There’s a board game group here in Southampton that meets regularly — most weeks, from the sound of things. I’ve never quite mustered the courage to go along, what with the whole social anxiety thing, but tonight Andie thought it might be a good idea for us to go together. I agreed, on the condition that she was the one who said hello and introduced us to begin with — that’s always the hardest part of meeting new people, after all.

And, against all the irrational scary thoughts my mind throws at me when confronted with a social situation like this, we both had a good time. We didn’t even “need” to stick together; Andie went and played some interesting looking card games, while I joined in on a five-player bout of a game I’d heard of but never played: Wiz-War.

Wiz-War, in case you’ve never come across it, is a relatively simple idea, executed beautifully well. You play a wizard, and your goal is to attain a target number of victory points (two in our first game; three in our second, for we played twice) by either pinching one of the other players’ treasure chests and returning it to your own starting location, or by killing your rival wizards.

The mechanics are simple and elegant. You can move three spaces per turn, and you can perform one “attack” per turn, which may either be a simple melee attack (or slap in the face, as it came to be referred to) or an offensive spell. Aside from that, you’re free to cast spells from the cards in your hand at any point in your turn, and this is where things get interesting. The spells are far more than simple attacks, in many cases. Some allow you to set traps; others allow you to temporarily control the minds of other player characters; others still allow you to impact the board in various ways such as rotating its various sections or applying environmental effects. Taken as standalone events, most of these spells can have an amusing impact on another player, but when you find a great combination of things — or when something backfires spectacularly — that’s when this game gets really amusing.

It’s a brilliant game for griefing one another, with tons of the spells seemingly built for the express purpose of being a bastard. One great example in our game involved one of the players backing himself into a corner, casting a “Prismatic Mist” spell, which enveloped two spaces in a magical effect that had random, mostly unpleasant effects when stepped into, then casting a “Swap Places” spell on me, causing me to be the one stuck behind the Prismatic Mist. (Fortunately, I had a Dispel spell in my hand, so it caused me few difficulties, but the setup was most entertaining at least.)

I’d be interested to play it again; I feel it’s something that my more regular gaming group would probably respond well to, particularly as it’s a purely competitive game. It’s dripping with theme but also has a decent amount of strategy to it, so it’s something I may well look into trying again — or nabbing my own copy — in the future.