wizwar6e/packages/engine/data/rules-notes.md

Wiz-War 6e — Engine Implementer's Rules Reference

Distilled from research/rules-6e.md (verbatim 5th-edition rules text, which the 6e rulebook lightly revises), research/official-faq-2002.txt (Tom Jolly's official FAQ, Sept 2002), and — primary source — research/official-6e-card-list.md, the owner's scanned 6e rulebook and Expansion #1 rules sheet (photos in research/scans/, IMG_4665–4673). The scan's rules-confirmation section verifies that the core rules in §§1–11 below match the printed 6e booklet. Remaining open questions are collected at the end — see also VERIFICATION.md for the photo checklist.

6e deltas over the 5e text (confirmed): "You cannot attack yourself" is stated explicitly (6e-first rule); deck is 125 cards (5e: 124) — the 125th card is Dispel Creation ×1, moved into the basic set without its text being edited (official card list); boards have no printed center dots even though the LOS text still references them (confirmed).

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1. Game setup

• Equipment (confirmed, 6e rulebook): four boards, deck of 125 cards, two counter sheets, four plastic bases, one die numbered 1–4.
• Each player gets one sector board (chosen face down at random); sectors are assembled per the player-count configuration (see boards.json → setups), then flipped simultaneously.
• Player's pawn starts on the center square of his sector = his home base.
• Each player's two treasure chests start on the two marked circles of his own sector.
• Deal 7 cards to each player; rest is the draw pile. If Trap! is drawn on the deal, discard it and redraw (trap cards otherwise fire the moment they are drawn).
• Everyone starts at 15 life points. 0 = dead and out. No upper limit on life gained during play.
• Turn order: clockwise, starting with the highest die roll.

2. Victory / elimination

Two ways to win:

1. Kill all other players.
2. Treasure: capture two treasures from opponents (need not be from the same player) and drop them, one at a time, on your own home base(s).

Elimination without dying: the moment both of the treasures you protect sit on other players' home bases, you are out (cards discarded, not awarded).

• A dead player cannot win, even posthumously; his home base becomes invalid for eliminating others, but his treasures remain valid win-objects.
• FAQ: if a player is eliminated, treasures left on his home base no longer count toward eliminating their owners.
• Dying while performing a would-be-winning action: death resolves first; the player is eliminated (no win).
• Kill credit: the last attacker gets all the dead player's cards, then must discard down to the 7-card hand limit. FAQ: second-hand kills (falling walls, monsters) give NO cards; a monster's kill gives its controller nothing.

3. Turn structure

Within a turn a player may, in any interleaved order (movement is divisible around other actions):

• Move up to 3 spaces (base rate).
• Attack once (one ATTACK card, or a punch, or an attack on an inanimate object — exactly one attack per turn total).
• Play any number of NEUTRAL cards (and COUNTERACTIONs used as neutrals).
• Drop objects (any time during own turn), make deals (requires LOS), etc.
• Draw up to 2 cards at the END of the turn only. Hand limit 7 (Brainstone: 9; displayed stones/keys count toward the limit). Over-limit: discard immediately. Voluntary discarding just to redraw is allowed (own turn only).

Hard turn-enders / restrictions:

• Picking up ANY object ends the turn immediately (only card-drawing may follow). You cannot pick up objects out of turn (even if a Teleport lands you on one). FAQ: you can't pick up two objects at once, even from one space.
• First round of turns: no ATTACKS. The 6e rulebook prints "no combat during the FIRST round of turns" (confirmed); the FAQ errata says to read it as "no ATTACKS" — indirect damage like Destroy Wall on round one is legal; Speed does not circumvent it.
• You cannot attack yourself (explicit in 6e) or your own monsters.
• Lost turn: the player may do NOTHING except play COUNTERACTIONs — cannot move, cast, or even draw cards. Lost turns accumulate. A lost turn while under a duration spell still burns a turn of that duration. If your own reflected attack costs you "a turn", it is the CURRENT turn.

"Turn" for durations/lost turns: an effect starts when cast and ends at the beginning of one of the caster's turns. FAQ refinement (interaction with Speed): duration still ends at the start of a caster's turn, but the count of turns is based on the recipient's turns.

4. Movement

• Base 3 spaces/turn. May add one NUMBER card to the turn's movement (e.g. "4" → up to 7). Die is never used for movement. Orthogonal grid movement (walls block; door passage requires the door opened).
• Board edges wrap via lettered openings; see boards.json setups for wrap and AUTO WARP rules (warp = adjacency for movement, LOS, and spells).
• Walking past opponents/monsters is safe — no free hits for passing through.

5. The five card kinds (printed taxonomy)

1. ATTACK — max one per turn. May carry L.O.S. tag (the 6e rulebook documents both ADJACENT and L.O.S. corner markings — confirmed).
2. NEUTRAL — unlimited per turn; cannot be counteracted (but see Negate Neutral, a special/counteraction that cancels a neutral at cast time).
3. COUNTERACTION — the only cards playable out of turn; may also be played during one's own turn as a neutral.
4. NUMBER (2–6 only; no 1s) — three uses: movement boost, spell DURATION (turns), or spell POWER (damage). One number card per action. Any card played without a number card has power 1.
5. MAGIC STONES — permanent objects granting a reusable power; name contains "STONE", text prefixed "POWER". Displayed face-up after first use but still count in the hand. FAQ: may be discarded even after display.

Other classes on cards (expansion-era): TRAP (fires when drawn), SPECIAL (out-of-turn cards like Interrupt/Opportunity Fire), INSTANT (Gift from God), OBJECT, ARTIFACT, dual types (NEUTRAL/COUNTERACTION etc.). FAQ: cards printed "SELF" in early sets were relabeled "LOS" in later printings (you are always in your own LOS) — a SELF-type spell still cannot be cast on others. Cards marked ATTACK-NEUTRAL are Neutral cast on self, Attack cast on others.

• Cards are used once then discarded face-up (discard pile is public; Deja-Vu searches it). Exceptions: physical objects (stones, Dagger, Large Rock, Wizardblade, Master Key, sticks…) stay in hand until dropped/thrown/discarded.
• If cards are to be randomly lost/taken from a hand, displayed cards are first taken back into the hand before the choice.
• Physical actions (pick/remove/jam locks, throwing daggers) are not spells (immune to spell-only counters like Absorb Spell / Full Shield).

6. Combat, damage, life

• An attack automatically hits unless counteracted. A spell that misses dissipates — it never hits something behind the target.
• Punch: no card, counts as the turn's attack, 1 damage, same square required (adjacent square if the target fills its square).
• Inanimate objects: only walls, doors, and thornbushes are attackable. Wall = 20 hp, door = 15 hp. Attacking one consumes the turn's attack.
• Physical vs magical damage both reduce life; distinction matters only where cards say so. Physical: rock, dagger, punch, falling wall. Magical: spell-caused (firewall crossing, Wizardblade, Lightning Blast…).
• You cannot physically attack through any wall, firewall, or bush.
• Deals/trades of any kind are legal while in LOS.

7. Counteraction timing (resolution order)

• Played immediately after the attack, by the target. Counteracting is always optional.
• Counteractions resolve BEFORE the attack takes effect. (Bloodstone reduces Fireball damage before the Fireball destroys the stone; Absorb Spell beats Card Erasure.)
• Multiple counteractions may stack against one attack, sequentially or added; the defender picks their own ordering. (Two Blunts on 5: 5 → 3 → 2, round up each time.)
• Counteractions can themselves be counteracted (Anti-Anti…), bouncing before coming to rest.
• Fractional damage from halving: round UP.
• If ALL damage from a spell is stopped, its secondary effects are stopped too (e.g. Lightning Blast's stun). (Known FAQ conflict on Create Wraith's card-steal — the fan DB sides with the rule; flag for house ruling.)
• A counteraction is instantaneous and affects only the one attack it answered (Absorb does not pool across attacks; Slow Death is countered one tick at a time).
• If a spell is counteracted, its accompanying NUMBER card is discarded with it.
• Hit by an out-of-turn source during your own turn (e.g. Fire Imp): you may respond only with counteractions.
• Escape-type responses (Teleport, Blink, Invisible, Shrink) make the attack miss entirely; Anti-Anti does NOT work against escapes, only against direct counters.

8. Walls, doors, LOS, map changes

• LOS = straight segment from the center of the attacker's square to the center of the target's square (for Create Wall: center of the wall to be created). ANY wall clip breaks it — FAQ: "barely nicking a corner" is NOT LOS; a corner counts as passing two walls (matters for Visionstone). 6e boards have no printed center dots; eyeball centers.
• Movable objects generally don't block LOS; fixed objects (walls, firewalls, illusion walls, thornbushes, doors, solid stone) do.
• Doors: locked at all times; opened only via cards (Pick Lock, Master Key…); auto-relock after passage. You may cast through an opened door without stepping through. You cannot tailgate unless the opener states he is holding the door; only Remove Lock keeps a door permanently open; Jam Lock beats Master Key.
• Map-changing cards place tokens. Creation constraints: nothing may be created on a home base or on an occupied square (walls exempt — they live between squares; walls never diagonal, only on lines between spaces). FAQ: teleports/swaps may drop things on home bases as long as immobile objects (Solid Stone, Thornbush) never end up there; cards override rules where explicit (Waterwall on a Wall of Fire).
• Wall/door destroyed at a sector junction, then Rotate Sector: 50/50 die roll decides which sector keeps the alteration.
• Thrown objects land in the targeted square, or immediately before an intervening barrier. FAQ: objects (never treasures) may be thrown; thrown objects deal no damage unless the card says so.

9. Objects and treasures

• Dropping: any time during own turn; token goes on the pawn's square, the object's card sits beside the board; the next taker must take the card into hand. FAQ: discarding a physical object needn't place it on the board (discard pile is fine); own turn only. Cursed objects (Load Stone) can't be discarded.
• Treasures: carry at most ONE (own or opponent's — FAQ kills the 7e wording that implied one-of-each). Not a hand card, cannot be thrown, may carry any number of other objects alongside. You may re-steal your own treasure off an enemy home base.
• Objects can only be taken from a living player via cards that explicitly remove/ destroy objects (Drop Object etc.) — Medusa-then-loot is illegal. (Artifacts are the exception: walking into the holder's square and declaring the take — one per turn, not an attack; see below.)
• FAQ: Wizards and monsters are generally NOT "objects" for object-targeting spells (Teleport Object, Animate Object) — badly defined pre-8e; Drag explicitly DOES work on wizards/monsters. House-rule the rest.

10. The die

d4 — the 6e equipment list confirms "one die numbered 1–4". Never for movement. Random direction: pick the intended direction's number, then roll. 50/50 checks: 1–2 low / 3–4 high, assignment declared beforehand.

11. Expansion-layer rules (Exp1/Exp2, verbatim source in rules-6e.md §3)

The monster and magic-wand rules below are confirmed by the owner's scanned Expansion #1 rules sheet ("Expansion Set #1, Third Edition Rules"). Note: this Chessex-era printing calls the charged items magic wands (Blaster/Shift/Sticky/ Warp WAND on its card list), where the 5e-era card database says "Stick" — same mechanics.

Monsters — obey creator (Imp excepted), move during controller's turn (slaved to extra/lost turns), cannot hurt their creator, can't carry/cast/use hand cards unless their card says so, permanent until killed. Attack once per turn; cannot attack on their creation turn (creation itself is the attack that turn; later turns wizard + monster both attack). Monsters can attack monsters; you can't attack your own. Monster kills award no cards. No NUMBER cards on their movement, but neutrals (Mist-Body, Speed) may be cast on them. Monsters suffer floor hazards and count as "Opponent"/ "Anyone" targets. Running past a monster is safe (Buck/Fire Imp excepted). "Monster" = damage-dealing creations: Alter Ego, Shadow, Familiar, Killer Ooze count; Slime, Animate Object, Decoy, Buck do not. If the controller dies, his monsters vanish. A monster's attack is not YOUR attack (doesn't break Buddy).

Flying/levitating — immune to ground effects (Tacks, Killer Ooze, Waterwall).

Magic Sticks / Wands — "Stick"/"Wand" in the name; charges set by NUMBER card at first use (number card is discarded — FAQ); max one use per turn regardless of Speed/Adrenaline (limit is on the object); no recharge; transfer carries remaining charges; Amplify/Add work when setting charges; sticks don't burn; count in hand; Absorb Spell can't touch them (objects, not spells). FAQ: needn't stay displayed (refines expansion text).

Artifacts (Exp2 only) — steal by entering the holder's square and declaring it (NOT an attack, one per turn, no stealth protection prevents it); turn continues after a steal (but picking one off the floor ends the turn as normal). Any player may at any time WISH one out of existence: cost 4 life (irreversible) + discard entire hand (cursed cards excepted). Attack-artifacts limited to once/turn; others unlimited. Discarding (crushing) artifacts is legal on your own turn.

Transformations (Ghost/Vampire/Werewolf) — you remain a Wizard, not a monster.

Multi-attack effects (Adrenaline, Claw of Mars) — never let a once-per-turn object fire twice; extra attacks must come from other sources.

Variants (official, optional): Team play (4p: seats 1+3 vs 2+4; 6p: 3 teams of 2; win = kill or 3 opponent treasures on team bases; no attacking teammates; card reveals/trades only in LOS). Two-player crossed-exits variant (see boards.json). Doors variant: a wizard may open the doors of his own sector without a key.

12. Notable per-card engine gotchas (from the FAQ — full text in cards.json)

• Reflection works on non-LOS spells and "numbers of things" (Thought Steal → both players lose a card to each other); reflected Around-the-Corner spells retain the corner-bend.
• Power Drain + Reflection cancels; Power Drain + Blunt still drains the full amount (blunting damage-taken, not the spell).
• Ugly is instantaneous (no duration), works on invisible/shrunken (self-cast, no to-hit), not on Blinded players; forced retreat happens out of the victims' turns.
• Fear is self-cast (uncounterable), forces card-based escape if available, beats Go Away and Ugly; measured 3 spaces by walking distance.
• Teleport: counteraction-mode dodges outright; destination must be a vacant space; Swap-before-Teleport ok, not after; Reuse Spell allows double Teleport but not double Swap ("replaces movement").
• Illusion Wall: belief rolled per player at first sight; a believer's destruction of it is private; even knowledge of fakeness doesn't grant LOS through it.
• Medusa: total lockout (no spells/sticks/stones/artifact use), immune to damage, TRAPs, Slow Death, It — but still Swappable; carried gear petrifies except artifacts.
• Area spells count ranges through Permawarp/Door-to-Door warps (count to the warp mouth, continue from the far end).
• Lost-turn + reflected Lightning Blast: lose the rest of the CURRENT turn incl. draws.

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RESOLVED by the owner's scans (official-6e-card-list.md)

• The 125th card: Dispel Creation ×1 in the 6e basic deck (AND ×2 in Exp1). CLOSED.
• Per-card quantities: fully documented for the 6e basic deck (91 + 34 numbers) and Expansion #1 (61 + 14 of its OWN number cards, no 6s). CLOSED.
• Number-card distribution: base 2×12/3×10/4×7/5×4/6×1; Exp1 2×5/3×4/4×3/5×2. CLOSED.
• Bomb: on NEITHER official list — not in the owner's 6e+Exp1 collection; the DB commentary's "6th edition card" guess is wrong for this printing. Presumed Exp2/7e-era.
• Trap! / Speedstone: confirmed in the 6e basic deck (×1 each). CLOSED.
• "FORCE FIELD": mystery closed — it is an official Expansion #1 card (×1); text recovered from the FAQ's verbatim quote.
• The die: equipment list confirms "one die numbered 1–4". CLOSED.
• First-round wording: the 6e rulebook prints "no combat during the FIRST round"; the FAQ's "no ATTACKS" reading is errata, not rulebook text. CLOSED.
• Core rules wording (punch 1 dmg / wall 20 / door 15, pick-up-ends-turn, door auto-relock, 50-50 junction rule, AUTO WARP details, hand/draw limits, LOS center-to-center incl. the dot reference): all confirmed as written in §§1–11.
• Exp1 card-count conflict: 75 is correct (61 + 14); Jolly's-site figure of 84 is wrong for this printing. CLOSED.

OPEN QUESTIONS — still needs verification

1. BUTT-HEAD and MEGA-MONSTER (official Exp1 list): no text, type, or LOS info exists anywhere — photograph the cards.
2. Presumed renames need card-face confirmation: GIFT FROM ABOVE (= DB "Gift From God"?), DIMENSIONAL WARP (= "Permawarp"?), REDIRECTION (= "Rewarp"?); wand vs "Stick" card titles; SKELETON/TROLL/WRAITH vs "Create Skeleton/Troll/Wraith".
3. Verbatim card text: all text fields come from the 5e-era card database, not from 6e card faces — spot-check wording (and the ADJACENT/L.O.S. corner markings) against the physical cards.
4. Boards: door positions on Layouts D and F; which 4 layouts are in the base box; which layout was replaced before 7e; board dimensions/backs. (A separate agent is verifying boards against photos — see boards.json.)
5. Expansion #2 (owner does not own it): membership, quantities, and the 85-cards-vs-88-names / 106-per-Jolly's-site arithmetic remain unresolved; Bomb's true home (Exp2 vs 7e) with it.
6. Errata sheet: check the box for one (the 5e shipped one).
7. 7th-edition delta (130 cards vs 125): still undocumented.
8. Torquemada is a joke entry in the FAQ, not a card. Ignore.