SPALDING WARGAMING CLUB
It gets up to 6 players sat round a table, blasting spells at each other Here's a guilty pleasure. Back in 1979, Games Workshop released this, the first of their 'bookshelf' games (imitating Avalon Hill's sophisticated style of board games that resembled hardback encyclopaedias on your shelf).
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The lurid cover, which seems to have inspired GW's 'warlock purple' paint, gives few clues about the board game (well, it's a card game really) within.
Warlock: The Game of Dueling Wizards pits 2-6 players against each other as fantasy spellcasters, where the cards are spells. Sounds familiar? Yes, it's interesting to view Warlock as a sort of prototype for Magic: The Gathering, like one of those dinosaur birds that's got feathers but can't fly yet.
The cards are in black and white, but the art is by Russ Nicholson, who illustrated The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, so it's steeped in late '70s/early '80s nostalgia. Spells have an energy cost (the term 'manna' not yet being coined) which can vary depending on whether you're a black or a white wizard. Effects vary too, so horrid demons are more dangerous and cheaper when a black wizard summons them. Some summoned monsters (like a dragon) can 'wander' when summoned, attacking random targets (including the summoner if you're unlucky).
Once everyone reveals their attacking spell, you then play a defensive spell against what's coming at you. If it's a physical attack, you can try to beat its score with a physical attack of your own. Otherwise, you have to play a spell which specifically counters it (as shown on the eye-defying tables on the player score sheets). If you can't defend, you get blasted into Limbo. Eventually, you'll have too little energy to buy yourself back out of Limbo and you're out of the game.
Warlock is a game out of time. It's like looking at Stevenson's Rocket: it shows you how far technology has come. Nowadays, there'd be icons to replace those tables of what-counters-what and expansion packs of extra spells. What I mean is, nowadays you play M:tG. But I'm very fond of Warlock, so much that I've replaced the cheap plastic counters with nice wooden counters and cubes. It gets up to 6 players sat round a table, blasting spells at each other and swearing when they get countered. It's got lovely old skool fantasy art. And it's from my childhood, so there!