wizwar6e/research/boards-6e.md

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.

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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). CORRECTION (2026-08-15, from owner's photos): the physical 6e boards have NO centering dots — the dots were an artifact of the fan redraws. (Consistent with the designer note that 6e dropped the LOS center dots; the rulebook text still defines LOS center-to-center.) 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: CONFIRMED 7.5 in square (owner-measured, 2026-08-15; 1.5 in per space). The fan reproduction's 7.5 in print size was exactly right. The owner's box also contains no errata sheet (unlike the 5th edition).

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).