Wizards of the Grimoire Review
Try to out-spell the other kitchen table wizard.
Grab spells every turn, handle mana from your hand, and then decide which spells to play and how to handle their cooldowns! It’s a tableau builder with some mage dueling elements. This quick 2 player game is 20-40 minutes, and is entirely self-contained.
Video published June 28th, 2023
Draft a spell from a pool of 10 every turn!
Pay for the spell, do the ability.
Eventually manage up to 6 spells in front of you.
This is sponsored post.
What we played
Played it 4 times, with 2 different opponents!
Need to learn how to play? Or want more reasoning for our points? Our review video’s got you!
Component/Learning Pros
Exceptional packaging
Box is a spell book with a magnetic flap
Great component quality
Thick cards, spellbook
BEAUTIFUL art
No duplicates of any of the 70 spells
Vivid depictions of what spell is trying to do
Mana of 1-4 has more electricity the stronger the power
Good iconography
Easy to start playing
Rulebook is very clear with good organization
Great player aids
Main gameplay loop is easy to teach
Gameplay Pros
Clever mana system
Balances the quantity and power of mana well, as activating a card asks for a certain number of cards
Draw 3 cards every turn so can’t get mana locked
Neat puzzle of figuring out which spells go on cooldown at what time
Strong spells have more time in between their cast because longer cooldown
Spells that ask for strength of mana lead to varied use cases
Can reward for: having different types of mana in hand, or having a weaker hand, or paying for spells with certain powered mana
Lots of multi-spell combo possibility
70 unique spells
E.G. Hand manipulation: play big attack to discard hand down to 2, then use those 2 remaining cards to draw 5 cards!
E.G. Use a one cost spell, then use another spell to remove mana from it, then use that spell right away
E.G. Amnesia spell, which does an additional damage for each time it was cast on 1 turn. Keep spamming it!
Delayed spells lead to more interaction, as only trigger when discard cards off of them
The penalty of putting more mana on cards is now a reward to give delayed spells more fuel
10 Ongoing Spells give passive as long as there’s mana on them
E.G.: “Growth” to boost all of your mana
E.G.: “Power Hungry” to give you back your cards for basic attacking!
Lots more combo-ing as the game progresses
Up to 6 spells in front of you
Decision to leave a spell open late game to replace it slows you down a turn for stronger turns later
Decent counterplay for being a tableau builder
If they are trying to play off of mana numbers, take those spells
“Hoodwinked” deals a lot of damage, but is less damage if you do strong basic attacks against opponent
If not drawing many cards, get spells to penalize small hands
If loading up strong mana onto spells, use “Overload” to deal damage equal to what they’ve stacked on spell
Miscellaneous Pros
Really good replayability
Holding up to 6 spells a game where the deck is 70 spells
Combinations in how you’ll get them from center of 10 spells is varied
STRATEGY: Can go hard on delayed cards or forgo completely
STRATEGY: Try to combo spells ASAP, or slow down opponent
Runs really true to time of 20-40 min
Zero way to heal, so health keeps decreasing (especially with basic attacks)
Visual CONS
Cards are hard to read
Lot of the decision making is deciding what spell to get, text is small/excessively wordy from 10 cards
Should increase font size and remove fancy horizontal line
More symbols would have helped simplify cards (e.g. MTG mana symbol)
Gameplay Cons
Some weird spell design
Renewal and Sleight of hand give +1 or +4 in card advantage, too good to draft. Are 1 cost, meaning they’re cheap and are usable every turn
Hand advantage is almost always amazing, since pays for spells/basic attacks, and more cards is higher chance to draw stronger mana
3 cards in game (Shackled Motion, Secret Oath, and Stone Crush) play around card advantage, out of 70 randomized spells in game.
Not sure what combination of cards you will get, so you may not run into weird imbalance
Think Sleight of hand should be removed from game, won’t make a difference with 70 spells anyways
Counter of Puppet Master and Power Hungry is a bit too steep, Puppet Master makes Power Hungry engine unplayable
Thankfully no counter will just win you the game, still need to draft well
Time-Distortion is too good, since it pays for itself AND speeds up 2 other spells, which is always good in the game
Drafting spells from pool of 10 is overkill for scope of game
Overwhelms newcomers
Game already has randomness, limiting pool to 6 would feel more appropriate to more casual nature of game
Recommender Score
Wizards is definitely more of a low-conflict tableau builder than a mage dueler. Despite the theme of being cool wizards who cast spells at each other, damage are like accomplishments that you ramp up every turn, making damaging your opponent akin to seeing who can cross the finish line of 60 victory points first.
Yeah, there’s no pivotal mind games in the game, rather knowing when to execute the strong spells to push for 60 damage. There’s no counter spells, or spells being hidden info, there’s no healing, and no positioning of any sort. It’s just grab spells and mana and play with only just cards! Spells also tend to be not the craziest thing if you’ve come from trading card games, they usually fall under the lens of doing damage, drawing more mana, or finding ways to spell up spells. But that’s totally fine for the 20-40 minute runtime.
When looking at the replayability, gorgeous heaps of art, and extreme ease of playing, we were tempted to give this an 8/10, but some of the card design just stopped us in our tracks. These ultimately don’t break a session even when at their worst, since you still need to draft other spells well, so that’s why Wizards comfortably sits at a 7/10. It is currently a card game that is okay with some jankiness from both players drafting spells from a single deck of cards… just like the extremely popular Radlands! More comparisons in our video review below.
Wizards came with an included expansion, so if they come out with more expansions with MORE complexity, we could really see this be a nice game that you can continually scale to your player buddy’s preferences. It 100% leans more casual than most card games out there but still has some combos even us card game veterans were impressed by. Spellboards will always look different!
