Wiz-War - In Stores Now Hot

If FFG does as good a job with Wiz-War as they did with Cosmic Encounter, this is fantastic news. If not, I still have my handmade copy which scales up to 9 players. The most we ever had was 6 players, but it was amazing.

5 is best in my opinion. 4 is pretty good, though.

I'll buy it, because I've always said I would if the damn thing ever came out again. The tinkering with object permanence has me wary, though.

I'm also not tossing my homemade set (although mine only goes up to 8, which is lunacy anyway).

I'm happiest just to FFG get to some of their promised backlog, I haven't been excited about anything they've done in the last year or so. I don't like the LCGs, and nothing else seems to have had any staying power.

I really hope this one is as great as their Cosmic Encounter is.

I always wanted to try this game, but considering that you guys are talking about your 8 or 9 player sets, FFG's limit of 4 seems kind of lame. Oh wait that leaves room for expansions - yay!!

I have crazy high hopes for this game. The fact that Kevin Wilson is the designer of the reprint has me very happy. Plus Tom Jolly was still involved from what I read.

I never played the original game and I'm dying to get my hands on this in the next couple of weeks. If they get this right it could be their best reprint since we got Cosmic Encounter...

It's Kevin Wilson so that's promising...but I've got a bad taste in my mouth after how ugly the Nexus Ops reissue is. At any rate, I'll have it tomorrow via Coolstuff.

Yeah...a bit of hesitation here as well. It looks like the graphic design went through a few phases. The box cover and minis have the standard highly detailed hobby game look, but the card previews give off this 'zany' Mucha Lucha vibe, then the board looks like some space game.

What went down here?

Have you seen Nexus Ops yet? It's so murky, dingy, and muddy looking...the terrain tiles are these weird, wallpaper-like patterns, the artwork is strangely nondescript, and whoever gave the high sign to pastel miniatures in a game that has a very dark, jewel tone color pallette needs to be fired.

I haven't seen too much of Wiz War yet, but it sounds like there's likely several contract artists involved, all of whom did their own thing without any sense of stylistic consistency. This is bad news.

I'm really sick of the FFG illustration style...I'm ready for more stylized, interesting artwork in games rather than nth-generation Larry Elmore or anime crap.

The Nexus Ops looks fucking awful, I can't believe that all over BGG it's being taken for granted that the map art is "improved". They made the game harder to play, for christ's sake! That was probably my biggest problem with Chaos in the Old World: sweet looking boards and bits, but it's total mushy overload in play, to the point where I can't tell WTF is going on.

The thing with Wiz-War is, all previous editions were so chintzy that this'll have to be an improvement. I'm happy that they have cartoony art on the cards, and don't really care that the minis aren't as cartoony. An official release of that Kwanchai redesign would have been very very awesome, though, and outside of the fact that there was no art on the cards, clearly superior to this.

I agree with Barnes...it does look like they had multiple different artists involved. It appears that most of the game has a very cartoony/comic style. However, some of the preview cards looked like something you would see in Runebound. The difference in tone is pretty jarring.

Look at this preview

http://fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=2934

Look at the artwork on the Gnome and Werewolf transformation cards. Then compare it to the Mist Form and Extra Arms card. It doesn't even look like the artwork belongs in the same game. It's such a little thing to bitch about in the grand scheme of things, but I expect more out of a company as large as FFG.

People can bag on Ascension's artwork all they want, but at least they hired one guy to do it all and it looks cohesive.

Same here. Hate that so many games are getting so visually overloaded that you can't see what's going on.

The artwork on Eclipse isn't particularly interesting, but you can tell at a glance exactly what's going on, not only on the map, but also on a players mat upside-down and acrosss the table from you.

My copy is on the way!

I hope it is not done in Comic Sans! ;)

Yeah, I'm feeling that way about the Rex cards. Maybe it's my monitor, my aging eyes, or something, but all the lines and circles on everything is overstimulating. What happened to the simplicity of the Cosmic Encounter cards and races?

Unconfirmed as of yet, but it looks like there might be 2 pieces referred to in the rulebook that didn't find their way onto the actual countersheets. Sigh.

I'll check my copy when I get home.

On the other hand, hard not to improve on the usability of the original Dune cards, which didn't even say what they did on the card (thought it was pretty damn clear that the donkey meant you just got screwed).

Nexus Ops is a fucking eyesore on the table, seriously. I don't want to jump the gun on talking about it more since it's tomorrow's review, but GOD DAMN it is ugly as shit. It looks like vomit on a table. With pastel miniatures floating in it. I think people are confusing "thicker cardstock" and "more detailed figures" with "improved graphics".

Eclipse looks _great_. It's clean, minimal, and totally sci-fi. It's also tremendously practical. Only the ships are a bust, they really should have sprung for custom sculpts instead of off-the-rack ones.

Ascension's art is great. It's not the most techincally well-excuted, but it's stylish, unique, and doesn't look like the kind of "fantasty artist" shit that FFG usually uses. So, so tired of that stuff...

Oh for fuck's sake, a misprint? Really? Why is so FFG so incompetent when it comes to QA? There's no excuse whatsoever for an enterprise of their size to have such silly, avoidable errors making it into their products.

I thought the same thing about Dominant Species. A little plain but you can see everything going on at a glance and in that game, that IS the game.

Looks like sticking with the original NO was the right choice...

If FFG is going to go for the dark boards with the glowing cracks or whatever on Wiz War, they should have made the minis fluorescent to match the glow. I guess they didn't do it for NO because of cost, but Wiz War has so few figs. Would have been cool. Make the game stand out like the original NO did.

I picked up Wiz-War today -- Nexus Ops really did look horrible in the store.

To be fair, though, and while I agree that the FFG Nexus Ops looks worse than the AH one, the AH Nexus Ops pretty much looked like vomit on a table too. They weren't about to win any graphic design awards with that board. It's just that the original looked like crazy psychedelic vomit, whereas this vomit is more "realistic", which is clearly what I'm looking for when I play Nexus Ops.

Does Nexus Ops actually use that "first player marker" now included? Certainly the player who went first was completely irrelevant for the original Nexus Ops.

PS in case anyone thinks I just hate on FFG's art direction, I think that the FFG version of Cosmic is both the most usable one yet (with the easily stackable & countable ships and foreign colony counter on the warp, as well as the decision to make the aliens flat and therefore more easily shufflable) and the one with the best alien art. And I'm optimistic about Wiz-War, too.

Also, this tendency isn't only restricted to FFG, either. The Valley Games edition of Hannibal, while nicer thanks to the thicker cardboard, definitely had a busier, darker, less user-friendly board. And FFG's art is way better than the computer-generated 90s-PC-game-looking shit in Hannibal or the new version of Traders of Genoa.

Totally agree on Cosmic, 100%. I'd also add that the alien illustrations are the right mix of old fashioned, Barlowe's Guide to Exterrestrials style and quirkiness. The graphic design on the cards is simple and easy to read, and everything looks crisp and clean.

And I also agree about Nexus Ops' original look. But it had a distinctive, original look. The artwork was limited, but what was there was very much like 1980s arcade cabinet art (stole that from Jeff White, BTW, shamelessly at that). It had style if not execution, and that counts for a lot. Particularly when the new version looks so generic and those tiles are so poorly illustrated.

For Hannibal from Valley--I did like having the names of the locations easily visible to both players without scooting markers around. So it looks busier, but part of that is due to them looking to increase usability. I own both versions of Hannibal and both boards have their plusses and minuses.

For Nexus Ops, someone at FFG completely missed the point of the game, and that's clear from the art direction. I don't need grim and gritty in my Nexus Ops; it ain't that kinda game, and it doesn't take place in that kinda world.

As for Wiz-War...I'm gettin' it. I love the game and am tired of the chintzy thin floor tiles and the business card-quality stock for the cards (they really are the same stock, which is a bitch to shuffle, handle, and sleeve.)

The space floors are completely weird, though. Whose bright idea was that?

I like the cards with the goofy artwork, though. THAT is the flavor of Wiz-War. Someone, at least, understood that.

I like the Cosmic re-work too...although...I DID like the folded card stock that allowed the Aliens to stand up on the table.

It is easier to shuffle them now, but it was nice to be able to look the Vulch right in the eye from across the table and hate his Alien ass.

And yet the Earth Reborn cards get a pass?

The cards aren't bad...compared to the game tiles.

True point. Barnes went out of his way to defend them even though the entire community seemed to hate their gaudy asses.

But it would be a shame to let that stop you from playing one of the best games of all time.

FFG gets raked over the coals around here for anything they do, and that's perfectly fine because everyone who does it is inadvertently admitting that they hold FFG to this standard because they are so clearly the best in the industry and the ones to beat.

Regarding missing pieces, I can clarify now. There are 2 item cards in the deck named Fire Cloak and Bloodshard--neither appear on the inventory chart on the back page of the rules, nor are there tokens for them. Yet all other items are listed and have matching tokens. I have no idea if this is intentional or an oversight.

Sounds like an oversight, especially given the revamped item rules.

If they're droppable, they should have tokens.

This is the sound of me not caring, and buying it anyway. Yes, I have an 8-player home-made set with a billion freaking cards. Doesn't matter, it's in-print again, and I'm coughing up for a copy.

My fears from a few months ago are basically gone now that the rules are out, in general I think they're slightly improved. I had a full opinion somewhere in the forum about them, I don't remember it all now.

I'm still keeping my old avatar.

One thing that definitely looks like a big design flub in the new Wiz-War is the life-counter. The number is both small and very poor contrast, despite it being incredibly important for everyone at the table to know everyone else's life total. I'll probably be replacing with the enormously gigantic d20 life counters I use when I play Magic. Those are expensive, though.

Game released on Tuesday, first FAQ put out on Friday. Haha.

Once again, that FAQ is needless -- people really just need to play the damn games; everything mentioned is quite obvious.

Ahem...I recall someone saying something about the look of the Earth Reborn cards....once....and being told that gameplay trumps look...by...someone... ;)

I jest, I jest.

Yea that FAQ doesn't seem to be a big deal. Its just a couple of questions/answers and nothing that would make me think twice about purchasing the game.

So far I've heard good things except for one douche over on TOS who posted a review after one play using the "introductory rules". He claims the gameplay is slowed down by new rules and its overwhelmingly "Meh". I didn't get much info from the review at all to be honest.

I messed around with it last night. I think it's closer to a Cosmic Encounter situation than a Dungeonquest one for sure.

The new rules are very well-considered and smooth over some wonky stuff. I'm not too sure about the magic schools business, I like playing with a giant unpredictable deck of cards. I actually like maintained spells taking up hand limit. All of the original Chessex rules are present and identified if you want to use them- good move.

Didn't the walls used to take 20 damage to bust? Because now it's five. I haven't played the original in a long time, so I'm not sure.

Graphics are decent. The dungeon boards aren't as bad as was suggested before. They look OK, and the walls are clear on them.

The thing is, any improvement over the old set is appreciated...the old one looked like total crap. Charming, but crap.

The art is consistent, which was a concern. It's also cartoony and colorful, which is the right direction.

The life dials are fine It's really just a Magic life counter, really. But it works.

There are some extra counters, like hats to put on spells to show who's targeted and markers for time and whatnot. Administrative stuff, pretty useful.

I'm feeling it. It's a good looking set and it's intact with some _good_ changes and thoughtful updating. Kevin Wilson should definitely be there go-to guy for updating reprints.

Frank Branham is thanked in the rules. NOT in Comic Sans, might I add.