Players: 2-8 Ages: 8+ (I’d say 6+) Setup Time: <5 min Play Time: 30min-1hr

Production Values: Great quality cardstock, great artwork, but would have liked player pawns to be more solid.

Pros:

• Simple, Fun. Captures D&D essence of “kill monsters and take their loot”.
• Kid Friendly
• Cheap. You could buy this or a game they used to call scrabble for the same price…

Cons:

• Can be a little too random, making gameplay drag on after some consecutive bad die rolls.
• Might be too challenging/disappointing for some kids (losing turns, starting over if killed, etc.)

A Wacky Destruction Derby of Weirdness

I’m back again with another game review, but this time I had to spend a lot of time playing the game weighing pro’s and cons and really trying to think about how I honestly felt about this game. I’m normally pretty aware of which way my opinion is going to swing after a play or two, but with HEAP, I had to give it about 5 tries to fully absorb my own thoughts. The good news is, the game is fun, and I think some people will really like it. I myself like it, but it might not be for everyone, which may seem like an obvious statement but please read on to see exactly why.

Rev Up Your Compost Motors!

So what exactly is HEAP about? Following in true bodger tradition, it’s about cobbling together wacky scraps of technology and using all that “goblin intuition” to beef up your vehicles, effectively turning them into razor clad, lightning spewing death machines. The goal of the game is to shoot out your opponents tires and splatter them all over the pavement as quickly as you can. It’s like a destruction derby set in a goblin junkyard, it’s not necessarily about how good your parts are, but how fast you can bolt them on and go.

This is where my first issue with the game cropped up, the box said it played in 30 minutes but that wasn’t happening for my group, it was more like an hour. Once we learned to just run and gun, the game became a lot more fun. Heap isn’t meant to be pondered, on your turn spending more than 30 seconds trying to figure out which wacky motor or which crazy set of tires to trick out one of your vehicles with means you’re doing it wrong. If you can turn off “chess mode” in your brain, Heap plays exactly as intended, if that’s not case, I can’t guarantee how much fun you’ll have with this game due to the pileup phase, which ends the game. Allow me to explain.

The Breakdown

The game plays in phases, and each card has sections for each phase on them as well, it actually works really well compared to the small font used in Infernal Contraption. There’s a bodge box for the bodge phase, a rush box and stoplight combat indicator for the rush phase and a vehicle icon and part type. The parts types are motors, wheels, weapons, and bling, you can only have one of each type on your vehicle. Each player has 4 vehicles: a Gyrohopper, Big Rigg, Doom Buggy, and a Scrap Hog each with their own benefits and ready to trick out with crazy parts.

The Bodge Phase

Everyone adds up to 2 parts to their vehicles which usually results in you and/or your opponents picking up cards, discarding them, shooting out parts, or adding cards to your haul pile (essentially freebie upgrades at the end of the round). You can add more than 2 parts at the cost of discarding another card, you also draw cards before this phase if you don’t have enough in your hand and there is no maximum hand size in this game. After the bodge phase, then you head to the rush phase, where everyone decides which of their vehicles to take to battle – unless of course a player played a challenge card during the bodge phase, in which case you’ll be taking whatever vehicle they tell you to.

The Rush Phase

During this phase you’ll use the cards in your hand to play back and forth in a stoplight color-coded battle setup, using the vehicle and all its wacky parts that they’ve taken to the rush as an additional means of giving you a leg up during the rush. The color coded combat is really simple, and fast, which is a theme that this game has in spades. It’s pretty simple wherein if I play a card that has a yellow attack, you need to block with yellow (or a more rare ‘block all’ card). There is a bit more to this but not much and I won’t delve into the minutia here, if you care for a full 8 minute how-to video, Privateer Press has one and it’s pretty great.

Anyway, play like this goes  around the table, once a player can no longer attack/block they are out of the rush and this repeats until only one player is left and they are the winner of the rush. Players grab all the cards (if any) in their haul pile, and may attach as many of them as they like to their vehicles. If you win the rush, sometimes you get additional haul cards. The bodge and rush phases repeat until at least one player has upgraded 3 of their vehicles with 4 upgrade parts.

The Pileup

This is where things started to feel a little fruitless for me, and why I mentioned the game was not for everyone earlier. I say this because all of the parts which you’ve been attaching to your vehicle and building up to this moment are all thrown out the window. Even winning the rush in this game doesn’t mean much unless you have a vehicle that indicates when you win the rush you get additional cards.

There is a lot of gameplay within heap that is only temporary and my own personal hangups get in the way here, I really like when I feel as if the decisions I make carry through a game, no matter how small the game may be. After several playthroughs I could learn to shake that and just play the game full throttle, that’s when I started having a lot of fun with it. It’s all just a means to the end, and it should be a nitty-gritty, fast ride toward the pileup phase, at which point – anyone can win the game.

The pileup phase is just another rush phase, which also acts as the final phase of the game but with a few significant changes. The first player to get 3 or more parts on all 4 of their vehicles triggers it, at which point that player and all other players will flip vehicles that had 3 or more parts on them over to their turbo side and discard all of their parts and their entire hand of cards. Then, players will total up the number of cards to draw determined by their turbo and non turbo vehicles, discard the number indicated and rush for one last time. The winner of this will win the game.

Goblinoid Conundrum?

So as you can see, being the first player to get all of your vehicles upgraded gives you the advantage of having “turbo” vehicles in the end round of the game, allowing you better abilities and giving you more cards to draw from. So basically no matter how the game goes down, the end phase mostly levels the playing field once again. It makes 80% of the time spent playing feel totally pointless, but I think that’s only if you’re looking at the game too hard like I was. It doesn’t seem very crazy goblin deathfest to have a near-level playing field at the end of the game, it seems it should be almost the inverse because goblins aren’t fair little people. Regardless, as I’ve mentioned before, if you can get past this hump, I think that Heap is a great game to kill time with or play with a younger crowd.

Quality Parts

The overall look and feel of the game is great, the artwork on the cards is stunning, bold, and really colorful. The game puts a lot of emphasis on symbols instead of words, which makes it pretty accessible for the younger crowd too, which is a bonus in my book. Since this is another game in the Bodgers line from Privateer Press, the card quality is identical if not better than the cards shown during my review of Infernal Contraption. I was going to do an unboxing but it’s essentially exactly the same but the cards have different art, fear not though as I’ve snapped a few pics of some of my favorite cards for the review.

Finish Line

Overall I’d say heap is a good game, it’s priced reasonably at $22 on Amazon and makes for a good way to spend some time in between games or get younger kids into tabletop gaming. My son has enjoyed learning to play Heap and is overwhelmed with the theme of the game, the ending phase doesn’t seem to bother him much. That about wraps it up, thank you guys for reading and if you do decide to pick up heap, please use the links here within my article. Until next time, game on!

Madness? This. Is. Mt. Skullfire!

What is Epic Spell Wars of the Battle Wizards you might ask? Well it’s a game that involves some cards, life counters, some dice, and a bunch of wiz biz. What’s the big deal about all that you might ask? You might say “Jerry, but I already have games with all of those elements in them!” The difference is this, to put plainly: this game is probably more fun. Also Epic Spell Wars most certainly contains 300% more crazy shit than other leading games. Do other games involve gore-nado’s or testikills? Yeah that’s right, you’ll probably get squashed by a giant testicle in this game, and earn magical loot like Lady Luck’s Brassiere. Interested? Read on!

What The Fluff?!

Death Fairy’s Maggoty Lightning Bolt? Sounds interesting. Beard O’ Blasty’s Infernotastic Cone of Acid? Devastating! Walker Time Ranger’s Disco Mirrored Brain Suck? Wait, what the hell is going on here? Yes these are but the tip of the iceberg when it comes to all spells you can construct within ESWotBW. The gameplay is really basic – construct spells to obliterate your foes with, and hope to be the last wizard standing. Become the last wizard standing twice, and you win the game!

Spells in the game have 3 components: a source, quality, and delivery which are used to build your spell each round. Everyone takes their turn simultaneously and lays out a spell they’ve constructed from their hand of 8 cards while pronouncing it in their best wizard voice! It is up to your group to make up a penalty for players not speaking in wizardly tones. Each player picks one of the 8 wizard personas to take on during gameplay, which are illustrated on a card along side a counter to keep track of your life total. The wizard players pick is purely cosmetic and has no effect other than the amount of laughter that takes place when announcing oneself.

Millions of Spell Combinations! Okay, Maybe Just Thousands…

Each of the three components add to the mechanics and resolution of  the spells you cast. The source of a spell is basically the name of the wizard casting it (which is specified by the  card itself, or whichever of the 8 wizards you happen to be playing) and usually adds mild or random effects, while the quality is a wacky adjective that describes the spell and adds damage or other benefits such as spiky, mysterious, or ballsy. Finally, the delivery of a spell is the big whizz-bang chaotic ending that usually does the most damage and involves rolling a few dice. Deliveries are usually something brutal like vorpal trap or exorcism but also delve into heinously strange territory with cards like meatier swarm or phantasmagoons.

When you chain 3 spell elements together, all of the artwork on the cards connects and you wind up with something awesome like this:

 You don’t always have to play all 3 parts of a spell though, and you might not always be able to. When you announce your spell you fill in the gaps with your wizard name, made up adjectives and delivery names. Players who play smaller spells act first than those who’ve channeled up longer ones, players who tie either go by initiative order (indicated on the card) or a good old-fashioned roll off to determine who goes first. This has both its advantages and disadvantages which adds a good dose of strategy to the pure chaos of the game.

Death Is Awesome

If you’re gonna die, better to die first! The sooner you’re out of the game, the sooner you’ll be scoring Dead Wizard cards to help you out in the next match when you come back for another harrowing round of ridiculous spells and cartoony carnage. Most of all the dead wizard cards give you benefits like returning with treasure, increased health, and bonus die rolls. A few of the dead wizard cards do actually say “You’re dead. Live with it.” which is a nice touch.

Bizarre Baubles

Sometimes you get loot, all of the time that loot is absurd and awesome. Sometimes other wizards will steal your treasure, sometimes you’ll blast them into a pink mist and get it back! Sometimes the Phister Cannon or the Wand of “Let’s Get This Shit Over With” really come in handy. Treasure is earned when a card tells you that you’ve earned it and you draw from the pile of treasure cards, they provide all sorts of bonuses and situational effects, along with a few gambles. The only downside to treasure is that if you acquire a ton of it, you may have a hard time keeping track of all its awesomeness!

The Game, The Goods

Epic Spell Wars of the Battle Wizards is insanely fun to play, and extremely easy to jump into. Once you play a single hand the whole rest of the game should immediately click for most people, for those who don’t grasp it by that first round…well you’ll have one extra turn of blowing them to smithereens before they return the favor.

Games can last anywhere from half an hour to a couple of hours, depending on the size, luck, strategy, and experience levels of everyone playing. Not saying that the game has a steep learning curve, but if you’ve played a few games you’ll have a better idea as how to eliminate the other wizards with a bit more efficiency. The randomness of the game keeps things really interesting at all times though.

The artwork for this game was done by the amazing Nick Edwards who’s art style for these was so similar to Pendleton Ward’s I thought that the Adventure Time creator was involved. I was mistaken but not disappointed by any means. The packaging, printing, and cards themselves are all very high production value, I’ve played about 5 full games now with zero wear & tear on the cards. The game even comes with a cardboard standup of Mt. Skullfyre for flavor!

Now Go Melt Some Faces!

How many times have I used the word awesome in this review? Probably one too many. In case you haven’t picked up on this yet – I highly recommend this game. It’s great for just about anyone, devoted gamers and casuals alike – even people who don’t normally play tabletop games will have a blast with ESWotBW. Much laughter is sure to ensue, many body parts are sure to fly, and only the greatest battle wizard shall survive!