In 1975, Ideal published a game called Tank Command in which each player had ten shells numbered one through ten and secretly chose one each round. Whichever player chose the higher shell won the round, and moved a central scoring marker (adorned with tanks!) a number of spaces towards his opponent equal to the sum of the two numbers. Of course, once having chosen a shell, you couldn't chose it again for the rest of the game. The winner was essentially the first player to have the marker cross a goal line, so the game was trying to outguess what your opponent was going to do. Shazamm, a new Z-man game that I had the pleasure of playing at Gencon, is similar but with the addition of magic spells.

Components:
Gameboard consisting of bridge across lava river and player power point track, heavy cardstock pieces representing the central firewall, two opposing Beetles, er, Wizards, two dials allowing the players hidden allocation of Mana points, and two decks in different colors of fifteen identical spells (one of which is simply a bluff.)

Game Play:
The game starts with the fire wall in the center of the bridge with each wizard three spaces away. Each player is dealt five cards from his spell deck, and each marker is placed on the fifty end of the power point track. Each turn, each player uses his dial to secretly chose the number of Mana points he wishes to spend for that turn. Each player also choses secretly whether to cast one of more magic spells. The dials are revealed, and the player playing the highest amount of Mana wins the round, moving the fire wall one space toward his opponent. Or does he? You see, the magic spells may effect the outcome of the round, either adding Mana to a player's initial choice, manipulating the rules so that the lower number wins, resetting the firewall in the center, or other wild and chaotic effects. The trick is, each spell can only be used once per game by each player, so if you waste a powerful spell early, you won't have it later on (while your opponent still will.) Mana used during each turn is subtracted from a player's total, and when that's gone, you don't get it back until the round is over.

Each time the firewall touches a player, the round ends. Each player draws three new cards, the wizards are again placed three spaces away from wherever the firewall ended up, Mana levels are reset at fifty, each wizard draws three new cards, and the two outer spaces of the bridge crumble away. Play continues until one of the players is knocked back off the bridge.

Rating:
Shazamm is an outguess-your-opponent game with two levels of guessing. Ideally, you either want to commit one more Mana on a round than your opponent, or you want to commit a lot fewer Mana, so you'll have more toward the end of the round. You also try to outguess what spell or spells your opponent will play, as certain spells neatly counter others. I won a four player tournament at Gencon basically by rope-a-doping my opponents. I gave up position early to run my opponents out of cards and clobbered them in the end game. (Well, to be fair my first opponent did himself in by playing a Silence Spell when I had more Mana points left.)

If you enjoy games where you try to read and outbluff your opponent, then you'll love Shazamm. If that sort of game doesn't appeal, you might want to leave it alone. I think the cards add enough tactical play and replayability to give it 6.5.