- Counter Spell and Magic Mirror are cast directly from your hand and at any time during the turn (as a reaction to another wizard casting a spell).

- When players draw cards, they don't draw to replenish their hand, but instead redraw up to 2 cards (never exceeding the maximum 5).

This way, a player that casts Magic Mirror, will be left with a smaller hand next turn. I think this is a nice penalty for such a strong spell…

I still want to try these changes, but Counter Spell suddenly seems a bit too easy to cast. Also, what's the point of casting a powerful offensive spell if you can see your opponent has a a counterspell or magic mirror ready for use?

So, I'm thinking one solution to the whole problem is that Counter Spell and Magic Mirror are casted from your hand instead of from your spell sequence. This way you're not sure if your opponent will be able to stop your attacks and the player using them is basically hurting his future choices…

Another idea is to force players to choose their spells for the turn secretly (maybe by giving each player a card with the spell table where they put one or two tokens before revealing their card for the turn. The problem is that this adds a new component to the game…

I'll try to give all this options a go soon…

Forcing a player to cast the most powerful spell removes some of the options a player has, and it doesn't seem logical to force a player to cast a spell that won't have any effect on the target… at least if you have lots of suns and your target has resist fire, you have the option to cast a hit or an ice bolt, even if those would do less damage…

I guess the only solution is to force players to cast a spell… or maybe make counter spell and magic mirror special spells that aren't declared normally.

If you go the route of requiring a player to cast, then the opponent can still opt to use their Wyrm for a Hit rather than for a Fire Ball. A Hit isn't even a spell, so maybe it even cuts through a Magic Mirror.

You could avoid that problem by requiring players to use their Wyrm for the most powerful spell they could cast. That would create the odd situation (for example) in which you'd be forced to play a big fireball because you have lots of Sun runes at a time when your opponent has Resist Fire up and so will take no damage. I guess that would make Resist Fire more powerful, though.

I think Magic Mirror is great if you don't have many wyrms in your hand because you can use a wyrm in your Spell Sequence to damage your opponent as long as you have a moon and a knot available. It also makes attacking more risky, so a player having many wyrms doesn't have such a big advantage.

I also decided to simplify Resist Heat and Resist Cold because as they are always cast before any offensive spells, they should be able to stop them. Of course, this means that the current turn when they're played counts as one of the turns of the spell (you have to remove a token at the end of the current turn, unlike in spells like Invisivility or Haste that take effect next turn).

Feedback is welcomed

Then I thought that the game would be more interesting if it was longer, because you'd need more than a lucky start to finish your opponent, and the possibility of a recovery from initial attacks would be much higher. So we played a second game, this time with 12 HP.

This second game was much more interesting because we both had time to develop different strategies. I tried invisibility and some ice bolts while my gf threw some fire balls at me. It was all pretty balanced but then with 2 hastes in a row, she basically became accelerated for the rest of the game. I tried to heal and resist while launching the occasional ice bolt, but she was healing and throwing fire balls at me, one after the other. Then, with just 1 HP left I managed to make her forget all her runes (a three leaves amnesia spell) and I was hoping to play a big drain spell next, but she played a wyrm that even without any runes was enough to end the game with my defeat.

One thing that I didn't anticipate when writing the rules and happened tonight was that my amnesia spell was triggered before my gf was able to activate another Knot spell, but as I turned that card face down, her activation was canceled. It seemed the most logical thing to do, but I'll add a note in the rules just in case…

In principle I did like the idea of your hand of cards being your HPs, because it does limit your options as you get hurt, but in practice, it doesn't work that well… I'd like to find a system more like that one, but without the drawbacks :D

It occurs to me, though, that it makes Haste a kind of suicide. Haste might need to be changed a bit or replaced with a different spell.

Thanks!!

Here's another possibility: Divide the deck in half at the beginning of the game. Each half-deck is a draw pile for a separate player. When you take damage, discard the top card from your draw pile. First player to exhaust their draw pile loses.

1. If the high bidder takes more tricks than they bid, they score their bid minus one for each overtrick. (This combines with the existing rules. A bidder who takes fewer tricks than they bid scores zero points. A bidder who takes exactly the number of tricks that they bid scores their bid plus a bonus of three.)

2. In a Bottom hand, Aces are considered high and Crowns are considered low. Number cards retain their usual order. So the order of cards in a Bottom hand would be: Crown,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,Ace (In a Top hand, Aces are low and Crowns are high.)

The first rule makes bidding a bit less risky by adding a margin for error. The second rule makes controlling the bid matter more, by increasing the difference between Top and Bottom hands.

Both of these rules need more playtesting. Feedback is welcome.

Can you draw a card even when you have one in your hand that you can play?

No.

At least, that's how I've played it. This means that you can be forced to play a card that will let your opponent go out, but it keeps things simple.

You are welcome to say yes and allow drawing at any time if you prefer, but it will make for a somewhat longer game.

(EDIT to add explanation)

With three possible ways to score (flushes, sets, and straights) there is some intense pattern matching involved. One player compared it to the game Set.

When you roll a 3 and have to add the ranks of the figures, do the crowns count as 10 or 0?

Crowns count as 10.

And additionally, if you roll an 1 and a 2, do you make a check for both items 1 and 2?

Check both.

And additionally, if you roll an 1 and a 2, do you make a check for both items 1 and 2?

Place a piece of a third color on the first space of each pawn card. These are crocodiles. At the end of each round of turns (after the last player has made their moves) all the crocodiles move one space forward, except if they're already at the third space on their pawn card. In that case they move back to the first space. If a crocodile moves on top of a from, the frog is sent back to the Excuse card.

We found that this added element which neither player can control and which changes the board (a bit like a third player would) also adds a bit of planning.

BTW, I see the problem of having 6 cards to take from in a game with 2 players. Maybe it'd be best to put either 5 or 7 cards so that each player gets to take the last one every other time….