Board Game Unboxing: Epic Spell Wars of the Battle Wizards: Duel at Mt. Skullzfyre

Oh man... I've been waiting patiently for this game. I didn't know much about it beyond the artwork and spell combo mechanic, but that wasn't enough to stop me from driving all over to find a copy.

After a few stores (and about 40 miles) I found one!

Join me after the jump for a look inside the box. Warning though, it can be a little risqué. Especially for a board game. If you can handle spells like 'Muzzlesnap's Ballsy Testikill' or a treasure called 'The "Let's End This" Shit', then follow me for some imagery and wizardry.

The next few images are the player score cards. The backside features a large image of the character, and the front side is a smaller version of the same image, with a scoring track.

Some treasures and Dead Wizard cards. The Dead Wizard cards are given to players that are temporarily knocked out, and to be used when they return in the next session.

A completed spell.

The rules. More on this later.

Great interior image. It also holds the components really well. In fact the components are just cards, bigger cards, a few dice and chits. And the useless Mt. Skullzfyre.

Quick Session Recap: After taking these pictures, we had a chance to play a quick first game. So far, I'm really happy with this game. It's exactly what I thought it would be: combine parts of spells to make one big epic spell and cast it on your opponents, but there is also a lot more to it. The Dead Wizard deck is a nice touch to keep using players in the game, and the spell combos can get really cool. There's a struggle for initiative, cool glyphs that give you additional dice to roll, and spells that effect the player of your left, right, both, or all opponents. You choose a 1, 2 or 3 card spell spell from a hand 8 cards, so you have lots of options each turn.

The game was very quick to learn. Rounds were short enough (we played for about an hour and played three full rounds), and it was pretty funny all around. I love the art style and the humor, but I know some people have been put off by the vulgarity. Some of it seems a bit over the top for a board game audience (cuts down the demographic of an already small demographic), but it worked very well with my group. They loved it.

My only complaint would be the rules, and this is coming from someone who hates writing rules. There are tons of images and examples of gameplay (awesome), but the text is in a handwritten font style (not terrible) that varies size and spacing on every line (terrible). It also mixes up terms (the Main Deck is also the Spell Deck), and doesn't specify how many games to play. So I guess this is up to the players, which is ok but I looked everywhere for the suggested game length. And finally, we played wrong for a few minutes because I couldn't tell if you draw back up to 8 at the start of each turn. It turns out you do, but the only place I saw it was on the quick reference on the back of the rule book. It might be in there somewhere, but it's really tough to read, and even harder to reference at a glance. Check it out for yourself here: http://www.cryptozoic.com/downloads/files/epic_spell_wars_rulebook.pdf