 So wizard the wizard Scott and I met two awesome smart people at the previous PAX Australia first PAX Australia. Yes, we went to it. We were walking around and we were like, we got to find some smart people to play a game with. We saw two people and they were looking for a game. So like, hey, you want to play a game? And one thing led to another. Played Hanavi. We played Hanavi, which is smart person detector alpha. Yep. And they were smart. Yep. The smart person detector went bing bing bing. Yep. It's almost like a dowsing rod, but it works. So I have to give props to them because Jess and Bane, these two people who were smart and we hung out with them. I hung out with them again at the next PAX Aus cause like we do, we form PAX specific posses in every region of the world where there's a PAX and they brought out a game. And as is the Rimm and Scott style, I did what we always do. Really? I've never heard of this game and you want me to play it? Watch how enthused I am. Watch me try to avoid learning this game cause I actually just want to play this game that I brought and I played wizard and it was great. Wizard. So wizard is actually a mad old game. It's published in 1984. It is two years younger than us. Yep. It was all it all it received a nomination for the 2011 Netherlands spell in freeze, which I guess is the Netherlands game. Netherlander dust field is yours. Right. Basically in 2011. So it took that long for the end to be recognized. It wasn't even published commercially until like 1986. Right. And then we only discovered it in 2014. Yeah. So this game is like a game that I guess has just been sitting in the dark and suddenly popped out of nowhere. It's designed by a guy named Ken Fisher. Yeah. Who I never heard of, but I'm going to look him up. All right. In his board game geek picture, he has a hood on that has a gold lining. I think wizard is the only thing that he makes. It's wizard cards dot com. Well, you know what, guys, if you've only ever made one game, you're batting a thousand. Oh, no. He's made Isaac Asimov super quiz one, two and three. Okay. I think your batting average is dropping. Or maybe this is just his part of his wish. I don't know. All right. All right. We'll do less. Wizards is the only thing we care about. Sorry, Ken Fisher. Wizard is interesting because he actually has the username wizard on board game geek. Wow. Yeah. So remember our review of Penn Dante, Penn Dante is like the if poker were designed today to be fun. It's Penn Dante. It's like they take poker and you soup it up with some, you know, Euro game, you know, skills and some modern rules to it like it's a modern game and all that put some theme on there. Yeah. And you know what? Penn Dante gives you 90% of the fun of actual poker without any of the tedium of actual poker. Right. So wizard is well Penn Dante is to poker as wizard is to whist. Yeah. Slash heart slash huker slash every trick trick taking games wizard is just a Trump food suit following trick taking game. Now most people who are in the board game nerd community who are looking to play a trick taking game goes straight to teach you. I have teach you play teach you teach you is not good teach you is not I would rather play hearts than play teach you but I would rather play wizard than any other trick game game I've ever seen. Well, it depends because bridges for old people. I so I grew up in the Midwest where everyone plays trick taking games everyone. Everyone knows those kinds of games. You grow up playing yuker and whist and hearts and pinocchio and all these kinds of game up. I hate bridge I hate pinocchio I like yuker but if you play yuker enough it's a solve game that comes down to cheating hearts is a fantastic game. Hearts is the best. I fucking love hearts. I will play hearts almost any time. Hearts is great. Yes, but much like how we when we taught Penn Dante especially when I tried to teach Penn Dante to a bunch of our friends I learned that a lot of our friends had never played poker like they didn't know what a flush was. So they knew what she was. They were extra surprised by a flush. Yeah, and this was the same deal. It was interesting to read the rules to trick taking because I had never in my life thought about the rules to teach him this game. I would say look we all you have to do in this game is trick taking. It's trick taking Trump Trump is the top card that gets revealed from the deck after we deal the cards. Well here you know what what I'll do right now for you guys. I'm going to teach you the entire game the way I would teach it to Scott. All right. So but I already know how to play. Exactly. But this is for the listener. So this is basically just a trick taking game. But the way you're going to do it is you bid how many tricks you're going to take and then you play a hand of one then you bid how many tricks you're going to take and you play a hand of two then a hand of three. So obviously in the hand of one I would only bid one or zero because it would be impossible for me to take two tricks. Yep. Dealer dealer allowed to bid to even though there's only one to take. Well yes. But that's going to fuck you because the scoring is you get one point for every trick you take if you bid the correct number and then you get two points because you bid correctly. So if I bid one I get one I get three points. So you want to take more tricks and bid correctly but if bidding correctly is more important because if you're even one off from the correct bid you lose a point for every one you're off by. So if I bid eight and I take nine or seven I lose a point. But if I bid one and take one and you bid five and take five you're doing way better than exactly that way you can't just be like zero zero always taking zero ducking under even if you always take zero you're going to play a trump card at some point because you're going to have one in your hand and you're going to take one maybe maybe not you're going to be off. Yeah because someone else will play the fucking ace you just duck your Trump under that is fine. So that's the game with one trick to it. All three tricks three tricks. Yeah. I was just going to say there are super Trump weird cards. Oh OK. Yeah. There's only four of each type. There are gestures and there are wizards. I didn't I don't know any gestures. So the problem is the game is in German. At least the copy of it that we got so it's Zauberers and Nars Z's and N's because that's not in any way visually confusing. Yeah because Z is just a sideways end. Yes. Well I mean six and nine upside down. So anyway so that's why you draw a line on one side of it. So you know a wizard is it is Trump and it is infinity. So it always wins the trick. What if two people play with our the same wizards are played whichever wizard was plays first wins the trick. So if I get the first play because I took the last trick and I play a wizard I get the next trick and everyone else can dump a card. Yeah. So if I if you lead a wizard and clear out a suit of whatever is no suit for that. So wouldn't I want to play my wizards later in the round because I mean I'm going to take a trick with the wizard anyway. Possibly. So if I play it later in the round I basically preventing people from dumping suit early in the you don't want to be in a situation where you don't have the lead anymore. So and then the last three people all lead wizard and then your fourth wizard is just fucked. That could happen or you might accidentally take a trick in the mid and now you don't want to take a trick with that wizard. And then the gestures they are negative infinity and are not Trump. No. What if no suits. So obviously even if two people play NAR one of the other players is going to take the trick but what if all players play NAR whoever led that NAR gets fucked. Oh no. I've never seen it happen. I doubt that whatever happens. I'm going to yell and scream. NAR be beautiful. Well so it says here on board game you can play with three to six players but there's only four. It can only happen with only happen with four or fewer players. I think the game is best with four players like all trick taking games are. Yeah. If you play with five or six. I mean obviously it's still really all wizard or all NAR situation can't happen. Yes. But so if NAR is lead then the next player to play sets the suit for the trick. Okay. So that's pretty much the whole game. Now if you don't know if that doesn't mean anything to you the way trick taking games work fundamentally one you should go back and listen to our episode on hearts. Yeah. Everyone who is in the game has a hand of cards. Yes. Someone goes first. That person plays a card. Any of the cards cards have a suit and a value. So whatever suit was played is now the suit for that hand trick. So the next person now has to play one card from their hand. If they have a card matching the suit of the already played card they must follow suit. That's why you ever heard the phrase follow suit. That's what that means. So if rim goes first and he plays a spade the car and I have a spade in my hand. I must play a spade. I may not play one of the other cards in my hand and people if I cheat people can figure it out easily and ruin me. Yep. Pointing out. So I had to play a spade if I don't have a spade I may play any of the other cards in my hand. Exactly. So one suit will be determined by some fashion in some games players can kind of decide through a process in this game and in many games it's just random and not all trick taking games have this but one suit will be determined to be Trump. That suit will Trump any other suits. So if I played the 10 and Scott played the four and someone else played the two of the suit that was the trick then I would get it. I have the highest number. Yep. But if anyone someone else plays a card from some other suit because they didn't have the appropriate suit in hand worth nothing they don't they don't get to take the trick because it's only you have to follow suit for your card to count as taking the trick but a two of Trump beats the highest number of non Trump right. So it's like if I want to take tricks a lot of them I want to have a lot of Trump cards in my hand and dump a suit. So let's say I get rid of all the spades in my hand but I have a bunch of Trump cards hearts of Trump then other people still have a ton of spades and they play them and on my turn I don't have to play a spade because I don't have one so I play my heart cards that are Trump and I get to take those tricks regardless of the value of my heart cards unless someone else someone else also ran out of spades and place heart cards that are higher value than mine right so because the hearts of the Trump if someone just starts the hand with the hearts well that's awesome sometimes but you have to follow suit you had to follow so if I so in it like a stand like in hearts well the hearts as an example so in Uker if I play Uker is not a good example because they have to explain fucking about whatever with so in West if I play the ace of Trump and I lead that and Scott only has a king of the Trump suit he's got to just throw it down and lose it and it doesn't do anything even though that it's an extremely powerful card yeah I was forced to play and lose it so the final rub in wizard is that you may play a gnar or a Zauberer regardless of following suit at any time you can always play one yep so even if I can follow suit I can wizard or gnar instead so like if I want to really if I am gonna know if I was in a situation like rim just said we have a really powerful card but I'm gonna be forced to lose it I can just gnar or wizard instead and keep that powerful card in my hand and then play it later and get the value from it yep so the game is great you can play it with a normal deck of cards as long as you have eight cards beyond the deck of cards that can be labeled czar and and on czar Zauberer and gnar so usually if you buy a deck of playing cards at the drug store it's gonna have like two learn to play cards and two jokers you might need to like get two decks of cards of the same back and like take the aces and doodle on them and write Zauberer and then take some deuces and write gnar on them or something do something like that or you can just buy there's a lot of people that make pre-made decks the one we bought has the the official one has the best worst arts ever so the artist is friends vo Winkle and the art is simultaneously good and bad I mean it's not the worst art I've seen it's not sentinels the multiverse are just like a child drew it sorry whoever did that but yeah it's bad the art special and if you play with this deck your players will comment on the art yeah it's not worthy which I think is actually a positive right it doesn't really matter for the game you know a lot this is the way it does for like a collectible or you know living god I just realized what it says on the back game contents 60 character cards one score pad of truth one set of instructions I love how it's not even branded as a card game it's a the character cards yep it has this whole story and the story in the game is amazingly succinct what's the story the story is we unearthed Stonehenge and found the game that wizards used to play back when wizards existed nice here are the rules dude it sounds true to me I believe it so if you have never played a trick-taking game ever get this game and play it says on board game geek that wizard originated from oh hell or also known as up and down the river which are played with a standard deck of 52 cards with a proprietary 60 card deck comprising a standard deck plus four wizards and four gestures in the first hand one card and so on so apparently there was another trick-taking game called oh hell also known as up and down the river which was the game that came before wizard but did not have the wizards and gnar's in it yep but then you're getting close to whist or gops or all those other kinds of games yep but uh seriously if you've never played a trick-taking game you get wizard somehow and this is the best way to learn trick-taking games to learn to get good at them and then like it'll be really easy to play hearts and you could all these other kinds I think you should just play hearts first on your Windows PC so it's tricky because or yahoo games what's interesting and then you'll be able to play wizard very easily has the hearts teaches you desuding and ducking and all those kinds of strategies very important things to know for what hearts has no trump and hearts has the card pass well hearts are trump and hearts well they're not trump sort of right there like reverse Trump like you know they're not they are no they're not they don't count extra for taking a suit but they're the in Trump only means it lets you take a trick that you wouldn't otherwise take sure but they're the special suit in that you don't Trump trying to not a special suit they're the point suit don't fuck with me on trick-taking games in Michigan yes you've been a pedantic nonsense if you call that Trump among anyone who plays these games they would laugh you out of the room you'll still be able to easily understand the concepts of wizard after playing hearts got other in America other than one teaching game I'm fucking undefeated at wizards don't you even don't you even so but yeah hearts and Euker are the two like Arctic typical games I'd say whisk but no one fucking actually plays with well people did no yeah no one plays with and also Euker is basically just like whisked with a tiny deck so it's kind of it's almost like Euker is almost to whisk what Penn Dante is to poker as well in a sense as a bridge yeah I hate bridge but to articulate why bridge is a big deal though I know it is I respect bridge but I don't like playing bridge but so let's talk about wizard in because just play it but strategy wise oh strategy wise alright this is a good game with a very high skill cap right so I think might the thing is you go this with people with noobs is like beating babies to death like it's just right so you look at your opening your look at your hand you say how many tricks can I possibly take with this hand and the thing is well you could you might have a hand it's got like wizard okay I got a bet at least one I got a wizard yep then I got like two high trump cards well I should probably got I saw a game in the first round two wizards were in people's hands yep so shit happens exactly so let's say it's the hand of five you've got a wizard two high trumps and two man cards are those Mac cards the same suit maybe yeah why not if they're the same suit I'm definitely bidding fucking for how are you gonna get for because I'm gonna control with the wizard lead my other stuff the odds of other Trump being out in the five hand probably pretty low you think you're basically counting that one of those Mac cards will be able to take a trick because I'll be leading it toward the end and because they're meh if I if someone else fucks me somehow takes control I'll probably be able to use those Trump to get control back pretty easily because the odds of the highest Trump being in the game are pretty low and two because I'm desuited there's a decent chance I can use one of those Trump to get back in right away yeah I would just bet three because even if I am able to take one of the tricks with one of those Mac cards right I'm know that other people all have five cards in the hands someone's gonna fuck me when I play one of my high Trump so the wizard or some shit yeah so I basically can't those two those you know the advantage I can do if I try to take the tricks versus the someone's gonna fuck me cancel out so I go well I go three here's the real thing my heuristic there which was similar to yours is just based on your hand which is how like in the hearts your hand is the only real core direction you don't get to see anyone else's hand that's all you got to go there's no bidding but in wizard players openly bid on how many tricks are gonna take in turn order yes so depending on who bids first and what they bid it's the hand of five the first player let's say rim goes he has the hand we just discussed if I'm bidding first three all right so he going first he bids three if he's correct that means among the three other players only two people should take tricks me know I'm sitting to the left a rim I look at my hand it's ridiculous luck day I have two wizards so but all the other cards in my hand like twos but you know that I'm really confident because I bid three not knowing anyone else is right so but I'm bidding to I got two was alright so the other two people either know they're not taking shit are dumb and right so now it's around a five and five people have already bid with two two people of bid on all five tricks the other guys holding like a really high trump card he bids one and the other person's got some high trump cards to they've been one or two now this is where the game gets interesting or people have been a total of like seven or eight tricks out of only five available tricks yeah someone's wrong and and funny sometimes will go way under like I saw a game a couple of games were like in one hand the bids will be like one one zero and then the fourth person's like seven yeah they got a really bad hand but everyone else bid way low and the other thing is sometimes you'll under bid right by accident well that was really it so when your example the guy with that high Trump maybe he gets scared away from bidding because he knows like alright these guys got fucking wizards or whatever right so he bids zero so now my shithand is more likely to win because he's doing everything he can to not take any tricks so let's say I'm in a situation I got like I got a high card of every suit and a wizard so I've got I think I'm going to take five tricks but I'm pretty sure one of these is going to get fucked over it's a 10 and not a 13 what in green or something so I'm like yeah someone's going to probably take an 11 or 12 green and I won't get that one so I'll go under by one I'll bid four then as we play all the I'm forced to play those high suit cards by following suit and I end up taking my four tricks and I still have my wizard in my hand so the other thing is when the bidding ends usually you'll see like a lot like amongst people who are like really smart and good at trick taking games the bids are almost always within one or two of the actual number of tricks that I've never been off by more than one yeah I've been I was off by two or three or four or five in toward the end because if you're behind fucking just bid extra yeah if you're going to lose right then your only hope to catch up is to try to take more tricks there's nothing is like I'll play a hand then I'll bid three and I will take exactly three and say what a good job that was I got it exactly right but I didn't get it exactly right I could have taken four or five tricks I just didn't bet four or five so I chose during the round to not take tricks I could have taken because I bid too low so I even though I got the right number and got the you know points and didn't lose points I could have had more points because I made bidding was not aggressive enough so basically the game has the bidding aspects of bridge it has the Trump protection aspects of you Kerr and it has the ducking and desuiting tactics of hearts so it combines a lot of my favorite card it's pretty much everything there is about trick taking games all in one game so it comes with a bunch of variants plus wizards yeah but whatever there is one problem with the game as written the game does not give you a way to deal with reneg so in like in you Kerr if you fuck up and for like you don't follow suit and then later it's like oops I had a heart and I should have played it that doesn't ruin the game the rules basically like the rules deal with that there's a rule for if someone or an egg right so let's say like or if you're in the middle in the Midwest reneg because they just can't pronounce words right so let's say rim has a green card in his hand and I play green and he chooses to play some red card he forgets that he had in his hand then we find out later when he plays a green card I say rim why didn't you follow that green card on the previous two turns ago and I've played green yep fuck we've ruined the game no way to fix it there's no fix written into the rules now I at all I want I'm trying to come up with a rule that we as like our friend group is just going to agree upon as the rule for renegs just so that we don't have to deal with it because the fact that matter is I think the rules should be something along the lines of whoever takes that trick should take it according to the cards that were played yep but the person if you are caught basically you lose just lose chips yeah I'm trying to figure out because you screwed up I'm trying to figure out like a number of them right I think the number has to scale up as though as you get deeper in the game it has to be the penalty should become worse how about this you lose a number of chips equal to the number of cards that might be too much though but at the same time it also depends on like how significant was the mistake you made exactly it might not have mattered like oh you would have played it earlier and not taking the trick and the other card that you did play earlier would have not taken this trick exactly and also you fucked up everyone else's card counting that's all the counting cards very important so I'm not sure and if anyone has suggestions discussed in the forum because that's the only flaw with this game the other thing is that there's a variant I really want to try because one thing that hearts has that makes hearts shooting the shooting the moon no so in hearts in the first hand oh the passing pick three cards and pass them to the dude to your left and the dude to your right passes three to you so I know that I gave this motherfucker three spades so I know he's got a bunch of high spades and I don't have any spades it's going to be awesome he's right so we can you can easily add that to wizard as a variant rule no problem here's the question though do you bid before or after passing I think after by default do you but do you hardcore mode is before I mean we could you could choose the cards you're going to pass then bid then see the cards you're picking up because that you remember that you still getting information from the other people's bids yep you could also have something cool where like you're allowed you get your cards you're allowed to raise your bid but you can't lower it like something like that there's this game is right for custom thing is with passing cards people are going to dump suit like pretty much immediately yeah that's what happens in our Trump Trump cars become way more powerful yeah that you'll be able to take way more tricks if you have any trumps whatsoever and you know what much like with so do you reveal Trump before or after the bidding and passing much like order matters so much even then Scott much like with Dune everybody has that power that's correct and to but then luck becomes a big factor to in high level hearts play for example I would pass my dad to high clubs and a middling to low club but maybe I didn't de-suit myself of clubs yeah you got a low club and you're gonna get rid of that no problem you kept the low one no but I gave away a low one to imply that I had gotten rid of all my clubs and I'm probably some motherfucker who's gonna heart and or screen spade someone you held one middling club yeah that's still not gonna take a trick hopefully not so you get into like the card in high level hearts play the cards you pass themselves are a whole game of their own so it's like there's a whole process of seeing your cards choosing which cards to pass seeing the cars that were passed to you and seeing what Trump is and seeing the other players bids and you know so like when in that process the order that you do the things and when the people bid really changes the game a zillion yep so if you're you know if you're an aspiring game designer and you think those none of those things sound like a big deal they're such different games if you don't understand why the order of those things changes the game like 10,000% don't make any games and if you want to be good at this game when you first teach it to your friends one play a bunch of hearts online but two a basic heuristic that a lot of noobs use is guess how many tricks you think you're gonna take and go for one less than that because you're probably wrong yep you'll probably get wizarded or something it's like count the number of awesome trick taking cards in your hand that are powerful the high trumps and the wizards and whatever take that number subtract one and then try to take that many tricks and you'll probably beat most people who don't know what they're doing yeah and we're gonna play I mean we're gonna play a lot of games at PAX South but I think Wizards gonna be the like it's gonna be the default warm-up game or the default four of us are waiting for you guys to finish Eclipse before we do another thing game also at least our thing as came up at PAX losses anytime someone plays a wizard they basically sing that thing from Daffy duck behold the wizard incredible power that that you're pretty much obligated to say that out loud possibly loudly every time you play a wizard yep so link to that much like the posing in pendante this game is also right you know it's a good right any good board game any good tabletop game is gonna have a thing that people say y'all got a brick y'all got wood from my sheep that's right so the fact that this people are playing this game going wizard shows a good game this has been geek nights with rim and scott special thanks to dj pretzel for the opening music cat lee for web design and brand okay for the logos be sure to visit our website at front row crew dot com for show notes discussion news and more remember geek nights is not one but four 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