Wizards & Relics + Awakening Review

Wizards & Relics from Eternal Realms puts 2-4 players competing to have the most legendary group of wizards by putting them into the Hall of Immortality. This is done by winning duels against the other players. Each round, a new shrine is flipped over. These will give a possible advantage in every round such as adding more power to a specific type of card. Players will each secretly place down one wizard and one relic. From there everyone will flip their wizard cards. If there are additional actions needed from the card, players will resolve in turn order. Then relics get flipped and the process repeats. Each player will do the final calculations based on what they played and if there's any additional advantages. If they win the duel, their wizard is sent off to immortality and they can draw new cards or take from opponents. If you lose, you discard your cards and draw. Play repeats until a player has enough wizards in their hall. Once someone hits that mark, they will win the game.

The Good: I was genuinely surprised at the amount of strategy put into this game. There are various levels of cards and each player is given a completely randomized set of all of these. Having a random deck every single game provides a nearly unlimited amount of replayability. The type advantages are really cool as well. It gives even more depth to the game but it never made one type feel completely overpowered, just simply given an extra advantage.

The Okay: The random decks are a huge strength to the game but because of this, you can also get a deck that's a complete dud sometimes. Not every card does anything extra other than add to your power levels so you could be facing an uphill battle every round if you happened to get unlucky in that regard. You just need to plan differently but that can absolutely take away some of the fun in each round.

Awakening: Here is where I normally put things I didn't care for but I don't really have anything. I also had a chance to try the Awakening expansion which at the time of writing this the campaign is very over. Awakening is great though. It can be played completely standalone or added to the base game to add in even more players. Up to 8 theoretically. The powers are a little more complex in this version but it's still completely accessible to anyone. If you enjoyed the original game I can't think of a reason not to add more W&R to your life.

Final Thoughts: From what I thought was going to be a fairly straightforward and simple game, I was completely shocked to see how much more Wizards & Relics was. Every round feels like a chess match to try and get the upper hand against your opponents but it always feels incredibly balanced. I can't wait to keep playing this to see what other surprises are in the box.

Thanks to Eternal Realms for providing me with a review copy and letting me check out the prototype ahead of time!