Since Paul brought his son along, we decided to start light with Wizard. Fairly simple to learn. There were some basic "how to trick taking games work" questions, especially regarding trump.

I really like how the wizard and jester allow you to retain trump or a high suit card.

Having played a lot of "Up and Down the River" in my youth, I was familiar with the basic gameplay, but the scoring differences significantly change the game for me.

In Up and Down the River, you score 10 points for making your bid exactly, and you get jack if you miss it. You also get 1 point for each trick you take, if you made your bid exactly.

In Wizard, you get 20 points for making bid exactly, and 10 additional points for each trick if you do so. If you miss your bid, you get -10 for each over or under.

This scoring change has 2 effects: it makes Wizard a much more forgiving game, and it makes you want to get as many tricks as you can. In "Wizard-speak", "Up and Down the River" gives you 100 points if you make your trick, plus 10 points per trick, but you never go down. This is contrasted to 20 points for making bid + 10 points per trick, but -10 for each one you're off.

The incentive to make your bid is the same, essentially, but you get rewarded 5x as much in "Up and Down the River" (also called "Oh Hell") for making bid. The side effect of making that bid is extra points, but they're paltry in Oh Hell, whereas they're significant in Wizard, due to the small number of points you get for making bid. So it makes you really want to get those tricks.

In the past, I've sluffed off a lot of my cards and "played it safe" in Up and Down the River. This nets you 100 points in that game, flat. Significant.

Doing so in Wizard nets you 20 points, flat. Plus all of your opponents are raking in points from the tricks you sluffed off. If you sluff just 2 tricks, you're halving your score, as opposed from reducing 120 to 100.

This does create some scoring imbalances in Wizard. The latter rounds are much more "important" than the beginning ones. For example, I had a killer hand, and I wasn't sure whether to bid 5 or 6 on a hand of like 8 or 9. I bid 5 to play it safe, and unwittingly took a trick with one of my lower cards. But if I had gotten 5, it would have been 70 points for me in a single trick! Because there are less points out there in the beginning, the 20 for winning is significant in the beginning (until 4 or 5 card hands), but thereafter it starts to fall by the wayside and getting more tricks is very important.

In Up and Down the River, you get 100 points, regardless of the round, and that acts as a balancing mechanism of sorts (for comparative round scoring). Sure, you can get a lot of points, but you primary points are still coming just from making bid.

I'm not sure which scoring method I prefer, yet (having played only a handful of games of Wizard).