Wiz-War with the new expansion is amazing

I mean, even more amazing than before, which is a high bar, indeed. I knew the creatures would be good, but I kind of expected that the Totem school would be fairly superfluous. That may be the best of the three. Each totem is sector-wide, so you can start to compound their abilities relatively easily. I had +2 damage (Spirit of the Wolf), -2 damage to me (Spirit of the Bear), and doubled movement (Spirit of the Cat) running in my sector tonight and was able to take advantage of the other spells based on the number of totems, as well. And we play with all of the cards, so I clearly got a good draw, but the deck still isn't so large that you're losing schools.

That said, I think I'm going to remove the Planar Call cards from the deck because they're just annoying. You use them to find a creature card in the deck, but there are still only six creatures so it takes a while to process them. They don't do much other than that and we were drawing in to creatures at a decent pace already.

I removed a bunch of the counterspells from the base set and the first expansion, so our games have a little more, uh, punch. With all of the new fireworks added in the two expansions, things get pretty lethal pretty quickly which is just how it should be. I got hammered in a 3-player tonight and was down to one life when a 4-turn Acid Bath got reflected onto me. I already had a Lifestone in hand, so I cast Regeneration and ran around the maze trying to hide in corner while the Regen and the Acid slowly ticked down at the same pace. I got back up to 3 life thanks to the Lifestone but then got Powerthrust for 7 by an enemy in Big Man form (draw from that whatever connotations you like...)

That's awesome news/front-line session reporting. Did you paint your creatures yet?

Ha. No. My painting days ended with over 8000 points of Skaven. No mas. It would be cool, but I'm fine with imagination at this point.

It really is a fantastic expansion. Only 4 plays in for me so far though, so it still has that veneer of "ermagherd, ner kerds fer meh to pler werth" on them.

I'm not liking the totem school for certain types of play though, such as big book of spells. It gets too diluted, and for a school which relies on playing with itself to make its own effects culminate, it has a lackluster showing there.

When using the FFG magic deck method, along with specialization (especially as a school chosen for specialization), it functions much better.

Totem doesn't feel very wizwar to me, but that's ok. There should be something in the game catering to various tastes.

As above, planar call usefulness seems contingent on which magic deck method you use. It's great when using it as a tutor for creatures in big book of spells, but feels like creatures are being forced down your throat with the 3 schools and cantrips method.
Either way, less planar calls equals more spellls you do like to have included in the deck in their place. Bonus.

The use of creatures is adding a new dimension that is really swingey to the game. The genie, as predicted, is a pain in the ass especially since we know that creatures get more hit points added to them from wizards cutting themselves in order to even to conjure them.
The boggart is pretty fun too for certain strategies (strategy... heh... now there's a word you don't hear very often associated with wizwar).

I believe that creatures have indeed added strategy to the game, in its own minimal fashion, especially combined with the specialization optional rule.

It offers something for everyone. For the counterspell haters and lovers, for those who hate and love treasure running too. Adding a new dimension to play, yet still sticking largely with what makes wizwar so good already. Way better than malefic curses, even at this early stage of experience with this expansion. Very fun.

The only real criticism I have is that magic cards are _far_ too often duplicated inside the schools, so the novelty wears thin a bit with their predictabilty of draws within the decks(s), and a couple cards from the base set made it into this expansion adding further fuel to the duplication criticism. It doesn't suffer for that, but I feel ffg could have handled that better and thus a twinge of dissapointment creeps in.

A definite must buy and I consider it a compulsory purchase.