4 damage |
| Fill 'er Up | Neutral | ? | Refill your hand to the limit immediately; doesn't end your turn |
| Firefly Stick | Object/Attack | ? | Wand: spawn up to NUMBER fireflies, each move 5 and burn for 1; any damage kills one; water sweeps them |
| Fit of Frenzy | Trap | ? | Goes off when drawn: drop your treasure and go attack somebody before resuming normal play |
| Flame On | Neutral | ? | Ignite yourself: 2 self-damage/turn buys a 4-point fireball each turn and fire immunity; water snuffs it |
| Flight | Neutral | ? | Fly over floor hazards, monsters, and players; duration = NUMBER; Remove Curse drops you for d4 |
| Full Shield | Counteraction | ? | (second printing of the base-deck card) |
| Geas | Attack, LOS | ? | A monster turns on its own creator and hunts them until dead |
| Ghost | Attack or Neutral | ? | Target (or you) becomes intangible for NUMBER turns: walks through anything, immune to physical, carries nothing |
| Hard Cell | Neutral | ? | Add 3 charges to a wand, or 2 turns to an active duration spell |
| Healthstone | Object (Stone) | ? | Permanent: recover 2 life on any turn you don't move (max 15) |
| Hotfoot | Attack | ? | Target takes 1 damage per square short of 4 they move each turn; duration = NUMBER |
| Howling Vacuum | Neutral | ? | Everything movable in your sector is sucked 1 space toward you (shortest walking path) |
| Hypnosis | Attack, LOS | ? | Puppet an opponent's entire next turn (using at most 3 of their cards; no self-harm) |
| It | Attack, LOS | ? | Tag: whoever is "It" takes 1 damage at end of each of their turns; pass it by touch |
| Janitor | Neutral | ? | Sweep away every board token within 2 squares (walls' rubble included) except players and treasures |
| Klutz | Trap | ? | Goes off when drawn: drop everything you're carrying, then redraw |
| Load Stone | Object (Stone), cursed | ? | Dead weight you cannot discard; hand it off by entering someone's square (an attack) |
| Monster Bane | Attack, LOS | ? | Destroy one monster and add its remaining hp to your own |
| Mundane | Attack | ? | Target discards every magical card in hand (mundane items like Dagger stay) |
| Negate Neutral | Special/Counteraction | ? | Cancels a neutral spell at the moment it's cast; targets the spell, so shields/reflections don't apply |
| Pass the Buck | Neutral, LOS | ? | Immense 10-hp buck blocks a corridor; any player may nudge it 1 space on their turn |
| Pick Lock | Neutral | ? | (second printing of the base-deck card) |
| Psychic Storm | Attack, LOS | ? | NUMBER magical damage to the target square and all adjacent squares, through walls |
| Public Funds | Neutral | ? | All treasures permanently become ownerless — any two on your base win; nobody can lose by treasure placement |
| Push Object | Neutral | ? | Shove a loose floor object away from you until it hits something; 2 physical damage on impact |
| Random's Card | Number | ? | A wildcard number: roll d4 and add 2 (yields 3–6) |
| Reflection | Counteraction | ? | (second printing of the base-deck card) |
| Rejuvenation | Neutral | ? | Heal yourself NUMBER points, up to your 15 maximum |
| Ricochet | Neutral | ? | Bounce an LOS spell around two 90° corners |
| Shatter | Neutral | ? | Quadruples an attack's damage against any non-player target (walls, monsters, bushes) |
| Shock Wave | Attack | ? | NUMBER magical damage and the target drops everything (into the square behind them) |
| Spell Stone | Object (Stone) | ? | Permanent: draw 3 cards per turn instead of 2 |
| Sticks and Stones | Attack, LOS | ? | Damage = (target's magic sticks + stones) x NUMBER |
| Sucker | Attack, LOS | ? | The treasure the target carries proves fake and returns to its starting square |
| Super-Dodge | Counteraction | ? | Dodge any one physical attack outright; 50% chance to dodge an LOS spell |
| Swap Sectors | Neutral | ? | Exchange the positions of any two board sectors (no rotation) |
| Teleport Creation | Neutral, LOS | ? | Send any created object or monster — even immobile ones — to any vacant square |
| Teleport Load | Object | ? | Placeable beacon: while ON, every attempted teleport lands on it instead |
| Teleport Object | Neutral, LOS | ? | Teleport an uncarried movable object up to 4 spaces through obstacles (not to home bases) |
| Time Warp | Neutral | ? | NUMBER turns elapse instantly, burning down every active duration spell |
| Tiny Swap | Neutral, LOS | ? | Exchange any two things in your LOS — items, people, monsters, even fixed creations |
| Vampire! | Neutral | ? | Bat form: move 7, hit only 1 time in 4, 2-point bite, no treasures or spells; duration = NUMBER |
| Wall of Fog | Neutral, LOS | ? | Permanent fog wall: blocks LOS but not movement; fire and it destroy each other |
| Wall of Glass | Neutral, LOS | ? | Permanent glass wall: blocks movement but not LOS; 6 damage at once (or 10 cumulative) shatters it |
| Werewolf | Neutral | ? | Wolf form at will: move 4, d4 punch, casting limited to counteractions and items |
| X-Ray Vision | Neutral | ? | Gain LOS through any two walls for one spell |
### Artifacts (Expansion Set #2 only — 16 cards, dropped from later editions/redesigns)
| Card | Type | Qty | Effect (paraphrased) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Amber Pendant | Artifact | ? | Bind one counteraction or duration spell into it; that spell stays active/reusable while worn |
| Arm of Thor | Artifact | ? | Carry two treasures — but roll each turn; a 1 costs 4 damage |
| Book of Infinite Spells | Artifact | ? | A separate 5-card spellbook hand, refilled 1 card per turn; objects drawn are tossed back |
| Brain | Artifact | ? | However many spells you burn, your hand refills fully at end of turn |
| Claw of Mars | Artifact | ? | Three attacks per turn |
| Crystal Ball | Artifact | ? | LOS to anywhere on the board within NUMBER range per use |
| Evil Eye | Artifact | ? | Glare at someone in LOS for 2 damage, once per turn (your attack) |
| Eye of the Beholder | Artifact | ? | Borrow another wizard's LOS for your casting; reflections hit them, not you |
| Eye of Claremont | Artifact | ? | Inspect any one player's hand once per turn |
| Force of the Jet-Eye | Artifact | ? | Nudge any player one space during your turn (counts as an attack) |
| Magic Armor of Ares | Artifact | ? | Absorbs 2 points from every point-type attack, physical or magical |
| Power Battery | Artifact | ? | Bank number cards inside; spend the stored power freely — but a thief gets it all |
| Ring of Power | Artifact | ? | A reusable 3-value number card, once per turn |
| Shield of Azpesdoze | Artifact | ? | Total immunity to fire damage of every kind |
| Teleport Amulet | Artifact | ? | Teleport d4 spaces but pay d4 life, uncounterable; once per turn, replaces movement |
| Wings of Mercury | Artifact | ? | You may keep acting after picking up an object |
---
## Gaps to fill from the physical 6th-edition copy
1. **Per-card quantities** for the base deck (and number-card distribution 2–6) — no
online source records them. Photograph the sorted deck and count.
2. **Exact 6e deck membership**: confirm the base deck matches the "Basic" column above
(esp. whether Bomb, Dispel Creation, and Trap! are in the 6e box, and whether any Exp2
cards snuck in).
3. **Verbatim card wording** — everything above is paraphrased. Capture text from the
cards themselves or from the archived scans (see sources file; every non-artifact card
has a PNG scan on the archived wizwar.com).
4. **7th edition delta**: which 5 cards the 1997 130-card deck added over 6e's 125 is
undocumented.
5. **Artifact scans**: the archived site has reference text but no scans for the 16
artifacts; only the text database covers them.
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# Wiz-War (Chessex era) — Annotated Source List
Compiled 2026-08-15. "Reliability" reflects how authoritative the source is for the
Chessex 5th/6th/7th edition card pool.
## Primary sources (official / designer-run)
### 1. wizwar.com — Tom Jolly / Jolly Games' official Wiz-War site (via Wayback Machine)
The single best source. The site is dead; all links below are Internet Archive captures.
- **Card index with set tags and scan thumbnails** (alphabetical; every card tagged
Basic / 1st / 2nd expansion; each name links to a full-size PNG scan of the actual card):
https://web.archive.org/web/20160318081653/http://www.wizwar.com/cards/
- Full-size card scans follow the pattern
`https://web.archive.org/web/20160318081653im_/http://www.wizwar.com/cards/Cards/Basic/Fireball.png`
(also `.../Cards/1st/...` and `.../Cards/2nd/...`). These scans are the verbatim-text
source for every non-artifact card.
- Reliability: **authoritative** — designer's own site. Titled "Wiz-War: The 5th
Edition" but per BGG discussion it contains every non-fan card in circulation and
matches the 6e deck ("Basic" includes the 6e-only Speedstone).
- **Card reference database** (all 208 cards — including the 16 Exp2 Artifacts — with
full rules text, Jolly's FAQ answers, and commentary;
the numbered contents list at top doubles as a complete checklist):
https://web.archive.org/web/20160425040139/http://www.wizwar.com/cards/cards.html
- Reliability: **authoritative** for card text and rulings. Notes flag Speedstone and
Bomb as 6th-edition cards and explain Dispel Creation's move into the base deck.
- **Card table sortable by type/set** (type + LOS + creation/object class per card):
https://web.archive.org/web/20160425032433/http://www.wizwar.com/cards/scans.php?sort=set
- **Older one-page card database (2001)** — name / description / action / target table,
~195 cards, predates the scans:
https://web.archive.org/web/20010309120048/http://www.wizwar.com/cards.htm
- **Board scans**: https://web.archive.org/web/20160318081653/http://www.wizwar.com/cards/boards.php
(Boards I–IV plus the Expansion "Brownboards" I–II).
- What's missing here: **no per-card quantities**, and no scans of the 16 Artifacts
(text only, in cards.html).
## Edition / expansion identification
### 2. BoardGameGeek — version and expansion pages
- Wiz-War main page (game id 589): https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/589/wiz-war
- 6th edition version page (box back: 1 rulebook, 4 boards, 2 token sheets, **125 spell
cards**, 1 die; 1993, Phil Morrissey art):
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgameversion/27352/chessex-sixth-edition
- 7th "classic" edition 1997 (box back: **130 spell cards** "including spells, stones &
hazard cards", 4 stands): https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgameversion/28612/chessex-classic-edition-1997
- Expansion Set #1 (item 28071; orig. Jolly Games 1985/88):
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/28071/wiz-war-expansion-set-1
- Chessex "English third edition" 1993 purple box — **75 spell cards, 2 boards,
2 token sheets**, "for use with the 6th edition set":
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgameversion/35412/english-third-edition
- Expansion Set #2 (item 38450; 1993): **85 cards featuring Artifacts**, new tokens/rules,
"Mad Wizard" rules digest; page notes it's only valid for 5th edition and earlier and
that most of it (the Artifacts) never appeared in Chessex editions:
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/38450/wiz-war-expansion-set-2
- Reliability: **good** — component counts quote the box backs.
- Note: BGG blocks plain fetches (403); the JSON API at
`https://api.geekdo.com/api/geekitems?objectid=<id>&objecttype=thing|version` works.
### 3. Wikipedia — Wiz-War
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiz-War — edition timeline: Jolly Games eds. 1–4
(1983–1985) with expansions 1988 and 1991; Chessex 5e 1991, 6e 1993 (blue box), expansion
reprint 1993 (purple box), 7e 1997; FFG 8e 2012 (full redesign, different cards; expansions
Malefic Curses / Bestial Forces); SJG 9e 2023. Reliability: good for history, no card data.
## Card-list discussion / quantity hints
### 4. BGG forum thread "6th Edition Chessex Card List" (2020, thread 2356205)
https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/2356205/6th-edition-chessex-card-list
- A buyer of an unpunched 6e copy had 121 of the stated 125 cards; by comparison with a
list he was missing **1 of 2 Blunt, 1 of 2 Create Wall, the single Brainstone
("brainstorm"), the single Dagger**, and had an extra Drag (2 instead of 1) — the only
per-card quantity data found anywhere online.
- Also the pointer to the archived wizwar.com/cards/ list, described by a poster as
containing "all the non-fan-designed cards" despite its 5th-edition label.
- Reliability: fair (fan recollection), but firsthand physical counts.
## Fan reconstructions and print-and-play files (BGG Files section, game 589)
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/589/wiz-war/files — **downloads require a free BGG
login.** Useful for cross-checking card pools and for verbatim-adjacent text:
- **Kwanchai's Wiz War Redesign** (filepage 35997) — full redesigned PnP deck of the
Chessex-era card pool: https://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/35997/kwanchais-wiz-war-redesign
- **WizWar "Magic Stone" Basic Set** (filepage 54028) — Ilya 77's redesign: boards + tokens:
https://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/54028/wizwar-magic-stone-basic-set
- **WizWar MStone Cards Basic** (filepage 48093) — basic card set incl. number cards:
https://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/48093/wizwar-mstone-cards-basic
- **WizWar "Magic Stone" Expansion 1** (filepage 54029) — all Exp1 cards + tokens:
https://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/54029/wizwar-magic-stone-expansion-1
- **WizWar "Magic Stone" Expansion 2** (filepage 60781) — all Exp2 cards + tokens:
https://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/60781/wizwar-magic-stone-expansion-2
- **Community Expansion+** (filepage 98753) — fan-designed extra cards (not official):
https://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/98753/wizwar-magic-stone-community-expansion-plus
- **Wiz War FAQ.doc** (filepage 2537, 2003) — comprehensive FAQ, quotes rulings:
https://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/2537/wiz-war-faqdoc
- **English rules Doc1.doc** (filepage 4689): https://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/4689/doc1doc
- Reliability: redesigns are faithful to the Chessex card pool (the wizwar.com list matches
them), but art/wording are fan-made; quantities in the PnP decks may not match retail.
## Fan-designed extra cards (NOT official — exclude from the 6e list)
- The Game Cabinet, "Wiz War Additional Cards" (1990s Usenet compilations by Merlyn LeRoy,
Timothy Cain, Kerim Aydin, Moonpile; plus Charlie Prince's PostScript card typesetter):
- http://www.gamecabinet.com/rules/WizWarCardsStart.html (index; pages 1–5 linked)
- Reliability: authentic period documents, but all homebrew content.
- wiki.wizwar.net (https://wiki.wizwar.net/doku.php?id=decks) — thorough wiki but covers
the **FFG 8th edition only** (7 base schools + 6 expansion schools); not applicable to
Chessex decks. Same for wizwarmastered.blogspot.com card lists and Dized rules pages.
## Marketplace confirmations (component lists)
- Noble Knight, Wiz-War 6th Edition: https://www.nobleknight.com/P/2147384243/Wiz-War-6th-Edition
- Noble Knight, 6e + Expansion #1 bundle:
https://www.nobleknight.com/P/2148330144/Wiz-War-Collection-2---Base-Game-6th-Edition-w-Expansion-1
- Reliability: fine for what shipped in a box, no card detail.
## Access notes
- boardgamegeek.com and api.geekdo.com reject default fetchers; send a browser User-Agent.
Forum posts are readable without login via
`https://api.geekdo.com/api/articles?threadid=<id>`; file downloads need a login.
- Wayback CDX index for wizwar.com (to find more captures):
`http://web.archive.org/cdx/search/cdx?url=wizwar.com&matchType=domain&collapse=urlkey`
- The live wizwar.com domain is now unrelated/parked; use archived captures only.
## Follow-up: BGG thread 2356205 ("6th Edition Chessex Card List") — CLOSED, no new data
Retrieved 2026-08-15 via `api.geekdo.com/api/articles?threadid=2356205` (raw JSON saved
as `bgg-thread-2356205.json`). Six posts, Jan 2020. Contains NO card list: an owner of an
incomplete 6E copy (121 of 125 cards) asks for one, and is pointed at the archived
wizwar.com/cards database already mined above. Only data: the owner's inventory delta
(missing 1-of-2 Blunt... actually 2x Blunt, 1x Brainstorm, 1-of-2 Create Wall, 1x Dagger;
one EXTRA Drag, 2 instead of 1) — matches the quantity fragments already recorded. Do not
re-chase this thread.
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Rules FAQ for Wiz-War, in alphabetical order.
Last updated Sept 1 2002
Have your own questions?
General rules questions
The 7th Edition Board Layout
The board layout for 4 players is incorrect. The opposite edges should have
identical letters at the opposite board entries. You can leave a board on one side
and enter the opposite board edge at the space that is exactly opposite the one you
left. The 2 player board is a little different in that the exits really DO cross over, which means, if you are playing a 2 player game, toss out the RELOCATE SECTOR card, which is useless in a 2 player game (or, just redraw when you come to it).
Attack-Neutral Combos
Some cards have mutiple spell designations in the corner (ATTACK, NEUTRAL, COUNTERACTION) with some combination of spell types shown. Since the rules stipulate that you can cast a COUNTERACTION out of turn or during your normal turn, the COUNTERACTION-NEUTRAL is redundant (and to be eliminated in later editions). All the cards with "SELF" marked on them were changed to "LOS" in later editions, primarily because you are obviously in LOS with yourself, and the card specifies that you cast the spell on yourself. These will be changed back to "SELF" in later additions, primarily due to the fact that it misleads people into believing that a "SELF" type spell can be cast on anyone. In the 8th edition, "who" the spell can be cast on will be very specifically defined. The cards that DO say ATTACK-NEUTRAL on them refer to the fact that they are a Neutral spell if cast on yourself and an Attack when cast on others.
Combat
You can't attack yourself. This is mentioned in the 6th edition rules, but no
earlier editions. This is a very important rule! Also, the rule should read "No ATTACKS can be used during the first round of turns", not "No COMBAT during the first round of turns". It's perfectly okay to use a DESTROY WALL next to a person, thus damaging him on the first turn, since it is not an attack.
Creating Objects
More notes on creating objects on one's home base; the
basic rules state that you may NOT create an object on a player's home
base. This rule appears to get broken by such a card as TRADER, and some TELEPORTATIONS. This is alright as long as "immobile objects", such as Solid Stone or Thornbush, are not placed on the home base. The 8th edition clarifies this, since it limits what can and cannot be teleported on the cards. TRADER, for example, only works on "Mobile Objects".
Death
The second-hand killing of a Wizard, say by falling walls or
controlled MONSTERS, does not get you his cards, nor does a MONSTER get
cards by killing a player!
Dumping Cards and Physical Objects
This is explained pretty well in the
basic rules, but everybody seems to forget you can do it. If you want to
discard a physical object, it is NOT necessary to dump it on the board, you
can just discard it to the discard pile. The board would get very crowded
otherwise. This includes ARTIFACTS, if you think someone is about to take
one from you and there's nothing you can do about it. This can only be done during
your own turn (this is not in the rules, but will be next printing).
Line-of-Sight
If you "barely nick a corner" of a wall, this is still NOT
line-of-sight. A VISIONSTONE could see through the corner, but if you
"nicked two corners", the VISIONSTONE would not work.
The new Wiz-War set, 6th edition, has no dots in the center of the
squares with which to measure line-of-sight, even though the rules say to
use these non-existent dots. Our advice is to eyeball the center of the
square, or put your own dots on the playing board. It might also be
worthwhile to take a magic marker and draw the walls brown, as they do not
stand out very well as it is.
Lost Turns
These will accumulate if you get hit by a "lost turns" type
spell while under the effect of another "lost turns" spell. Also, if you
lose a turn while under a duration spell, this still uses up a turn of the
duration spell.
If you happen to get hit by a reflected attack (yours), and you "lose a turn",
this would be THAT turn, not your next turn. This could happen with
Lightning Bolt or Hypnosis, for example.
As the rules say, if you Lose a Turn, you can't do anything but play
Counteractions until your next turn. This also means you can't draw cards!
Magic Sticks
These don't have to be displayed. When you first charge it
with a NUMBER card, the NUMBER card gets discarded, so it no longer counts
as part of your hand.
Magic Stones
They may be discarded as cards even after used and
displayed. Nothing makes an object so permanent that it cannot be
discarded. This is always a player option. MAGIC STONES are not "created"
by the card, the card merely represents the physical object. It may be
displayed and left displayed whenever you use it first, even if it is not
your turn.
Monsters
These are creatures that do damage, generally. This means that
ALTER EGO, SHADOW, FAMILIAR, and KILLER OOZE are considered MONSTERS, while
the SLIME, ANIMATE OBJECT, DECOY and BUCK are not, even though they are
mobile.
Though some Monsters can carry objects, they cannot use them.
You can't attack your own monsters. This is in line with the rule that
you can't attack yourself, and prevents some rule conflicts.
Monsters that can cast spells can cast "SELF" spells, too. A monster that changes itself into a different monster (like a Werewolf), assumes the attributes of that monster, as described on the card, but retains any other attributes not mentioned.
Picking Up Objects
No, you can't pick up 2 objects at the same time, even if they're in the
same space.
Players as Objects
There is some confusion in the rules which will
probably not be resolved until next edition as to whether Wizards and
MONSTERS can be treated as objects or not, for purposes of spells such as
DRAG and a few others. Unfortunately, this is not well defined anywhere.
The basic rules state that players are NOT objects, so spells such as
TELEPORT OBJECT and
ANIMATE OBJECT would have no effect on Wizards. Use common sense and house
rules. You will rarely run into
this as a problem, but you could. Obviously, if a card says a MONSTER can
carry objects, it is NOT referring to other Wizards!
Spell Priority
There is some question as to whether Counteractions or
Attacks work first, especially in a case like SHIELDSTONE vs FIREBALL.
Counteractions always work first. Thus, if someone was hit with a FIREBALL
while they were carrying a BLOODSTONE, the BLOODSTONE would reduce the
damage done by a point before it was destroyed.
If you have 2 Counteractions you want to use, you decide for yourself
which one activates first.
If a spell gets counteracted, the number card (if any) that accompanied it is also discarded.
Throwing Objects
The basic rules imply, without explicitly stating, that
you can throw objects, but not treasures. That's true! You could take a
Magic Stone and throw it inot a PIT 3 spaces away, if you wanted. Throwing
objects at other players does not do any damage, unless a card, such as
HEAVE-HO or DAGGER says so.
Treasures
If a player is eliminated, any treasure left on his home base
does NOT count toward eliminating the player to whom that treasure belongs. Also, the 7th edition rules are rather badly worded and imply that you can carry 2 treasures as long as one of them is your own and the other belongs to another player. This is incorrect. You can carry only ONE treasure, and it can be EITHER one of your own or one of the opponent's.
Card FAQ's for Wiz-War
Absorb
This is only for one attack, it does not work against 3 points of
damage from multiple attacks in one turn.
Absorb Spell
When played versus a REUSE SPELL, ABSORB SPELL takes
priority, since it makes no sense doing it the other way! Also ABSORB SPELL
defeats a CARD ERASURE, as Counteractions take effect before Attacks.
ABSORB SPELL has no effect on objects or the spells they produce, such as
Magics Sticks, Magic Stones, and Artifacts. ABSORB SPELL will not work
against ANTI-ANTI, since ANTI-ANTI is not used against the player, but
rather his spell. Yes, ABSORB SPELL will work on FULL REFLECTION or
REFLECTION, but not FULL SHIELD, as that is not used against you, but cast
upon the player using it.
Add
Can you play a NUMBER card to add to your movement, then perform some action
that gets you another NUMBER card, THEN play your ADD with the new NUMBER
card, adding it to the NUMBER card already played? No, you can't. When
the ADD card is used, the NUMBER cards to be added must be played together,
immediately upon casting the ADD spell.
Adrenaline
This lets you attack 2 times in a turn, it doesn't let you use
objects twice in a turn when the particular object says that it can be used
once a turn.
Alter Ego
The Alter Ego must be created in the space you are in; the fact the
card says "LOS" on it was merely to indicate that the space you are in is
certainly in your LOS. This will be changed in a later edition to "Same
Space".
Amber Pendant
Yes, the token says "AMBER AMULET", at least in the first
edition of this expansion. You obviously cannot put an object (like a
Magic Stick) in the AMBER PENDANT. It has to be a spell. A "neutral
duration spell" certainly does not include things like CREATE WALL, or
INTERRUPT, but would include SHRINK or INVISIBLE.
Amplify
With SLOW DEATH, it causes 2 pts. damage per turn. If AMPLIFY is
used with SHIELDSTONE, SHADOWSTONE, WIZARDBLADE, or other permanent
objects, note that it only affects that object for one use of the object,
not permanently. AMPLIFY can be used with a 1 point spell (one without a
NUMBER card) to make it worth 2 points. AMPLIFY does not affect NUMBER
cards going into POWER BATTERY, it only affects the power as you use it to
cast spells.
Animate Object
If this is on a TREASURE, and the treasure is on your home
base, is it considered to be sitting on your home base? Since this is an
enchantment on the object, and not a creature that is carrying it, then the
answer is YES.
Anti-Anti
Will work against SHIELDSTONE, but not SOULSTONE. This will not
work against Remove Curse, as Remove Curse does not counter the attack spell,
but merely stops the ongoing effects of the spell.
Around the Corner
This is a spell cast on another spell. If such a spell
is reflected, then the reflected spell will go back around the corner,
since it still has AROUND THE CORNER cast on it.
Big Man
Can be punched from an adjacent square, or attacked by MONSTERS
from an adjacent square. If he steps over something, like a PIT or KILLER
OOZE, it requires 2 movement points. If Big Man pushes someone to an
intersection, then the other player gets to decide which direction to go,
if Big Man decides to push him further. Big Man will cancel Shrink.
Blink
See TELEPORT, or TELEPORT SPELLS.
Blind
Even if you're BLIND, you can still move your MONSTERS okay, since
they aren't LOS controls, anyway. Also, non-LOS spells are not affected by
your being blind. If you try to cast a spell on someone, if it goes the
right direction, then it hits him. If you cast a spell that was supposed to
go 3 spaces away, and you accidentally point it at the wall next to you
instead, since the spell can't go the intended distance, it dissipates. If
you are trying to attack one player while you are BLIND and the spell ends
up going toward another player, it misses him.
Blunt
If you play two in a row, they act one after the other, they do not cancel the
damage out entirely! Thus, against a 5 point Fireball, the first would reduce damage to 3 points (2.5 rounded up), and the second would reduce damage to 2 points (1.5 rounded up).
Book of Spells
This cannot hold items or objects, just spells and NUMBER
cards. Discard them if you draw objects, redrawing to fill to 5 cards.
These may be used in any combination you like with the cards in your hand.
REFLECTED spells will blast you, not the BOOK.
Brainstone
This has a loophole. If you drop it and pick it up, you get two
new cards, then get to draw 2 more at the end of your turn. This is, so
far, legal.
Buck
See "Pass the Buck"
Buddy
Some people think this should be an ATTACK. If you want to play it
that way, fine. Some people also think it should be burned. Some play it as
a duration card, so you could do this as a house rule. In the next
revision, it will just become an ATTACK.
Claw of Mars
This does NOT allow you to use objects more than once per
turn if the object says it can be used only once per turn. It will,
however, let you punch someone 3 times, or use 3 different attacks.
Create Big Black Bat
It can carry, but not use, objects, not even passive
objects like AMBER PENDANT with a Counteraction. Obviously a BAT with a
BRAINSTONE can't draw cards.
Create Familiar
It can carry a spell, not an object.
Create Pit
Yes, you can drop objects in here, even while you are jumping
over the PIT. No, contrary to what the card says, you can't create objects
in or on or over the PIT, which eliminates all those bizarre questions
about creating SOLID STONE over a PIT and having it fall down, or making a
WALL sideways over a PIT, and so on. TINY SWAP can't be used to do this
either, as this would qualify as creating an object in a space where an
object already is, which is against the basic rules. FILL SQUARE WITH
STONE cancels a PIT, and any objects inside the PIT at the time appear at
the top, on the floor, so nothing gets "squashed". It takes a whole turn to
climb out of, as well as into, a PIT, and your movement would end adjacent
to the PIT. You could still add NUMBER cards to your movement in such a
case, though. You can jump diagonally across a PIT if it's at an
intersection, but it still takes 2 movement points to get across. A player
outside and adjacent to the PIT has LOS into the PIT, but a player in the
PIT has no LOS outside of the PIT (except in the very rare instance where
someone jumps or flies over and he uses an INTERRUPT to cast an
attack...you get the idea). If a PUSH OBJECT is used to shove a treasure in
on someone in a PIT, they take 2 points damage just as normal from a PUSHED
OBJECT.
Create Pit, more
Climbing into a PIT, you must start the turn adjacent to
the PIT, and may not perform any other actions while climbing. You could,
if you like, just fall in and take the damage. Two or more adjacent PITS
would just make one long PIT.
Create Wall
This can NOT be created in the middle of a square, or diagonally across
a square. This is true of any wall. Obviously it cannot be created on top of
a wall section with a door or an illusionary wall, as this would constitute
creating an object on a space that already has an object in it.
Destroy Wall
Works just fine on door-sections too. While ABSORB and BLUNT
will work fine against the damage from a falling wall, FULL SHIELD will
not, since it is not a magical attack.
Disease
The instructions on this one are confusing even to me. The
sentence that says "Disease is short-lived, you must infect a player every
turn for it to do any damage" can easily be misinterpreted. If you walk
into a space with another player while the spell is active, they take
damage. They do not "catch" the disease", thus the disease is short-lived.
If you want the player to take more damage from DISEASE, you enter his
square again on a following turn (or remain in the same square if he does
not move). There's some question as to whether the casting of the spell is
an ATTACK, or whether it is entering a square with another player that is
the ATTACK. Entering another player's square constitutes the ATTACK, not
casting the spell. This card violates the rule (somewhat) that you can't
attack more than once in a turn, since you can clearly infect more than one
person, as the card says. That's okay, it's supposed to be that way. By
this logic, a person with BUDDY cast on him, and DISEASE, cannot infect his
BUDDY, that is, cannot enter his space. Also, entering one player's space
multiple times in one turn does NOT cause extra damage, the damage can only
be inflicted to a single player once in a turn.
Dispel Creation
This has references to Expansion #1 cards, which, if you
have the basic set without the expansion, you have to ignore. The reason
for this is, DISPEL CREATION used to only be in the Expansion...it was
considered a good idea to put one in the basic set, but unfortunately, it
did not get edited to accomodate this move.
Door-to-door
The range of area-of-effect spells such as FEAR counts up to
where one side of the door is, then finishes counting at the other end of
the warp.
Double-barrel
Should say "half-strength attacks", not "half-strength spells", thus a
physical attack would work also.
Drag
This will work on Wizards and MONSTERS just fine. It will also work with
AROUND THE CORNER.
Dust Cloud
This will work on players or monsters. If someone tries to
physically attack someone else in a DUST CLOUD, they must roll the die to
see if they hit (a 1 in 4 chance). Since DUST CLOUD blocks LOS, an LOS
spell cannot be cast upon a player in DUST CLOUD, or by a player who is in
a DUST CLOUD. Spells cast upon oneself still work fine, though, and no roll
is required.
Empathy
If used as a Counteraction, the duration of the spell starts when
cast and ends at the beginning of one of the turns of the player that
attacked you. If used against CHAOS, it is quite ineffective, since it does
what CHAOS does anyway. This will not work against an already-active
spell, just new ones.
Exploding Energy
This only affects NUMBER cards carried by the Wizard, no items he carries,
such as POWER BATTERY or RING OF POWER.
Extend
Does not work on already-active spells.
Eye of Claremont
This should be marked as an attack.
Fear
If a player plays GO AWAY on someone where that person would have to
move into FEAR'S radius, treat it as though the player ran into a dead end.
FEAR wins. Since FEAR is cast on your SELF, it is not Counteractible. FEAR
even scares your own MONSTERS off. FEAR also takes priority over someone
who is UGLY. The 3 spaces away is measured as a Wizards walks (if he could
walk through walls), not diagonally.
FEAR doesn't affect other players until their own turns, but
technically it becomes active the moment it is cast. This is unlike UGLY,
which takes place instantly and forces other players to move away from you
during your turn. With FEAR, they have to use their own movement on their
own turn to move away from you. During your own turn, you could move back
into range with them, which would once again force them, on their own turn,
to try to move away from you.
If an opponent cannot move away from you but owns a card that would allow
him to do so (like Pass Through Wall or Teleport) he must use it to escape.
Fill Square with Slime
Sure, you can leave items in SLIME, but you can't
teleport someone there or create something else inside, like a MONSTER, or
leave a creation spell trapped inside. This is per the rule that you can't
create an object in a space where there is already an object. HANDFUL OF
TACKS would work just fine in SLIME, as it isn't a spell. Only water will
damage the SLIME, so other attacks are useless. Spells stuck in SLIME only
go off once, the first time someone walks into the SLIME. SLIME is a big
cube filling the corridor, and offers no LOS, nor can it be flown over.
Fire Imp
Will attack MONSTERS as well as players. If put in line of sight
with a KILLER OOZE, it will shoot it every turn until 5 points have
accumulated on it and killed it.
If the FIRE IMP hits you with his attack during your turn, you
can only use a COUNTERACTION against it, even though it is during your
turn. You might look at it as though the IMP is taking a turn within your
turn. What he shoots at you, technically, is a spell, and does magical
damage, thus may be COUNTERACTED like a spell. You cannot AMPLIFY, then
REVERSE the damage done to you, as AMPLIFY is a NEUTRAL and may not be used
to aid in COUNTERACTING the damage.
No, you can't create a FIRE IMP over a PIT. That consititutes creating
an object in an occupied space, which is against the rules (the PIT
occupies the space).
Force Field
For those of you who don't own this spell, it says;COUNTERACTION. L.O.S.
Creates a force field immediately
adjacent to you on one side only, preventing an opponent from entering the
space you occupy or cating [sic] spells on or past you. Lasts only
until the end of the opponent's turn. The Force Field is stationary, it does not move with the player. Cards that represent non-spell items, such as daggers, can fly through the field just fine. Likewise, Wizardblade can slice through the field.
Force of the Jet-eye
To be used only once per turn.
Gift From Below
Sure, you can use counteractions on this. Even reflections will work,
although no opponent will take any damage.
Handful of Tacks
These work just fine on MONSTERS, too, as do other hazards. If a player
chooses to pick up the tacks, they cannot perform other actions during their
turn of picking them up, although they can break the process of picking up
the tacks into 2 separate isolated turns. They can, of coures, draw cards
during these turns. If a player dumps the tacks into a space where someone is already standing, then that player takes no damage as he leaves the space where the tacks are. The next version of this card will say "entering the space" instead of "crossing the space".
Heave-ho
In the very rare occurence of a passage-loop, where HEAVE-HO
would travel forever, we've limited it to a maximum of 10 spaces. AROUND
THE CORNER has no effect on HEAVE-HO, as HEAVE-HO is cast on yourself, not
on the treasure. In the example below, where the "x's" represent Wizards,
HEAVE-HO does 3 points of damage, which are counted as spaces as the Wizard
walks;
_________________________
| | | |
| X | | |
|_______|_______|_______|
| | | |
| | | X |
|_______|_______|_______|
Howling Vacuum
This has no effect on a PERMAWARP if the other end of the
warp is in another sector. If it is in the same sector, passage through the
warp can, if possible, be counted as "the shortest path possible" to the
wizard casting the spell. An opponent WILL be pulled through a WALL OF
FIRE, if that is the shortest route, or a DUST CLOUD, or a WALL OF FOG,
etc. However, an opponent will NOT be pulled out of a PIT!
Hypnosis
Yes, this means you don't have to draw cards for your opponent at
the end of his turn. If REFLECTED, both players can control each other for
their next turns. This spell lasts a player's turn, so is in essence a
duration spell. If you cast Hypnosis on a Monster, you control the monster's *actions*, you do not take control of the monster. This is an important distinction for use upon Alter Ego, where the monster's controller's spells are used. Thus, the normal owner's spells are used up, not the ones belonging to the caster of Hynosis.
Idiot
"What am I doing here" is a joke. You don't really have to say it.
It's also the IDIOT'S choice as to whether he takes a short path through a
WALL OF FIRE (for example), or a long path around it. He can avoid
obstacles.
If you happen to already be carrying one of your treasures when you
are hit with this spell, it has no effect on you.
What is meant by "nothing can be done" is that all your effort must be
directed to getting to your nearest treasure. This still allows you to cast
and draw spells if they help you in your goal, but it does not allow you to
attack players or pick up other items, such as opponents' treasures. You
could, however, destroy a wall if your nearest treasure is behind it.
Illusionary Attack
Yep, you can use this to create a monster, or Swap, or Power Drain, even.
Each opponent affected has a 50% chance to believe in it; in the case of a
monster, each opponent rolls separately, the monster does not disappear
just because one player doesn't believe in it.
Illusion Wall
Just because you see a Wizard create an ILLUSION WALL does
not mean you know it's a fake, nor can you figure it out by watching
another Wizard walk through. You must roll to see if you believe it when
you see it. If you do believe it, it acts just like a real wall for you,
so even if you throw a dagger at it, the dagger would do 3 points of damage
to the wall and fall to the floor on your side of the wall. You can even
punch an ILLUSION WALL to pieces. If you destroy an ILLUSION WALL, this
does not destroy it for everyone, just you. You can't see through ILLUSION
WALL even if you know it's a fake.
Interrupt
If a player runs by in front of you, and you want to blast him
with a spell, state that you are casting your INTERRUPT as he passes in
front of you and you can cast the spell upon him.
Invisible
If a spell misses you while you are invisible, it hits nothing;
it dissipates into nothingness.
Janitor
Just like it says, ALL tokens, even DESTROYED WALLS, get removed.
Killer Ooze
This is a MONSTER. No, it does not block LOS, just lays in a
layer on the floor, and is not moveable. Only fire, and no other type of
attack, will hurt the ooze (except MONSTER BANE for 5 points).
Large Rock/Dagger
These are NOT spells (yes, the rules already say that)
which "create" the objects, they are the objects themselves. Yes, they can
be discarded!
Lifesaver
You would discard and redraw in a 2 player game. It doesn't say this
on the card, but it makes sense.
Lightningblast
If this gets FULLY REFLECTED, you lose the rest of your turn and can't
draw cards (in addition to damage).
Load Stone
Like it says, you can't discard it (which includes dropping it,
which is in essence discarding it), but you can certainly use whatever
means you have to dump it on another player, including SWAP OBJECT.
TELEPORT OBJECT would not work, as you are not giving it to another player.
Likewise, a player can take it from you by accident with a THOUGHT STEAL.
Master Key
Will not work with a JAMMED LOCK.
Medusa
Basically, you've turned to stone for a while, along with all the
stuff you've been carrying (except for ARTIFACTS, of course). You can't use
ANY spells, ARTIFACTS, Magic Sticks or Magic Stones during MEDUSA. Being
immune to damage does not mean you cannot be attacked with, let's say, a
SWAP. A person under MEDUSA cannot take damage from or be affected by a
TRAP. Anyone under MEDUSA would also be immune to SLOW DEATH and IT for the
duration of MEDUSA.
Mental Swap
If you were really rude, you could dump all your cards except
for MENTAL SWAP, and then trade hands. Of course, the other player might
use a FULL SHIELD on you.
Mistbody
Not affected by THORNBUSH or ROSEBUSH. A falling WALL would not
hurt you. You can still use objects, even while misted. If you drop or
throw something, it becomes unmisted (solid). No, Waterwalls will not
affect you, as you are floating along in the air, and the water is rushing
along on the floor. Yes, you can reach into a SAFE. MISTBODY is also immune
to KILLER OOZE, which lies on the floor.
Monster Bane
If you cast this against a monster that does not have any
specific life points, like SHADOW or FIRE-IMP, then you only get 1 point
from the monster.
Negate Neutral
This is a counteraction, and as such can certainly stop a
Destroy Wall spell as it is cast. It has no effect on Neutrals after they
have been cast, so it cannot make an item that was created with a Neutral
spell go away if it already exists.
No Spell
Works only on the player, not his magic items.
Pass the Buck
Can be attacked by a MONSTER in an adjacent square, or punched by a
Wizard in an adjacent square.
Permawarp
With area affect spells such as FEAR and BOMB, you would count
up to where the PERMAWARP is, then count the remainder of the effect's
distance in an area around the other end of PERMAWARP. I've also been told
PERMAWARP is much too powerful. If it seems so to you, play it so it
activates immediately upon being drawn, meaning a player cannot hold it
until the perfect moment to win the game, but must choose the best place to
locate it based upon where he is at the time.
Power Drain
If REFLECTION is used against it, they cancel, since you both
lose and gain the same number of points. Using POWER DRAIN on your own
monsters is not allowed, since you are not allowed to attack yourself or
your own controlled monsters. If POWER DRAIN is BLUNTed, then you still
POWER DRAIN the same amount of points, but your opponent takes less damage. He
is blunting "damage done", not acting upon the attack spell itself. The same is true of ABSORB SPELL.
Psychic Storm
This will certainly affect the caster if he is dumb enough
to stand within range. FULL REFLECTION of this spell will only protect the
one player using it, but casue a second PSYCHIC STORM to form where the
caster stands. REFLECTION, likewise, would cause a half-damage STORM
originating at the caster's location, also reducing damage to the user of
REFLECTION by half, but leaving the spell at full power against anyone else
that happens to be in range of the original spell. In the strange case
where more than one player reflects it, damage is cumulative, so this is
one case where the spell could do more damage to the caster than the
opponent.
An "adjacent square" is defined as one of the 4 that are side-by-side
with the target square, not the diagonals.
Public Funds
This should NOT be LOS.
Reflection
If you counteract a spell with this, then you may still also
counteract the remaining damage with another counteraction, such as BLUNT.
Yes, an attack with RICOCHET or AROUND THE CORNER can be reflected back
onto the caster. Note that other spells that do not have LOS can also be
reflected. You are, in essence, casting a reflection upon a spell which itself has a spell cast upon it, allowing you to control it. REFLECTION also works on "numbers of things", like cards, so it would work on THOUGHT STEAL so both players lose a card to each other.
Relocate Sector
No, you can't have 2 sets of two boards, each, isolated.
The entire board must remain connected after a RELOCATE SECTOR. AUTOWARPS
do not suddenly appear after RELOCATE SECTOR is used. Opposite board edges
connect, nothing more. RELOCATE SECTOR is useless in a two-player game in the 7th edition since the exits cross over the way they do, and should be discarded if drawn, and replaced with a new card.
Remove Curse
This will stop permanent spells, even LIFESAVER, on a player.
It does not affect magic items, such as ARTIFACTS, magic sticks, or magic
stones, or an ANIMATED OBJECT.
Reverse
Against POWER DRAIN, both players will get points. REVERSE will
not work on you if it is you who are doing the attack. Thus, if you lose
points due to a POWER ATTACK you've used, you may not REVERSE these points!
Ricochet
See REFLECTION.
Rosebush
See THORNBUSH.
Safe
If an item is in a SAFE, it is not considered to be lying on the
ground. Thus, an item on a home base that is in a SAFE does not count as
one of the 2 needed to win, though technically there is no way to create a SAFE on a home base, since it's an immobile object, and you can create objects there. If a SAFE is dispelled, the item inside immediately falls to the ground.
Shadow
This clearly only costs you a point during your OWN turn, not everyone
else's too! The 1 point cost is paid at the beginning of each turn; you can
stop Shadow anytime you feel like it.
Shieldstone
No, it does not work as a "1" without a NUMBER card, and says
so right on the card. Only 1 Number Card per use!
Shrink
If a spell misses you while you are shrunk, it dissipates into
nothingness. Big Man will nullify Shrink.
Slime
What works in a SLIME? Some folks have trouble deciding what would
go well in a slime. Try a FIREBALL, or LIGHTNINGBLAST, or SLOW DEATH, or
SUDDEN DEATH. You get the idea. After a player sets off the spell, it only
affects him, later players entering the SLIME are not affected by the
spells which have already been set off.
Slow Death
REMOVE CURSE works just fine on this. Once it has been
activated, FULL SHIELD and REFLECTIONS would have no effect on it, as they
only work when a spell is cast, not on subsequent effects of the spell. If
SLOW DEATH is REVERSED, the player receives a point for every card drawn.
ABSORB against SLOW DEATH will only stop the damage incurred by one card,
sine ABSORB is meant to work for one attack. That's what's meant by
counteractions working "momentarily", they only effect the one point of
Slow Death that they are cast on, then the Slow Death spell continues to
operate as before.
Soulstone
If hit by a FIREBALL and you only have, for example, 4 points
left, since it is a Counteraction it will do its job first, thus you would
only take 1 point of fire damage, since the last 3 must be taken with
physical damage, but then the stone would be destroyed because some fire
damage got through at all.
Speed
With SPEED cast on you, your controlled MONSTERS get an extra turn,
too. Also, SPEED can be cast anytime during your turn, but not after you
pick up an object. This means you could cast it, pick up an object, draw
cards, then take your extra turn. You can't use SPEED to help you attack
someone on the first round of turns. If you have SPEED on you while under the
influence of a duration spell, it uses up a turn of that duration. This redefines the duration of a spell from the viewpoint of a caster; the duration STILL lasts until the start of the caster's turn, but the total number of turns is based on the recipient's turn-count.
Sticky Wand (or Sticky Stick)
Webs, if burned, disappear immediately.
h
Strength
If you tear a treasure out of someone else's hands, this does NOT count
as picking up an object and does not end your turn. In fact, you can tear a
treasure out of somebody's hands and drop it on the floor even while
carrying another treasure.
Swap
You can use a SWAP before TELEPORT, but not after (within the same
turn, of course). Since SWAP indicates that it replaces your movement, then
if a REUSE SPELL card is used, you cannot use SWAP again in the same turn,
as you have already performed your movement for the turn. Aesthetically this
doesn't make a lot of sense, and the card shouldn't say that SWAP replaces
movement, but rather if you use SWAP, you foresake your movement, which
would allow you to use it twice in a turn, as it would not actually be your
movement.
Swaps tend to disobey the rule about creating objects in occupied spaces,
but that's okay, they're supposed to.
SWAP MEET conflicts somewhat with the rule that says you can't create an
object where there is already an object, since SWAP MEET clearly says that
you swap carried objects, meaning you would HAVE to be in the same space as
the "created object". SWAP MEET, though, is an acception to the rules, and
its operation is clearly explained on the card. Swap Meet is also a little
ambiguous; you only swap ONE of your objects for ONE of the opponent's, not
two for two.
Teleport
If you use this spell as a Counteraction, the attack has no chance
of hitting you. Yes, with a REUSE SPELL, you can TELEPORT twice in a turn.
You can teleport only into a vacant space; the 8th edition clarifies this.
Teleport Amulet
If you attempt to use this and your roll lands you inside
solid stone, you do not teleport, but you still lose life-points.
Teleport Opponent
If REFLECTED, opponent chooses where he wishes to send
you. You may finish your normal movement after he moves you (unlike a
regular TELEPORT).
Teleport Spells
Some teleporation spells let you teleport into occupied spaces and some don't. This is usually called out explicitly on each card. They vary because some cards would violate game mechanics if you did them a certain way. Say for example, someone takes control of your Wizard and tries to use Teleport to put you inside a Solid Stone block. It can't happen in the 8th edition, because the card stipulates that you cannot teleport into an occupied space. If a card does NOT call out one or the other, then you can perform the noted teleportation to any space you like, within the limits of the card.
Thornbush
Could be punched from an adjacent square without damage to the
Wizard doing the punching.
Thumb of God
If your set says this card is LOS, ignore that. It can be
aimed anywhere on the board. If you really, really hate this card, and you
own the set, remove it from the game. There has been a bit of confusion
about this card. It does NOT eliminate any pieces or players from the game.
If they are knocked off the board, you just put them back on at the space
which is nearest to the edge where they got knocked off.
Tiny Swap
Though not intended to be used this way, it is possible to use
TINY SWAP to move yourself, since you are in your own LOS. Yes, this is a
much more powerful version of TRADER. No, you may not put immovable objects on a player's home base.
Torquemada
If your opponent has run out of fingers and teeth, then he can
probably no longer deal cards anyway, so any player with functional eyes
left will have to read all the players' cards to them. Ha! Just kidding.
Not a real card (Not yet, anyway).
Trader
If your Wizard is in LOS with 2 different objects which are resting
on the floor, you may swap their positions. The two items must be normally mobile objects, not things like THORNBUSHES.
Troll
No, he does not normally go above 6 life-points, unless he has some
other spell cast on him that allows this to happen.
Ugly
Not permanent, no. People move away even though it's not their turn.
This is instantaneous, no duration. It will affect all players in LOS.
Since it is cast on yourself, there is no "roll to hit" on players who are
INVISIBLE, SHRUNK, etc., if they are in LOS. Likewise, a Blinded person
cannot be affected by Ugly.
If you are stuck in a 1 square room with another player and he casts
UGLY on himself, nothing happens. I suppose you could throw up or
something, but there are no bad game effects.
Since UGLY is instantaneous, an opponent may certainly enter the UGLY
person's LOS after that person's turn, since he is no longer UGLY. Even
though most Counteractions are useless against UGLY, since it is cast on
oneself and not an opponent, it is still possible for an opponent to get
off a non-related Counteraction, like a Waterwall, just before UGLY forces
him to move, even casting past the UGLY person if desired.
Visionstone
We've said this before; you can't DRAG a solid object through
a wall. Generally, this applies to some other spells, too. VISIONSTONE
allows you to cast through a wall, but it does not allow solids to pass
through. You can still, of course, create objects and monsters on the other
side of a wall; it's the spell that goes through the wall, not the object
that you are creating! VISIONSTONE works fine on doors, but not SOLID
STONE. It will not help you see through other LOS-blocking things, such as
a THORNBUSH or DUSTCLOUD. REFLECTED spells will not get back to you, as the
person doing the REFLECTING cannot see through the wall.
If you are using Visionstone and are shooting a spell diagonally so
that it just clips the corner of the wall, passing through the corner
counts as going through 2 walls (the line-of-sight line does actually pass
through both walls that intersect at a corner), thus, the Visionstone would
not work here.
Walking Dead
FULL SHIELD and REFLECTIONS have no effect on this after it's
started, as they only work when a spell is first cast, not on subsequent
effects of the spell. WALKING DEAD works on folks that are flying, as well.
Wall of Fire
This blocks LOS, even for a FIRE IMP. WALL OF FIRE does not
destroy Magic Stones as a FIREBALL does. Damage done by a WALL OF FIRE is
not considered an attack on you, thus REVERSE has no effect on the damage.
You may NOT cast it on top of an ILLUSION WALL, as that violates the rule
about creating an object in an occupied space.
Ward
This is to be played when a player picks up a treasure, you can't use
it after a player has been carrying a treasure.
Waterwall
If used as a Counteraction against a fire-based spell, it still
washes Wizards back 2 spaces if in range. The movement of a WATERWALL does
not constitute a Counteraction, that is, if the backwash from a WATERWALL
would wash you out of LOS of a non-fire-based Attack, it doesn't move you
fast enough to prevent damage. Its effect against fire is based on the fact
that it suddenly appears right in front of the FIREBALL or on top of the
WALL OF FIRE. It need not be cast the same turn as WALL OF FIRE to destroy
it.
This of course implies that in this case you can create an object
where one already exists. Since this is explicitly defined on the card, it's
okay (since cards overrule the rules).
WATERWALL pushes away from the point of creation, so players on
opposite sides are pushed opposite directions. You could conceivably use it
just to move yourself an extra 2 spaces during a turn, if you like. If you
are in a space with another player and you use a WATERWALL, you are both
moved the same direction. Waterwall will NOT move you around corners; you
smack into the wall at the corner instead. If used on Handful of Tacks, they
are removed entirely from the board, not just washed back.
The Waterwall itself WILL move around corners, even though it won't push people around corners, so if someone is within the 2 space range around a corner, the Waterwall will still get them.
Wizardblade
This is most certainly an object. However, the damage it does
is like a spell attack, but since it is any object, ABSORB SPELL has no
effect on it. REFLECTIONS will work, putting magical damage back upon the
user. NO SPELL would stop WIZARDBLADE for its duration.
You have to supply a new Number card each time you use Wizardblade.
You have to discard each Number card as it's used in each attack.
Wraith
Yes, he can be attacked physically, with a DAGGER, punch, etc. If all the damage from
his attack is stopped, the attacked Wizard still loses a card!
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# Wiz-War — Rules for the Chessex 6th Edition (1993)
**Status of this document.** No scan or transcription of the actual 6th-edition rulebook was found online. What follows is (a) a **complete verbatim transcription of the 5th-edition rules** (the text the 6th-edition rulebook is a light revision of), recovered from the Wayback Machine copy of the fan site wizwar.com; (b) **documented, sourced facts about what the 6th edition changed**; (c) the verbatim **Expansion 1 & 2 rules** (sold alongside the 6th edition); and (d) rulings from **Tom Jolly's own official FAQ** covering timing, counterspells, and edition errata. Each section is labeled VERBATIM, SUMMARY, or UNCERTAIN.
Key: the Chessex 6th edition (1993, blue box, art by Phil Morrissey, Chessex product code 7000) is, per Tom Jolly's own FAQ and history writings, the same game as the Jolly Games 5th edition with revised rules text and a slightly changed card mix (125 spell/number cards vs. 124). The rules below are as close to the 6E rulebook as can be assembled without the physical booklet.
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## 1. What the 6th edition is (SUMMARY — sourced)
- Publisher: **Chessex, 1993**. "New 1993 edition with revised rules and new cards!" Box back: "The new Sixth Edition Wiz War contains: **1 rulebook, 4 boards, 2 sheets of tokens, 125 spell cards and 1 die.** May be enjoyed by 2 to 4 players." (BGG version page for "Chessex sixth edition", ObjectID 27352, product code 7000, box 10×8×1 in.)
- New larger **blue box**, new cover/token art by **Phil Morrissey**. ~2,000 copies printed; sold out. Known QC problems (~1 in 12 copies had miscounted cards or fingerprint smudges). (Tom Jolly, "A Brief History of Wiz-War", League of Gamemakers.)
- Edition lineage: 1st–3rd self-published Jolly Games (1985–), 4th–5th printed by Chessex with Jolly art (5th labeled "New 1991 Fifth Edition"), **6th = 1993 Chessex**, 7th = 1997 Chessex "Classic Edition" (made in Mexico, same box art), 8th = FFG 2012.
- Expansion #1 (1991) and Expansion #2 (1993), by Jolly Games/Chessex, were the compatible expansions sold during the 6E/7E era.
### Documented 6E-specific rule/content changes (SUMMARY — each point sourced)
From Tom Jolly's official Wiz-War FAQ (silcom.com/~tomjolly/wizfaq.htm, last updated Sept 1 2002):
1. **"You can't attack yourself" first appears in the 6th-edition rules** — "This is mentioned in the 6th edition rules, but no earlier editions. This is a very important rule!"
2. **6E boards have no dots in the centers of the squares**, even though the rulebook text still tells you to measure line-of-sight dot-to-dot: "The new Wiz-War set, 6th edition, has no dots in the center of the squares with which to measure line-of-sight, even though the rules say to use these non-existent dots. Our advice is to eyeball the center of the square… It might also be worthwhile to take a magic marker and draw the walls brown, as they do not stand out very well as it is." (Implication: the 6E rulebook text on LOS is essentially unchanged from 5E.)
3. **Card-count change 124 → 125.** The 5E rules say "a deck of 124 cards"; the 6E box says 125. The FAQ notes that **Dispel Creation was moved into the basic set** from Expansion #1 without its text being edited ("DISPEL CREATION used to only be in the Expansion... it was considered a good idea to put one in the basic set, but unfortunately, it did not get edited to accommodate this move"). UNCERTAIN: whether Dispel Creation is exactly the 125th card, or whether other swaps were made; the fan card database's commentary also flags **Bomb** as "I think this is a 6th edition card."
4. **A board layout was replaced between the 6th and 7th printings.** Tom Jolly's site (wwbrdnu.htm): "Between printing the 6th edition and the 7th edition, a playing board was replaced in Wiz-War. Here is the art for the one that was removed…" So the 6E set contains one board layout that the 7E does not.
5. **Die**: "numbered from 1-4… may be 8-sided or 4-sided, depending on what game edition you have" (5E rules text — written to cover multiple printings; the phrase appears designed to survive into the Chessex printings). UNCERTAIN which physical die shipped in 6E.
6. 7E-specific notes for contrast (NOT 6E): 7E's 2-player board layout has exits that genuinely cross over (making Relocate Sector useless in 2-player 7E games), and the 7E 4-player setup diagram is misprinted (opposite edges should carry identical letters). Both per the official FAQ.
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## 2. Base rules (VERBATIM — 5th edition text, from wizwar.com "Wiz War 5th Edition Rules", archived 2004; © 1985 Jolly Games)
> Transcription note: recovered from web.archive.org/web/20041205021940/http://www.wizwar.com/rules.htm. Typos in the source ("onE of the four sectors", the duplicated "He in turn will try to protect them" sentence, "theses things") are preserved where harmless. The 6E rulebook is a revision of this text; per Section 1, expect the 6E booklet to add "you cannot attack yourself" and say 125 cards.
### INTRODUCTION
Wiz War is a game for magical combat in a stone labyrinth. Players attempt to bring two of their opponent's treasures back to their home bases while at the same time guarding their own treasures against theft. A game usually takes from fifteen minutes to an hour to play, and can be played with two or more players.
### WINNING
There are two ways you can win Wiz War. One way is to eliminate all the other players in wizardly battle. The other way is to obtain two "treasure chests" from any of the other players (they need not both be from the same player), then return them, one at a time, to your home bases, and drop them there.
Alternatively, it is also possible to lose the game by allowing both of the treasures that you protect to be taken to another players' home bases and left there. The moment that both of your treasures sit on other players' home bases, you are out of the game.
### EQUIPMENT
A four section playing board, a deck of 124 cards, one sheet of cardboard tokens, a rule booklet, and one die (numbered from 1-4). It may be 8-sided or 4-sided, depending on what game edition you have.
*(6E: 125 cards, two sheets of tokens — see Section 1.)*
### STARTING THE GAME
Each player chooses one of the four sectors, face down, at random. Put these sectors together in any of the setups shown on the last page, depending on the number of players, and turn all the sectors over simultaneously. This is now your playing board.
Each player starts his playing piece in the exact center of the sector he chose. This center square is his HOME BASE, to which he will try to bring two of his opponents' treasures.
In each player's sector, his two treasure chests are placed on the small circles evident on each sector board. For the rest of the game, the other players will try to steal these, and he will try to protect them. He in turn will try to steal theirs.
Shuffle the cards and deal seven, face down, to each player. Put the remainder of the deck aside as a drawing stack. If "TRAP!" is drawn on the deal, discard it and redraw.
Take a sheet of paper and write the players' names and the number "15" below each. These are your life-points, and you will lose or gain points as the game progresses. If you get down to "0" points, you are considered dead, and you are out of the game. There is no upper limit to the number of points you might gain through actions in the game.
Turns go clockwise, starting with the player rolling highest on the die.
### THE BOARD
Notice the letters on the setup diagram on the last page of the rules. These boards have open sides; that is, if you leave a board at point "A" on either side, you will reenter at point "A" on the opposite side. By the same token, if you smash down a wall right next to the "A" exit, then you can enter the opposite board edge at the point relative to where you smashed the wall.
The apparent double wall at the junction of any two sectors is not double at all; it should be treated as a single wall.
The AUTO WARP is only used in the three-player game. It does not count as a space; you go directly from one end to the other. For all purposes, treat the connected board edges as though they are adjacent. It serves to connect the three sectors together in such a way as to prevent any unfair advantages for any particular board. If a sector gets RELOCATED through use of the RELOCATE card, then the AUTO WARP is discarded, and only opposite board edges connect. ROTATION has no effect on the AUTO WARP.
If casting a spell, or checking line of sight through the AUTO WARP, treat it as a straight line, and the two connected boards as though they were adjacent.
Doors are the narrow sections in the walls that look a bit like doors. They are considered locked at all times, and require special cards from the deck to be opened. After passage through a door, it automatically relocks itself.
You can, if you like, cast a spell through an opened door without passing through yourself.
You can't follow someone through a door unless they state they are holding it open for you. There is no way, besides a REMOVE LOCK card, to jam a door open.
### MOVEMENT
You may move up to three spaces per turn. If you wish, during any turn you may add one NUMBER card to your movement to increase your allowed movement for your turn. If the NUMBER card was "4", then you could move up to seven spaces that turn. The die is not used for movement.
### OBJECTS
**Fixed/Movable Objects:** Fixed objects cannot be moved. These include such things as walls, firewalls, illusion walls, thorn bushes, doors, and solid stone squares. Movable objects include magic stones, treasure chests, the DAGGER, the LARGE ROCK, the WIZARDBLADE, and other players. Other players cannot be picked up, of course, but they can be DRAGged with the DRAG spell. Generally speaking, movable objects do not block line of sight, while fixed objects do.
**Dropping and Retrieving Objects:** Sometimes you will have objects in your card hand that you do not wish to carry at the time, since you are limited to seven cards in your hand and you may wish to get new cards. In that case, you can drop any or all of them. To do this, you merely state that you are dropping an object, and put an appropriate cardboard token representing that object on the space that your playing piece occupies. You can do this any time during your turn. Anyone else may pick this object up at a later time, if they land on it. The card designating the object, if there is one, is placed next to the sector where the object was dropped. Another player picking this object up must take the card for it into his own hand.
If an object is thrown, it is considered to have landed in the targeted square unless some barrier, such as a THORNBUSH, is in the way. In that case the object lands immediately before the barrier.
**YOUR TURN ENDS IF YOU PICK UP ANY OBJECT**, and you may perform no more actions that turn, except for drawing cards. You can't pick up an object out of turn, even if you TELEPORT onto it.
Treasures are treated like other objects, but **YOU CAN ONLY CARRY ONE AT A TIME!** After all, these things are pretty heavy. You can carry any number of other objects along with the treasure, though. Treasures do not count as a card in your hand. Treasures may NOT be thrown.
You can carry your own treasure, and may even go retrieve your treasure after someone has placed it on their own home base, in addition to taking yet another player's treasure off of someone else's home base. If you are carrying a treasure, keep the token with the playing piece and do not remove it from the board.
Objects cannot be forcibly taken from you unless another player has a DROP OBJECT spell card that allows him to do so, or unless he kills you. He cannot paralyze you with MEDUSA, then take everything you have. He must use a card that directly applies to the removal or destruction of a physical object.
### THE CARDS
There are five different kinds of cards in the game. They are called ATTACK cards, NEUTRAL cards, COUNTER-ACTION cards, NUMBER cards, and MAGIC STONES.
**ATTACK** cards say "Attack" in the upper left-hand corner of each card. **ONLY ONE ATTACK CAN BE USED DURING EACH PLAYER TURN.** In the upper right-hand corner, the abbreviation "L.O.S." might appear. This means that a spell can only be used if a player has a clear line of sight to the person or object the spell is to be cast upon. Line of sight is defined as the line going from the center of the attacker's square to the center of the target's square. The center is the dot marked on each space. In the case of a CREATE WALL spell, the center would be the center of the wall to be created. If this line of sight is interrupted by any part of a wall, the spell cannot be cast.
*(6E: the boards have no printed dots — eyeball the square centers. See Section 1.)*
**NEUTRAL** cards are non-offensive or non-defensive spells. ANY NUMBER of Neutral spells can be cast during a player's turn. It is not impossible for a player to use his entire hand in one turn.
**COUNTERACTION** cards are the only cards that can be used OUT OF TURN. They can be used (but aren't usually) during a normal turn as a NEUTRAL card, but their primary use is as a defense against attacks. They are played immediately following an attack by the player who was attacked. You CANNOT counteract a Neutral card. You can, however, use an ABSORB or BLUNT against indirect damage caused to you (e.g., by a falling DESTROYed WALL).
More than one COUNTERACTION card can be used to defend against a single attack, either used sequentially or added together. It is also possible to COUNTERACT a COUNTERACTION card, so an attack may bounce back and forth a few times before coming to rest. In case a COUNTERACTION card only stops half of a spell, always round the resulting damage UP to the nearest whole number. If all damage from a spell is stopped, any secondary effects, such as a lost turn, are also stopped.
A player is not obligated to play a COUNTERACTION card if he does not wish to.
COUNTERACTIONS are instantaneous; they only affect the one attack spell they were played against.
**NUMBER** cards have three purposes. First, they can add to your movement, as mentioned earlier. Second, they can affect the DURATION of a spell, the NUMBER then representing the number of turns that the spell lasts. A duration spell starts when cast and ends at the start of one of the caster's next turns. Duration-based spells are marked as such on each card. Third, they can represent the POWER of a spell, so that a LIGHTNING BLAST with a "5" NUMBER card would do five points of damage to an opponent (plus one turn lost due to stunning, as mentioned on the card). This damage would then be subtracted from the victim's point total.
Only one NUMBER card can be played per action. So in one turn, a player may use a NUMBER card to enhance his movement, use another to ATTACK with, and use yet another to become INVISIBLE (if he has the card) for a certain number of turns, and so on.
**MAGIC STONES** are magical gems that bestow a special power upon the holder. Stones may be discarded like any other card if a player does not wish to keep them, or they may be dropped. The cards are permanent, and the power they bestow may be used as often as the opportunity arises. The name of each magical stone contains the word "STONE" and the description on each card is prefaced by the word "POWER".
Cards are used once, then discarded face up onto a discard pile. There are exceptions! These include physical objects such as MAGIC STONES, the DAGGER, the LARGE ROCK, the WIZARDBLADE, and the MASTER KEY. Physical objects are not removed from your hand unless they are dropped or thrown. Of all the physical objects, MAGIC STONES and the MASTER KEY have one other requirement: They must be displayed face up in front of you after you have used them. They are still considered part of the seven-card hand. If any cards are to be randomly lost or taken from a player's hand, these cards must be taken back into the hand before the choice is made.
If you kill an opponent, you get all of his cards, but you must immediately discard enough to bring your hand down to seven cards.
Some cards involve physical actions, like picking locks, removing locks, jamming locks, and throwing daggers. These are not spells.
### THE TURN
You can do a lot during your turn. You may move, attack once, and use as many NEUTRAL and COUNTERACTION cards as you like. As an example, you play a "3" NUMBER card and say "I'm moving six spaces this turn." Then you move two spaces into L.O.S. with another player, cast an attack, move back three spaces, create a wall, shrink yourself, then move back one more space. The order you use doesn't matter, and you can break up your movement while performing other actions. If you pick up an object during your turn, your turn ends the moment you pick it up.
Losing a turn means you can do NOTHING for that entire turn, except COUNTERACTION.
For the purpose of lost turns, or spell duration, a "turn" starts when a spell is cast, and ends at the beginning of one of the caster's turns.
### COMBAT
There is no combat during the first round of turns. Combat consists of taking a card from your hand and playing it against your opponent during your turn. If that player has a COUNTERACTION card, he may play it then. If you want to COUNTERACT his COUNTERACTION, and have the card to do so, you may. You may attack only once per turn. Spells automatically hit their target if not COUNTERACTed. If a spell misses for some reason, it dissipates harmlessly, and does NOT hit some object behind the target!
Any damage done to either player in the form of damage points is removed from the 15 points on his score sheet. If you get to "0" points, you are dead.
Damage points, points, damage, and point-based spells all refer to the same thing: things that take away points from you, an opponent, or object (such as a wall or door). They have nothing to do with duration-based spells.
If a person is eliminated from the game by being killed, then the last attacker gets all the dead person's cards. If a player is eliminated by having lost both his treasures to opponents' home bases, his cards are discarded.
You cannot physically attack through any type of wall, firewall, or bush. You cannot attack yourself. You cannot attack on the first round of turns, even if you have the SPEED spell.
*(6E: "You cannot attack yourself" is stated in the 6E rulebook; FAQ errata: the first-round restriction should read "no ATTACKS during the first round", not "no combat" — e.g. Destroy Wall next to someone on turn one is legal.)*
ANY CARD MAY BE PLAYED WITHOUT A NUMBER CARD, but its power is only "1". There are no "1" NUMBER cards in the deck.
When all else fails, you may PUNCH your opponent. This requires no card, but does constitute your attack for the turn. A punch does one point of damage, and you must be in the same square as your opponent to do it. If the object to be hit fills an entire square, you may be in an adjacent square to hit it. It is possible, though time-consuming, to punch a wall down. A wall takes 20 points of damage to destroy; a door takes 15. Any attack against an inanimate object counts as your one attack for the turn. The only inanimate objects you can attack are the walls, doors, and thornbushes.
It is possible to walk by an opponent or cast a spell past him without affecting him at all, if you want to.
Any deal can be made while in L.O.S. with another player, including, but not limited to, trading cards.
PHYSICAL DAMAGE and MAGICAL DAMAGE both take damage points from a player, but on rare occasions (designated on the cards) they are treated differently. Physical damage would include things like damage from the LARGE ROCK, the DAGGER, a PUNCH from another player, or a wall that falls on you from a DESTROY WALL spell. Magical damage would include any damage caused as a direct result of a spell, such as walking through a FIREWALL, getting hit with the WIZARDBLADE, or being hit with a LIGHTNINGBLAST.
### CARDS AND ACTIONS THAT CHANGE THE MAP
If you add a wall, destroy a wall, create a bush or firewall, etc., then you must take an appropriate cardboard token representing this and place it where the item was created.
You CANNOT create an object on a player's home base, or on any space already occupied by a player or object (unless it is a wall, which doesn't actually exist ON a space, but in between them). You cannot, for example, cast a FIREWALL where an ILLUSION WALL already exists, or two THORNBUSHES in the same square.
Walls cannot be cast diagonally. They must be cast on the lines between spaces.
If a card has no duration mentioned on it, the effect is either permanent (such as CREATE WALL) or instantaneous (such as FIREBALL).
If someone has cast CREATE WALL or DESTROY WALL on a junction between sectors, and some other moron decides he wants to use ROTATE SECTOR on one of them, then roll the die for a 50-50% chance to see which one of the two sectors the "alteration" stays with.
### GETTING NEW CARDS
You start with seven cards. You may draw up to two per turn, but may never have more than seven cards in your hand at one time. If for some reason you do, you must immediately discard enough cards to bring your hand down to the seven card limit. Draw new cards only at the end of YOUR turn.
If you want to discard cards from your hand just for the sake of getting new cards, you may. This includes cards which represent permanent objects, which give you the option of dropping the object or discarding it.
### THE DIE
This is referred to as a D4 in the game. It is either 8-sided (numbered from 1-4 twice) or 4-sided, depending on which game edition you have. It is NOT used to roll movement.
Whenever a random direction is called for in the course of the game, pick a number representing the direction you are trying to go, or trying to cast a spell (if you are BLINKed), and then roll for that number.
If you need to roll a 50-50% chance, just call 1,2 as low and 3,4 as high, determining which roll represents what, beforehand.
### DEATH
A dead player is out of the game and may not win even if two treasures are placed on his home base. His home base is no longer valid for the purpose of eliminating other players. His treasures, though, are still valid to use to win the game. A player who dies while performing an action that would normally win the game is considered to have died first, and is eliminated from the game.
*© 1985 Jolly Games*
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## 3. Expansion Set Rules for Expansion Sets 1 and 2 (VERBATIM — from wizwar.com/exp.html, archived 2003; © 1991, 1993 Jolly Games)
> These are the rules that shipped with the Chessex-era expansions compatible with the 6th edition. Expansion 1 (1991): 84 cards, 2 boards, tokens. Expansion 2 (1993): 106 cards, tokens. (Counts per Tom Jolly's site, wwexp1.htm.)
### MONSTERS
Expansion 1 introduces spells that create monsters. Any monster will follow the commands of its creator (unless otherwise noted on the cards, like the Imp), even when out of line-of-sight. They move any time during the controlling player's turn, so if a player gets an extra turn, or loses a turn, so does the monster (Imp excluded, again). Monsters, unless otherwise noted on the card, may not hurt their creators, carry items, cast spells or use cards from your hand. They are permanent creations, until killed. You may not add NUMBER cards to their movement, but you can cast NEUTRAL spells such as MIST-BODY and SPEED on them.
For the few instances where MONSTERS can carry items, they can't use those items at all (unless the card specifically says otherwise).
Monsters attack once per turn. They cannot attack the turn they are created, but may move on that turn. Creating a monster counts as your attack only on the turn it is created. You and your monster may both have attacks on later turns. Monsters can attack other monsters. Players may not attack a creature that they control. If a monster attacks a player and kills him, the controlling player DOES NOT get the dead player's cards.
If you cast SHADOW and later lose a turn, and you wish to maintain the SHADOW during your lost turn, it will still cost you a life point. If there are other "lasting" effects on you that you have no control over, these also occur even if you've lost a turn.
If you cast BUDDY, you can hurt the other player with a monster's attack without breaking the BUDDY spell, and he can do the same to you. A monster's attack is not YOUR attack.
If a monster sees an illusion, he has the same chance to believe the illusion as a player does.
A monster controlled by you does NOT count as a card in your hand. If you die, any monster controlled by you immediately disappears.
Monsters, like Wizards, will suffer the ill effects of objects in the corridor (like a Thornbush) just like Wizards. Also, if a card specifies "Opponent" or "Anyone" as a target, this includes Monsters.
Wizards can run past monsters without taking damage from them, just as they can run by other Wizards without getting punched. The obvious exceptions to this (like the Buck and the Fire Imp) are noted on the cards.
### FLYING AND LEVITATING
Things that fly, float, or levitate are immune to the effects of ground-based effects such as TACKS, KILLER OOZE, and WATERWALL.
### MAGIC STICKS
You can recognize a magic stick because the word "Stick" is in the name of the card. Each stick carries a number of "charges" set by the number card played when the stick is first used. This number tells you how many times the stick can be used before it gets discarded. Place a token on the card when played indicating how many charges the stick has, and leave the stick displayed. Any stick operates a maximum of once per turn. Once it is used up it is useless and may not be recharged, or retrieved from the discard pile. If ownership of a magic stick is taken by an opponent, then whatever charges are left on the stick are also transferred. If the initial number of charges has not been set, then the new owner may do so. AMPLIFY and ADD will both work when setting the initial number of charges.
Magic Sticks do not burn. They do, of course, count as a card in your hand.
SPEED or ADRENALINE will NOT allow you to use a Magic Stick more than once in your turn. While the spells speed YOU up (and your monsters, whose turns are slaved to you), they do not speed up the limits of the wand. This isolation of the wand from you allows you to use it even with NO SPELL cast on you.
ABSORB SPELL, of course, has no effect on Sticks, since they are objects and not spells, even though what Magic Sticks produce are considered spells.
### OTHER NOTES FOR THE FIRST EXPANSION
There are tokens on the counter sheet marked with a number of Charges. These are to help keep track of how many charges a Magic Stick has left on it (place the token in front of you after you have charged up the stick). You needn't use them if you can keep it all straight in your head.
If you don't like a card in your edition of Wiz War, don't use it.
The tokens for Magic Sticks and Magic Stones aren't meant to be carried by a Wizard. They are there in case the player drops an item, to show where on the board it was dropped.
If you REUSE an object-creating spell, there may not be enough tokens to represent the new object. In this case, you'll have to rough it. Use a blank token, for example, with your own drawing on it.
The rules that let you discard cards that you don't want in your hand obviously do NOT apply to cursed objects (such as LOAD STONE). Naturally you CAN discard (crush) ARTIFACTS during your turn (or Magic Sticks, or Magic Stones, etc.). You may not discard or drop objects out-of-turn.
Some card effects let you perform multiple attacks in a turn, but certain objects which can produce attacks are limited to one use per turn. Since this is a limitation on the object, this means you can't use the object multiple times, regardless of the effect that exists on your Wizard. He must use other spells or physical attacks to get his quota of attacks in.
### ARTIFACTS
Artifacts were introduced in 1993 in Expansion #2.
Artifacts are physical objects which, if left uncontrolled, would completely destroy the balance of the game. Fortunately, these are objects of such great power that they do not "like" to be owned by any one person for very long. In fact, if you want to steal an ARTIFACT from another player, all you need to do is walk into the same space that player occupies and say "I'm taking your ARTIFACT", or whatever you wish to say to get your point across. THIS IS NOT AN ATTACK. You can only take one ARTIFACT from one player per turn. That player, of course, could come back the following turn and take the ARTIFACT back if he is in a position to do so.
Alternately, if a player seems too powerful with an ARTIFACT, and you cannot get close to him, you may WISH it out of existence. This is not a card... you may do it anytime. However, it requires a bit of a sacrifice. You lose 4 life-points (not reversible) and you must discard all your cards, except for cursed cards which say that they cannot be discarded. A small price to pay to keep those other Wizards from winning the game.
Your turn continues even after taking an ARTIFACT from another player, but if you pick one up off the floor it ends your turn.
Being INVISIBLE, or under SHRINK, or in a DUST CLOUD, MIST-BODIED, etc., has no effect on another player's ability to steal an ARTIFACT from you. There is no way to obscure the fact that you have an ARTIFACT for the taking.
ARTIFACTS can be used as many times as you like unless they are attacks, in which case you may only use them once per turn.
### TOKENS FOR ARTIFACTS, STICKS AND STONES
While the Artifacts all have separate tokens for each Artifact, to designate their board location in case they are dropped, Magic Sticks and Magic Stones do not; there are only generic tokens to represent either category. These are also only meant to represent the item in case it is dropped on the board.
### TRANSFORMATIONS
In Expansion #2 it is possible for you to change yourself into a Ghost, Vampire, or Werewolf, if you get the card for it. These DO NOT make you a MONSTER! You are still a Wizard.
### TEAM PLAY OPTION (thanks to Jeff Ingalls)
If you have 4 or 6 players, it may be fun to try team play. For 4 players, the 1st and 3rd are one team, the 2nd and 4th the other. For 6 players, use 3 teams of 2. Winning is determined by either killing the other players, or by getting 3 of the opponents' treasures on either of your team's home bases in any combination. You may not attack your teammates (unless a teammate is under someone else's control). Discussion of strategy is allowed, but you may not reveal or trade cards with your teammate unless in L.O.S.
### TWO PLAYER VARIANT
For better board access for two players, cross the B and C exits on the 2 boards (see the diagram in the basic set). Thus, each player has a B exit and a C exit in his sector. It's a lot more fun this way.
### DOORS VARIANT
You can, if you like, play with the optional rule that within each sector a Wizard can open his doors without a key. Suggestion by Tracy Johnston.
*Wiz-War Expansion 1 and 2 Rules, Copyright 1991, 1993, Jolly Games.*
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## 4. Official FAQ rulings — timing, counterspells, and clarifications (SUMMARY of Tom Jolly's FAQ, last updated Sept 1 2002)
Source: silcom.com/~tomjolly/wizfaq.htm (via Wayback Machine). These are the designer's own answers, applicable to the Chessex-era editions. Highlights most relevant to core play:
**Timing / counteraction priority**
- **Counteractions always resolve before Attacks.** E.g., a Bloodstone counteracts a point of Fireball damage before the Fireball's side effect destroys the stone; Absorb Spell defeats Card Erasure because counteractions take effect first.
- If you have two Counteractions to play, you choose their order. Playing two BLUNTs against 5 damage: 5 → 3 (round up) → 2; they don't cancel damage entirely.
- If a spell is counteracted, the Number card that accompanied it is also discarded.
- Absorb stops one attack only, not accumulated damage from multiple attacks.
- Lost turns accumulate; while under a lost turn you may play nothing but Counteractions — you can't even draw cards. If your own reflected attack costs you "a turn", it's the current turn, not the next.
- If hit during your own turn by an out-of-turn source (e.g. a Fire Imp), you may only respond with Counteractions even though it's your turn.
- Counteracting with EMPATHY: the duration runs to the beginning of one of the *attacker's* turns.
- Duration spells: duration still ends at the start of a caster's turn, but the turn count is based on the recipient's turns (relevant with SPEED).
**Combat and attacks**
- You can't attack yourself, and you can't attack your own monsters.
- "No combat on the first round" means no ATTACKS; damaging someone indirectly (Destroy Wall) on round one is legal.
- Second-hand kills (falling walls, monsters) do NOT give you the victim's cards.
- Nicking the corner of a wall breaks LOS (a corner counts as two walls for Visionstone purposes).
**Objects and treasures**
- You can throw objects (not treasures); thrown objects do no damage unless a card says so.
- You can't pick up two objects at once, even from the same space.
- Discarding a physical object needn't put it on the board; discard it to the pile. Only during your own turn.
- You may carry only ONE treasure — your own or an opponent's (the 7E rules wording implying you can carry two is wrong).
- If a player is eliminated, treasures left on his home base do NOT count toward eliminating their owner.
- Wizards/monsters are generally NOT "objects" for spells like Teleport Object / Animate Object (badly defined pre-8E; use house rules).
**Board**
- Magic Stick charges: the charging NUMBER card is discarded (doesn't stay in hand); sticks don't have to stay displayed (contradicts/refines expansion rules text).
- Magic Stones may be discarded even after being displayed.
The FAQ also contains ~90 per-card rulings (Absorb through Wraith). A full text copy is preserved as `official-faq-2002.txt` in this directory; the archived source URL is in `rules-sources.md`.
---
## 5. Card inventory (SUMMARY — 5th edition base set, from the wizwar.com card database/scans)
The fan site wizwar.com (built on scans of actual 5E cards) lists the **5th edition Basic set** as 68 distinct spell cards plus Number cards. Multiples in parentheses; all others ×1:
Attack: Blind, Card Erasure, Dagger (object), Drop Object (×2), Fireball (×3), Go Away, Large Rock (object), Lightning Blast (×3), Lock in Place, Medusa, No Spell, Power Drain, Powerthrust (×3), Slow, Slow Death, Stone Dead, Sudden Death, Swap, Telepath, Teleport Opponent, Thought Steal, Waterbolt (×3), Wizardblade (object)
Neutral: Add, Amplify (×2), Around the Corner, Buddy, Create Wall (×2), Destroy Wall (×2), Drag, Extend, Fill Square with Stone (×2), Illusion Wall, Jam Lock (not a spell), Mist-Body, Pass Through Wall, Pick Lock (×4, not a spell), Power Run, Relocate Sector, Remove Lock (not a spell), Reuse Spell, Rotate Sector, Shrink, Speed (×2), Thornbush (×2), Ugly
Neutral/Counteraction: Invisible, Teleport, Wall of Fire, Waterwall
Counteraction: Absorb (×2), Absorb Spell, Anti-Anti, Blunt (×2), Full Reflection, Full Shield (×2), Reflection (×2), Reverse
Stones/Objects: Bloodstone, Brainstone, Powerstone, Shadowstone, Shieldstone, Soulstone, Speedstone, Visionstone, Master Key
Trap: Trap!
Number cards: 2 (×12), 3 (×10), 4 (×7), 5 (×4), 6 (×1) — 34 number cards.
Spell/object/trap cards total 90; 90 + 34 = **124 cards**, matching the 5E rules' "deck of 124 cards." The 6E box says **125**; the extra card is most plausibly the Dispel Creation promoted from Expansion 1 (see Section 1, item 3). UNCERTAIN — verify against the physical 6E deck. (A BGG forum thread, "6th Edition Chessex Card List", thread 2356205, exists asking for exactly this list; it could not be retrieved — BGG blocks automated access and the thread is not in the Wayback Machine.)
Expansion 1 and Expansion 2 card lists (verbatim from Tom Jolly's site and the expansion rulebook) are included in the archived expansion rules; full per-card texts for base + both expansions are preserved in `cards-5e-with-expansions.txt` in this directory.
---
## 6. Gaps — what needs the physical 6E copy
1. **The exact 6E rulebook wording.** Everything above except Section 1 is the 5E text. The 6E booklet is "revised"; known revisions are the can't-attack-yourself rule and (presumably) the 125-card count, but the rest of the revision is unverified. A page-by-page read of the physical booklet is needed to catch other wording changes.
2. **The definitive 6E card list** (125 cards): confirm which card(s) were added/changed vs. the 5E list above (Dispel Creation? Bomb? any art/text changes).
3. **The 6E board layouts** — one 6E board was replaced before 7E; identify which of the 4 boards it is (the removed board's art was posted at silcom.com/~tomjolly/wwbrdnu.htm; the archived page exists but the linked image capture was not verified).
4. **Which die shipped** (d4 vs d8 labeled 1–4 twice).
5. **The 6E setup diagrams** (2/3/4-player layouts and the Auto-Warp placement) — described in text but the diagram page itself is only in the physical booklet.
6. Whether the 6E rulebook includes any of the FAQ errata (it predates most of the FAQ, so probably not).
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# Wiz-War 6th Edition — Annotated Source List
Research date: 2026-08-15. All Wayback Machine URLs were verified working on that date. BoardGameGeek pages currently block automated fetching (Cloudflare) — those URLs work fine in a normal browser.
## Primary rules texts (archived fan/official sites)
### wizwar.com — "Wiz War 5th Edition Rules" (full base-game rules transcription)
- **URL:** http://web.archive.org/web/20041205021940/http://www.wizwar.com/rules.htm
- **What it is:** Complete transcription of the 5th-edition (Jolly Games, "New 1991 Fifth Edition" Chessex printing) base rulebook: winning, equipment (124 cards), setup, board/doors, movement, objects/treasures, card types, turn, combat, map changes, card draw, die, death. This is the text the Chessex 6E rulebook lightly revises.
- **Reliability:** High. wizwar.com was the semi-official fan hub (maintained by D. Dugan & Company); Tom Jolly participated on its message board and the site linked to/was linked from his official pages.
- **Edition:** 5th (page header says so explicitly). Verbatim copy incorporated into `rules-6e.md`.
### wizwar.com — Expansion Sets 1 & 2 rules (full transcription)
- **URL:** http://web.archive.org/web/20030208085508/http://www.wizwar.com/exp.html
- **What it is:** The complete combined rulebook for Expansion #1 (1991: monsters, magic sticks) and Expansion #2 (1993: artifacts, transformations), plus team-play/2-player/doors variants and complete Expansion 1 & 2 card name lists with number-card distributions. Ends with Tom Jolly's Jolly Games address — this is the actual printed expansion rulebook text.
- **Reliability:** High (same site). Edition: the expansions sold alongside 6E/7E. Verbatim copy in `rules-6e.md`.
### Tom Jolly's official site — Wiz-War Rules FAQ (Sept 1, 2002)
- **URL:** http://web.archive.org/web/2004/http://www.silcom.com/~tomjolly/wizfaq.htm (Wayback; the live http://www.silcom.com/~tomjolly/wizfaq.htm no longer resolves)
- **What it is:** The designer's own FAQ: general rules questions (counteraction priority, lost turns, LOS corner-nicking, treasures, throwing objects, players-as-objects) plus ~90 per-card rulings. Contains the key 6E facts: "you can't attack yourself" first appears in the 6th-edition rules; 6E boards lack the LOS center dots; Dispel Creation moved into the basic set; 7E board-layout errata.
- **Reliability:** Highest — written by Tom Jolly. Covers 5E/6E/7E with edition callouts. Full text saved as `official-faq-2002.txt`.
- An earlier revision (Oct 8, 2001) is mirrored at http://web.archive.org/web/20060526100553/http://www.wizwar.com/faq.html — same document, older.
### Tom Jolly's official site — other Wiz-War pages
- **Wiz-War home:** http://web.archive.org/web/2004/http://www.silcom.com/~tomjolly/wizhome.htm — game overview, component counts of the planned Chessex 8E (never released; 156 cards, 6 boards), status updates.
- **Expansions page:** http://web.archive.org/web/2004/http://www.silcom.com/~tomjolly/wwexp1.htm — Expansion 1 = 84 cards + 2 boards + tokens; Expansion 2 = 106 cards + tokens; full card lists; notes that the in-print (2001) 7th edition = "classic edition (with the yellow name-block on the box)".
- **Replaced board:** http://web.archive.org/web/2004/http://www.silcom.com/~tomjolly/wwbrdnu.htm — "Between printing the 6th edition and the 7th edition, a playing board was replaced in Wiz-War," with a link to the removed board's art (image capture not verified).
- **Card credits:** http://web.archive.org/web/2004/http://www.silcom.com/~tomjolly/wwcredit.htm — who designed which cards, per set.
- **Reliability:** Highest (designer's own site).
### wizwar.com — card database (full card texts, base + Expansions 1 & 2)
- **Card list with full rules text per card:** http://web.archive.org/web/20040628113340/http://www.wizwar.com/cards/cards.html — ~200 cards, each with card type, full card text, FAQ notes, and commentary (including "I think that this is a 6th edition card" on Bomb). Saved locally as `cards-5e-with-expansions.txt`.
- **Card scans indexed by set (Basic / 1st / 2nd) with quantities:** http://web.archive.org/web/20040908071628/http://www.wizwar.com/cards/scans.php?sort=set — scans of actual 5E cards; source of the Basic-set inventory (90 spell/object/trap + 34 number = 124 cards) in `rules-6e.md`. Individual card scan pages exist under `/cards/card.php?<Name>` (hundreds archived, e.g. http://web.archive.org/web/20040310074151/http://www.wizwar.com/cards/card.php?Amplify).
- **Boards:** http://web.archive.org/web/20040502164014/http://www.wizwar.com/cards/boards.php and board images under `/cards/Boards/` (e.g. http://web.archive.org/web/20180210221403/http://www.wizwar.com/cards/Boards/Board-I.png) — scans of board layouts.
- **Reliability:** High for 5E card text; the site header says "Wiz-War: The 5th Edition Cards".
## Edition history / 6E identification
### BoardGameGeek — Wiz-War (Chessex sixth edition) version page
- **URL:** https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgameversion/27352/chessex-sixth-edition (archived copy used: http://web.archive.org/web/20210123024942/https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgameversion/27352/chessex-sixth-edition)
- **What it contains:** "New 1993 edition with revised rules and new cards! From the back of the box: The new Sixth Edition Wiz War contains: 1 rulebook, 4 boards, 2 sheets of tokens, 125 spell cards and 1 die. May be enjoyed by 2 to 4 players." Publisher Chessex, year 1993, product code 7000, box 10×8×1 in, English.
- **Reliability:** High for component/box facts (transcribed from the box).
### League of Gamemakers — "A Brief History of Wiz-War" (by Tom Jolly)
- **URL:** https://www.leagueofgamemakers.com/a-brief-history-of-wiz-war/
- **What it contains:** Edition-by-edition history from the designer: 1st (1985 baggie, 100 copies) through 5th ("New 1991 Fifth Edition"), 6th (1993, Phil Morrissey art, larger blue box, ~2,000 copies, QC problems ~1 in 12), 7th (1997 "Classic Edition", made in Mexico), 8th (FFG 2012).
- **Reliability:** Highest (designer-authored). Live page.
### Wikipedia — Wiz-War
- **URL:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiz-War
- **What it contains:** Publication timeline (Jolly Games 1985–, Chessex editions 4–7 1993–2010, FFG 8E 2012, Steve Jackson Games 9E 2023), summary of 6E (new larger blue box, Morrissey art, revised rules) and 7E (same packaging, updated contents).
- **Reliability:** Good secondary source. Live page.
### Noble Knight Games — Wiz-War (6th Edition) product listing
- **URL:** https://www.nobleknight.com/P/2147384243/Wiz-War-6th-Edition
- **What it contains:** Marketplace listing confirming the 6E product's existence/contents; useful for box photos. Also https://www.nobleknight.com/P/2148330144/Wiz-War-Collection-2---Base-Game-6th-Edition-w-Expansion-1 (6E + Expansion 1 bundle). eBay listings (e.g. https://www.ebay.com/itm/387028775381 "Wiz War (6th Edition) - Chessex 1993 - Complete") often include component photos.
- **Reliability:** Moderate (retail descriptions), good for photos.
## Rules summaries and community material (mostly 7E-era "classic" Wiz-War)
- **BGG files section (base Wiz-War, i.e. Chessex-era):** https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/589/wiz-war/files — community files including "Wiz-War rules summary (.doc and .pdf)" (https://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/24409/wiz-war-rules-summary-doc-and-pdf). Requires a browser/BGG login to download. Not edition-verified; almost certainly 6E/7E-era rules.
- **Scribd — "Wiz-War Rules Summary":** https://www.scribd.com/document/68073124/Wiz-War-Rules-Summary — appears to be the same community rules summary; login-walled.
- **BGG thread — "6th Edition Chessex Card List" (thread 2356205):** https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/2356205/6th-edition-chessex-card-list — a 2020 thread about exactly the 6E card list. NOT retrievable by automation (Cloudflare; not in Wayback). **Worth opening in a browser — it may answer the 124→125 card question directly.**
- **Jeff's Custom Wiz-War (jeloba.net):** http://www.jeloba.net/wizwar/ (HTTP only, no HTTPS) — complete print-and-play remake based on the 5th edition + expansions, posted with Tom Jolly's permission: boards (all six 5E/expansion layouts + 2 originals), tokens, rewritten card texts (deliberately NOT matching official wording), Access/Excel spell databases. Direct files: http://www.jeloba.net/resources/wizwar/ww-all-files.zip (25 MB), .../ww-spells.txt (tab-delimited spell list), .../ww-boards.zip, .../ww-tokens.zip, .../ww-number-card-labels.pdf, .../ww-spell-cards-original-decks.pdf, .../ww-spell-cards-additional.pdf. Reliability: high-quality fan material, but card texts are rewritten — use the wizwar.com database for official wording.
- **Kwanchai Moriya's Wiz War package (BGG file 35997):** http://www.boardgamegeek.com/file/info/35997 — single PDF with rules, counters, boards, and cards (Jeff's card texts + Kwanchai's art). BGG login required.
- **UltraBoardGames Wiz-War rules:** https://www.ultraboardgames.com/wiz-war/game-rules.php — covers the FFG 8th edition, NOT 6E. Useful only for comparing how FFG changed the game.
- **FFG 8E rulebook PDF (for edition comparison only):** https://images-cdn.fantasyflightgames.com/ffg_content/wiz-war/WizWar_Rulebook%20v1-12%20low.pdf — official FFG 8th edition rulebook (not read/OCRed here; linked as reference).
- **RPGnet review of Wiz-War Classic Edition (7E):** https://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/classic/rev_815.phtml — play impressions of the 7E "Classic Edition"; little rules detail.
- **Tabletop Simulator workshop:** https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=408527762 (classic, built from Kwanchai/Jeff fan materials — rewritten card text) and https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2063767485 (FFG 8E).
## Dead ends checked
- **Chessex's old site (chessex.com, 1997–):** Wayback holds only Wiz-War logo/cover GIFs (e.g. http://web.archive.org/web/19970726190725/http://www.chessex.com/assets/duplicate1/wizcov.gif) — no rules pages archived.
- **jollygames.com:** the archived 2001–2003 site is an unrelated Italian toy company. Tom Jolly's actual site was silcom.com/~tomjolly (see above).
- **No scanned 6E (or any Chessex-era) rulebook PDF** was found anywhere public — not on BGG's visible file listings, archive.org's texts collection, or fan sites. The physical 6E booklet remains the only source for exact 6E wording.
- **BGG XML API** (`/xmlapi2/thread`) now requires authentication; direct page fetches return Cloudflare 403.
## Local file copies in this directory
- `rules-6e.md` — assembled rules document (see its provenance labels).
- `cards-5e-with-expansions.txt` — full text dump of the wizwar.com card database (base + Exp 1 + Exp 2 card texts, ~200 cards, with FAQ notes).
- `official-faq-2002.txt` — full text of Tom Jolly's Wiz-War Rules FAQ (Sept 1, 2002 revision).