Playing Wiz-War with both expansions?

I have a game of Wiz-War scheduled for tomorrow, and I'm curious what some of you with more experience have to say about including the expansions.

I have both expansions, and I definitely included all of the Malefic Curses stuff, but I have yet to play with it. I also have Bestial Forces, and I'm a bit reluctant to include the creature stuff for tomorrow, since I'm guessing the other three people are new to the game.

Do you think adding creatures would be too complex right off the bat?

Also, how have you managed the spell deck? In the past I've used the modified Big Book of Spells (everything thrown together). But with the addition of the two expansions, the deck is getting a bit unwieldy, and I'm concerned about dilution. I haven't added the BF stuff yet, because Totem school relies on multiple cards from its own school to work well.
Do I go back to picking specific schools of magic, or just adding everything and not worry about it, or a mixture of the two?

Thanks.

I don't think creatures add too much for newbs. They fit surprisingly well into the main game, as if they belonged. It'll make games shorter too since there is more obstacle/threats with their presence. Game length isn't always an issue, but there are times when it can run long.

As for how to handle the magic deck, I'll just leave this relevant article here for your perusal:

color-crayons.blogspot.com/2014/11/wiz-w...ined-magic-deck.html

Adding in the Malefic Curses expansion is easy enough. It adds another play, player board, and some new spell decks. Per the rules, you now have new schools of wizardry from which players may choose when assembling the spell deck. Or, if you want play the Big Deck/Big Book of Spells variant and use all of the spells, then add in all of its new spells to your base game and play with a big deck--I've done that too. Caveat: some players take out certain spells to balance it all out when using that variant. I own the Bestial Forces expansion, but, I haven't played it yet; as I understand it, you have to add its schools of wizardry decks to play it properly. Wiz-War is so much fun!

once you have both expansions I think it becomes better to just use FFG's schools of magic. Or at least do some sort of solution. Giant Book of Spells doesn't really work anymore because, as you fear, not only does the deck fall over, but the dilution is just too much

Disgustipator
I'm only reading your question after your session, so my opinion doesn't mean a hell of a lot. Still, for what it's worth: Add 'em both.
I find that setting up individual schools of magic is too much of a time suck, so I fully advocate the big book of spells variant. For some reason, I never include the "black cantrip" school in the lot. I'll have to revisit why I do this. Wizards pull from a 500 card cardboard box that I bought for $1.50. It's great, and I've never gone back.
I too was worried about dilution with so many cards, but it hasn't been an issue because - we also play with the permanent spells variant.
4-5 wizards playing with permanent spells can cycle through all of the cards over 2.5 games.
Have fun!
Long live Wiz-War!

In the end, I just left the deck as is (Base + Malefic Curses), but added in the creature summon cards and the creature attack cards. I didn't really have time to rework the deck so I thought it would be fine that way, and it seemed to work out well enough. We also play with the permanent spells variant.

With 5 players we got through 3 games in about 2.5 hours. We reshuffled the deck after the first game, but not after the second game.

I'll take a look at the Totem school and see how badly dilution would affect it, but I think in the end I'll just throw everything together, and get some sort of card holder.

Drew, as for the Black Cantrips, the rulebook says to remove them:
"Black Cantrip is only used when playing with the Custom Spellbook optional rule."

Thanks for all the suggestions everyone.

P.S. The Minotaur is brutal, in an awesome sort of way.

I don't have Bestial Forces yet, so take this for what it's worth. But I did teach my wife the other day using the schools of magic FFG method, and I think it did help her learn the game. There was more repetition in the cards and it allowed for certain types of cards to have a much stronger effect on the game. (In our case that meant there were a lot of magic stones being used.)

San Il Defanso wrote: ...I did teach my wife the other day using the schools of magic FFG method, and I think it did help her learn the game. There was more repetition in the cards...

I can see how the repetition might be good, as there are less unique cards to digest if you go through a lot of the deck.

Did you do the usual "for your first game, we recommend that you use cantrips, mentalism, alchemy, elemental schools" approach that ffg suggested?

For some reason, it seems from my experience that transformations are less easy for new players to grok than creatures. I rarely even play with transformations anymore.

I've played with all cards from both expansions three times and with just the big stack o cards rules. There has popped up the occasional totem card that would have been more powerful with multiples, but they've been useful on their own. I think it plays fine that way and isn't worth stressing over swapping schools in and out.