A Wizard’s Shelf Review

With the ever-stable popularity of the Harry Potter universe, we tend to see offshoots of similarly-themed games pop up all around us. We have reviewed several of these “magic folk showing off to one another to see who is the best” games: Apotheca, WizBang!, Studies in Sorcery, etc. What you don’t really see much of are games simulating the gathering and organization of spell components. Sounds like a weird theme, right? I agree.

A Wizard’s Shelf is an 18-card wallet-sized game from Concrete Canoe Games. In it players are rival wizards (and witches, I presume) who are attempting to collect the best spell components and use them to cast powerful spells. All of this is accomplished with a simple card drafting and card placement mechanics.

DISCLAIMER: We were provided a copy of this game for the purposes of this review. This is a retail copy of the game, so what you see in these photos is exactly what would be received in your box. I do not intend to cover every single rule included in the rulebook, but will describe the overall game flow and major rule set so that our readers may get a sense of how the game plays. For more in depth rules, you may purchase a copy online or from your FLGS.  -T

To setup, each player is dealt two cards from the shuffled deck. Players choose which card will be played to their tableau on the Item side and the other must be played on the opposite Spell side. The deck is then again shuffled, and are dealt to three piles of cards (Spell side up), with two piles having one card more than the final pile. The top card of each pile is revealed and the game may begin!

On a turn, the active player will complete one of three available actions: Select a Shelf, Select a Spell, or Relocate a Shelf. The player may choose to Select a Shelf by drafting one face-up Item card from the offer area and adding it to their tableau. In order to place the card in their tableau, the player must overlap and cover at least one icon from their existing shelving unit. Therefore, any one to four icons may be covered in this way. A new Item card is revealed from the pile.

The player may instead to Select a Spell by drafting a Spell-side face-up card to their tableau. It is recommended that all Spells be initially placed on the left side of the shelving unit until its requirements are met and the Spell is cast, moving the Spell card to the right side of the magical KALLAX (or EXPEDIT if you were an early adopter). Keeping uncast Spells on the left and cast Spells on the right is very important in keeping track of progress, as each Spell card contains Item icons that need to be placed orthogonally adjacent to each other in order to active the Spell and its scoring bonus printed in the middle of the card. Spells will also have immediate actions that are one-time-per-game use, but break the rules of a typical game.

Finally, a player may instead choose to Relocate a Shelf from their current arrangement by simply moving it to a new place on their shelves. However, the limitation is that the relocated card must not be physically overlapped by another Shelf card.

Each of these actions may be accompanied by one optional free action. These actions allow players to bury a revealed Item or Spell card to the bottom of its deck and reveal a new one, flip a Spell card to the Item side in their tableau (assuming the Spell’s ability has not yet been used), or use a Spell’s one-time-per-game ability.

As soon as the last card has been drafted from the offer area the game ends and points are scored. Players earn points from same-type Item icons orthogonally adjacent in their tableau, plus points scored from Spell card bonuses, but LOSE one point for each Item icon of the same color that is orthogonally adjacent. The wizard or witch with the most points wins!

Components. Again, this game is 18 cards inside an unfoldable tuckbox. The rules are printed on the box insides, and upon first read-through, are somewhat confusing to read. I am smart, however, and figured it out with minimal injury. The cards are nice quality, but glossy – a bane to poor lighting like mine – and feature four icons upon shelves on the Item side, and very little art on the Spell side. I am not sure my enjoyment of the game would be influenced by having a little texture art or something on the Spell side, but it is definitely lacking in that aspect. The rules on the box insides is a cool idea, and I understand it probably also saves manufacturing costs, so I have no qualms about it for this style of game presentation. With a little spruced up art, this game would look loads better, but other than that, it’s 18 cards and the components are fine.

The gameplay left me a little unsatisfied in the plays I logged. I see the point, and the concept is there, but each turn I found myself agonizing over my options with not many great options available to me. I employed the deck recycling mechanic an awful lot, perhaps too much, and was still not able to draft the cards I needed to have a successful tableau. It could be dumb luck, of course, but for a small and light game with some great ideas, I was hoping for less of that.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I did enjoy my plays of A Wizard’s Shelf, but it needs a new look and some wow-factor excitement for my taste. I feel it is more a puzzle than it intends to be, and some of the Spell effects are too rule-breaking and invite too much unnecessary chaos, but I know this is definitely someone’s jam… it’s just not mine. At least not where I am currently in my board game journey.

If you are into the witches and wizards scene and need every game with that theme, then be sure to check out A Wizard’s Shelf. I would post a link to the publisher’s page to purchase a copy, but I didn’t find it there. However, you can grab yourself a copy of A Wizard’s Shelf directly from The Game Crafter and try it out! Purple Phoenix Games gives this one a 3 / 6. I was hoping for a bit more, but it is not at all a bad game. I would play it again anytime, but I do not see it staying on MY shelf.