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The gold tipped cane strikes the cobbled street as he strides toward his destination. His velvet lined cloak billowing behind him. The smog is starting to tighten its grip on the gaslit London streets. He reaches the square and looks around, he is the first here. He takes out a vial of blood from somewhere within his cape. Then he mutters a few words and smashes it to the ground. The blood starts to bubble up and coalesce into a solid form. The newly born vampire sniffs the air and snarls at something unseen before moving to its master’s side.
There is a low buzzing noise a fly lands upon the master’s hand. He swats it away. It's replaced by another, then another. The buzzing becomes more incessant. Rising to a cacophony as thousands of bugs swarm into the square. Swirling around its current occupants. The master slams his cane into the ground it emits a bright light. The bugs dissipate. This leaves the square empty, save for its original occupants and a blue haired nymph. She emits a high-pitched, sing-song like noise and a chirruping starts to echo down one of the streets. A giant beetle like creature comes barrelling into the square stopping next to the blue haired nymph. As this happens the light from the street lamps starts to pulse. Then flicker out, one at a time until the square plunges into darkness.
The wind picks up. A strong smell of rotting flesh is carried upon it. The wind disappears taking most of the smell with it. The lights pulse back on. Standing in the centre of the square is a hooded figure, who is soon joined by a living corpse that crawls out of the open sewer. A booming laugh sounds out around the square everyone looks to the sky, to see its source. A lightning bolt strikes the ground and the laughing demon steps out from the spot where it struck. He raises his arm to the sky and a great leathery flapping noise fills the air. A dragon descends into the square, it looks around at the other creatures surrounding it. The master raises his voice and asks a simple question. “Shall we begin?”
“Paranoids Only Think Someone is Out To Get Them. Wizards Know It”
Sorcerer is a 2-4 player CCG card battler published by White Wizard Games.
The premise is that you are one of 4 sorcerers battling through 3 locations in Victorian London until one of you is the victor. The victor is the first to win at two of those locations. To do this your sorcerer will be conjuring minions to battle at each of those locations. Your sorcerer will be moving between those locations to provide buffs to your minions. Giving them the chance to defeat the location.
Yes, that's right the aim is not to beat and destroy your opponent but to destroy and win the location.
Why you’re fighting? That’s not so clear maybe it is to be the king sorcerer or maybe there can be only one! But, as you cant kill your opponents, and it’s location dependent then maybe it is to become London’s Sorcerer Supreme. Victorian London’s Stephen Strange, perhaps? With added vampires, zombies, or werewolves.
“Perhaps it Would Be Simpler if You Did What You’re Told and Didn’t Try To Understand Things”
The game starts by getting you to build your 40-card deck, and your sorcerer. To do this you randomly draw from one of four decks in the 3 different categories. The categories are Character, Lineage, and Domain. These combine to give your sorcerer their individual powers and the minions they will summon into battle. This will also give you your Sorcerer's name. Tegu, The Bloodlord of the Forgotten Temple, for example. This means in the base set of the game you have got 64 decks that you can build, through these combinations.
The gameplay is a little different to other card battlers. You will each take it in turn to spend energy to play your cards, resolving any “when played“ effects. Play then moves into a 2nd phase where the battling takes place. Each player will use their played minions to attack at the various locations. An attack consists of taking the attack stat of the card, plus any modifiers from attached cards, and roll that amount of dice up to 7 dice. On rolling the dice you will have four outcomes. A miss, indicated by a blank face. A single hit, indicated by a skull. A double hit, indicated by 2 skulls and a critical hit indicated by a pentagram.
The damage then gets allocated, dependent of the damage type. Standard damage, indicated by the double and single skulls, gets split between the location and defending minions, by the defending player. Critical hits get apportioned by the attacking player. This sequence of play continues until both defending and attacking minions are exhausted. If ever a location takes 12 or more damage, that location is won by the player who inflicted the damage.
“If Failure Had No Penalty Success Would Not Be a Prize”
Omens can be used during the battle phase; an omen allows you to influence an attack. By spending an omen, you can re-roll one of your die or force an opponent to re-roll one of theirs. The first player also has a single useability, per round, to expend their first player token and force a re-roll of all dice.
Once the battle phase is complete then you ready all your surviving minions, roll a D8 to determine how much energy will be gained by all players. Each player gains an omen token and the first player token passes to the next player.
“It’s a Box! It Could Be Treasure, Don’t You Think? Its Growing Legs…”
The art design is very much in the theme of Victorian London and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen springs to mind. The player boards are very thematic and feel robust in use. It’s also nice that they are double sided, with an Egyptian theme on the other side. The publishers have the expansions in mind, which has a bunch of Egyptian locations to sit alongside the London ones. The box internals have plenty of space for this set and future expansions. There are useful card dividers for the 3 different deck types. However, I’m not sure if this is unique to my set, but the card dividers are a bit larger than the card holder area and so they don’t sit flush in the box.
The dice are solid enough and the cards are of a normal plastic variety. You have some nice weighty resin gems/pebbles to act as your energy and action trackers. Your avatars are represented by a cardboard standee which are solid. You are also given plenty of cardboard bases for your standee to slot into. Another small niggle I have is the components are very thematic. Until you get to the red wooden cubes you use for tracking damage in locations. Whilst attention and art design has been put into all the other components. I think that to add a little something to these would have also been nice.
“We Are Trying to Unravel the Mighty Infinite With a Language That Was Designed to Tell One Another Where the Fresh Fruit Was”
I like something that takes a familiar gameplay mechanic and tries to evolve it. This takes that classic card battler and adds a few more elements. Playing your cards before battling. Then playing cards alternately means you can respond to what your opponent has played and it feels like it adds a bit more tactical depth. I like that you can build your deck before the game and it gives the game a sense of variety in how your deck turns out. Those 64 potential decks sound like a lot and it feels like you are getting a fair bit of value from the game. Although I am unsure of how different each deck will play because your Origin determines a lot about how you play the game. The other cards feed into that archetype. Although they have done a good job of allowing all the cards to work together.
The dice-based combat is something I am not too sure of, I’m not the biggest fan of dice games. Many, many hours of Risk, in my youth, have seen me lose too many advantageous positions to bad dice rolls. But the ability to re-roll a bad roll takes the sting out of it somewhat. I don’t think this game will convert anyone to card battlers and it may have a few too many mechanics for entry level players.
There are also multiple game modes you can play, dependent upon the player count. Having up to 4 players means you can either square off against each other in a battle royale mode or team up 2 v 2. Which I believe offers good value for the base game.
“The Gods Imprisoned in a Thought. And Perhaps They Were Never More Than a Dream”
At the price point this game is offered, you get a lot of game with some nice components, for your money. It’s an evolution of gameplay mechanics found in more traditional card battlers. The theme of Sorcerers battling through Victorian London is one I enjoy. The ability to build your deck at the beginning of the game provides some variety to the experience. Whilst I don’t have any issues with the added mechanics. Some players may find it a little too much management.
One thing I would have liked to have seen is to have some kind of direct magical attack from the Sorcerers. Most of their skills are around buffing their minions. It would be good to see some spell craft beyond just summoning minions. There is also a disconnect with having your Sorcerer on the battlefield and yet they cannot be damaged. I would recommend this game to someone who is looking for something a bit meatier than Magic: The Gathering without the longer-term commitment of having to invest in that infrastructure.
