In the ongoing series of heavily-marketed and highly-produced books and games from Templar Publishing, Wizardology ties into the lavish book of the same name and is just as lavish as the book. It's a big box with tons of colorful pieces and sculpted figures, yet falls short in some key areas.

The Game Play

Two to six players take the part of a wizard apprentice on a mission to become fully trained wizards and free Merlin from his prison. To do this, the wizards must travel around a magical labyrinth to each of the four elemental chambers, pass a test in each one, and collect their specific and unique wizarding items. Once they have all four items, they return to the center of the maze to free Merlin and win.

Players take turns rolling the die and moving along the pathways of the labyrinth, and taking action on the space landed on. Around the maze are spaces like:

Crystal Balls - Draw a Crystal Ball card, which casts a spell or enchantment. Some cards can be kept to be played later, most are played immediately, and some of the ones played immediately will hurt the player that drew them. Most cards, however, benefit the player in some way, from the irritating and annoying (take one of another player's magic item cards) to the game-altering (take another player's hard-earned wizard item, or rotate the maze a quarter turn).

Magic Items - Get a magic item card. There are four types of items, each corresponding to one of the element chambers, plus a wild card that can substitute for any one item. You need at least one item in order to take the test in the associated element chamber; having multiple copies of the same item let you stay and keep trying the test on succeeding turns until you pass or you run out of items.

Phoenix Feathers - Get a special movement card. Boots let you move any number of spaces along your current ring of the maze. A broomstick gives you a 50/50 shot at moving to any one space of your choice (the other 50% meaning you waste your turn), and Magic Carpets are a 100% guaranteed version of the broomstick.

Secret Passages - Land on one, you can move to any other passage space if you want.

Roll the Double Die - Move again, but essentially roll two dice instead of one.

Lose a Turn - Lose your next turn. Easily avoided because the movement rules allow for you to either find an alternate path, or "bounce" off of walls to backtrack over your path. You really only ever have to land on this if the die roll would otherwise land you on a Magic Duel or Spells and Potion space (and often, you'd rather avoid these, as you'll see below).

Spells and Potions - Basically take a 50/50 risk of really messing up your opponents, or seriously delaying your own game. Roll the two spell dice - the first contains three spell symbols, the second two colors. The spell symbol determines which spell you attempt, the color whether you succeed (red) or fail (black). Rolling red means you can do such devastating things as send two players to the Alchemy Lab (the game's version of Go To Jail), switch pieces and cards and items with another player, and so on. Rolling black means, no matter what, you get sent to the Alchemy Lab, where you must then try on succeeding turns to roll the same spell dice combination you rolled to get there. On the plus side, you get three tries each turn; on the downside, failing to do so is extremely annoying, and there are NO other means to escape the Alchemy Lab (not even a Get Out of Chemistry Class Free card).

Magic Duel - Land here, and you immediately move to another player's space to engage in a magic duel. You also get to duel if you just happen to land on another player's wizard anyway. Duels are potentially rewarding, but you have very little control over the outcome. The player starting the duel wagers a number of cards on the duel (items, crystal balls, and/or Phoenix feathers). Each player then takes a set of duel cards, mixes them up, and draws one at random. There are three battle cards - Spell, Chant, and Potion - and each one beats one other card but loses to the other kind of card, exactly like rock-scissors-paper. Except that you don't choose which of the three to use - it's randomly drawn. (This right here is one rule that could easily be changed to give players a choice without it at all affecting the rest of game play. I have no idea why the game designers wrote it this way.)

The Element Chambers - On the perimeter of the labyrinth are the four element chambers. Wizards must get to each chamber during the game and pass a test to get their item. The tests themselves are exercises in probability. In the Air chamber, the player tosses a dragon-coin for a 50/50 chance at getting his hat. In the Water Chamber, the player rolls the Familiar die to get his pet animal (fortunately, you also roll a die to see how many rolls of the Familiar die you can make on your turn). In the Fire chamber, you try to draw your color-coded staff out of a barrel containing all remaining staffs, plus one false staff (obviously, every player will try to be the last wizard to take this test for the best odds). The Earth chamber has, by far, the coolest test to get your magic amulet. Another player takes the plastic wand toy and places a magnetic ring around it. The player taking the test then takes a second magnetic ring, and tries to place it correctly on the wand so that it hovers above the first magnet, rather than sticking to it. This is the coolest because it's a toy that the kids love to play with when it's not their turn (and, in fact, they could just play with it without the rest of the game, too, if left to their own devices).

Each attempt at a test costs you one of the corresponding magic item cards. If you fail but have another card, you try again on your next turn. Run out of items, and you have to go back to the maze to collect items again.


After you have collected all four of your familiar, amulet, hat, and staff, you maneuver your way back to the center, where you must free Merlin. How do you free Merlin? Roll a 7 on two dice. Do so and you win - fail, and you can try again next turn.

The Components

If I were assigning letter grades, I'd give the components a B+. Although the components look like they should be a solid A, there are some annoyances that lower the grade. The board is the best component - it's large, colorful, and very sturdy, and the labyrinth is designed such that it's actually a challenge to maneuver to the four element chambers, and players do frequently have to take detours in order to avoid losing turns, avoid duels or casting spells they'd rather not.

Each of the wizards is a two-inch plastic figure ornately and finely painted, and each represents a different wizarding culture - including an African, Indian, Persian, Lapplander, Chinese, and Western wizard. The familiars are miniature animal pieces that fit onto the wizards' bases, hats are unique to each wizard and fit (more or less) on their heads, and each wizard also can hold its own ornate staff (more or less). Don't make the mistake of trying to remove a wizard from its base - it won't stay on the base solidly afterward. And, as you might expect, paint on plastic does not stand up to repeated scratching or rubbing.

The cards are pretty to look at, but not well shaped for shuffling - they're long and thin, and not sturdy enough for the shape to rifle-shuffle.

The "double die" is cool-looking at first, but its novelty quickly wears off. It is a large clear-blue die on the outside, with a small white die on the inside. For most moves you only pay attention to the outer blue die, but when you must roll both, you add the inner and outer together. This proves to be more of an annoyance than anything because it's all too easy to forget about the inner die.

The staffs (mentioned above) in our copy were problematic. The tips of each one are painted with each wizard's color, so you have to draw the right colored staff to pass the test. However, the green and black and purple paints are very hard to distinguish, and we had to tell them apart by the size of the color spot, not the color itself. As well, one of the staffs had a flaw on the other end - the end that is supposed to look identical to the others - that made it easy to pick out from the others. This may be unique to our copy, of course, but I would guess that because the staffs are hand-painted, other copies will have similar flaws.

Finally, the large plastic insert in which most of the figures and dice are stored is absolutely useless. It is extremely thin and easily tears, and its design makes it nearly impossible to remove the dice and the wizard figures without permanently damaging the insert itself. Unfortunately, you can't immediately discard it because of the box design - the box has a "book lid" that opens onto the plastic insert. If you remove the insert, and store the pieces in the box itself, opening the book lid will spill your pieces out. Obviously there are home-made ways to remedy this, but for the price-tag of this game, you shouldn't have to.

The Rules

This component I give a C+ to. On the one hand, the middle of the rule book devotes two pages to pictures matching each wizard to its unique items, which is essential given that some components look like they could belong to two or three of the wizard figures. The rules also explain the effects of each of the Crystal Ball cards thoroughly (which is also essential, given that the cards themselves are written in "wizard" English and can be difficult to parse out).

On the other hand, the rules have several glaring omissions. The rules do not state the primary movement mechanism - that is, rolling one die and moving that number of spaces. It's not there - you have to guess that that is the intent. The rules do not indicate whether you must land in an element chamber by exact roll, or if you can simply enter on a high roll and ignore the excess. The rules also do not state what happens if two wizards are in the same chamber together. If they are on the same ordinary space, there is a duel - but there is nothing that says whether chambers are treated similarly, or if they are "neutral ground" where no magic duels occur.

As well, I'd like to point out to this publisher, as well as many other game publishers, that while light blue pages with slightly darker blue lettering may look highly stylized and thematic, it's a pain to actually try reading. Please. Black ink on light or white backgrounds is perfectly acceptable.

Minor points. The big question is,

How Good Is The Game Overall

When we got this game (as a Christmas gift) I was expecting an impossible-to-enjoy trivia game based on the book, full of multiple-choice questions we'd all fail the first time through, then remember enough on succeeding plays to make the game dull and unplayable. Thankfully it's a roll-and-move game instead!

Seriously, though, it's not just a simple roll and move and collect cards, obviously. While most of the game is thoroughly dependent on chance, there's a decent amount of tactical decision-making involved. Primarily, players will have to determine how long they want to spend collecting magical items versus how quickly they want to jump to the chambers for the tests. Given the numerous Phoenix Feather cards that can be used to hop around the labyrinth, it's entirely possible to get to the chambers in short order and try a one-shot on the test; it's also feasible to simply move to collect as many items as possible in order to help guarantee that once you get to a chamber, you'll pass the test before being forced out. Players also have to choose their targets of Spells and Duels carefully, and not simply take blind chances every opportunity they get.

The game does follow a fairly familiar pattern. All wizards start out with nothing, and not much happens as they collect cards here and there and wander toward whatever test they can best attempt first. After the first item is collected, players begin accumulating crystal balls and magic items and phoenix feathers to the point where they can more directly manipulate the game course and screw over other players, while garnering the pieces becomes easier and more likely. One player generally gets ahead in the count, however, and the other players have to pool their efforts to prevent that player from getting back to the center - generally by stealing an item or preventing the player from getting back to the center by movement. Once a player is in the center, there's little chance that player will lose unless, by chance, another wizard has gotten all four of his pieces as well.

Despite this pattern, however, an individual game is so thoroughly randomized that the outcome is not predictable. The last game I played with my kids, for example, had a complete reversal of fortune when my youngest daughter, carrying only two items against the four I and my other daughter had collected, received two "Hand of Glory" cards as a result of a duel with her sister. These cards let her steal an item from each of us, leaving her in a position to win and myself and my older daughter scrambling to retrieve the lost items.

Overall, this is not a "great game" - but it is not a terrible game either. It best appeals to the 8-12 year old set, and parents of such. There is little here that would appeal to the general BGG gamer - there are many other games in the same price range and with as many or more cool toy components that offer an overall more enticing gaming experience. However, it is about as difficult to learn and play as "Monopoly" or "Risk", but is far more enjoyable and less predictable than either one. Thus, I'd recommend it as an alternative to those mainstream games (and others) for precisely the age range mentioned above, but can't make it a recommendation for adult gamers unless they have children to play the game with.