Sorcerer: Rapid Review
Information:
Mechanics: Player Powers, Head to Head, Area Control, Dice Rolling
Player Age: 14+ Player Count: 2 - 4 PlayersTime to Play: 30 - 90 Minutes
Game Designer: Peter Scholtz (I)
Player Age: 14+
Game Designer: Peter Scholtz (I)
Rundown:
Sorcerer is a head-to-head/shuffle-building game. Players choose a character that represents them, a lineage that represents their bloodline (style of magic that they have learned), and their domain which represents where they have trained their craft. Once a player chooses a deck representing each of these it will be shuffled together to create a grimoire.
Throughout the game players will deploy minions to fight for them, attachments to either hinder enemy minions or make their own stronger, and cast one-time spells (sorceries) to turn the tide of battle. These cards are played in pursuit of conquering the battlefields, which is achieved by dealing 12 damage to a battlefield, flipping it over, and counting it as conquered for the remainder of the game. Conquer two battlefields and you reign supreme and win the game.
Alteration:
The alteration in this game comes from how players build their grimoire. This deck will consist of 10 character cards, 10 domain cards, and half the deck (20 cards) will be lineage cards. Each character and domain have their own uniqueness that helps players customise to their own play style. Some focus on drawing more cards, re-rolling the dice, or gaining energy amongst other things.
The real differentiation in the deck construction comes from which lineage you choose. Each lineage has it’s own mechanism that is spread throughout the deck, such as the Animst who removes cards from the opponents deck/hand and instead buries them under their minion. This attracts arthropod tokens that then increase the attack of the Animst.
Another example is the Bloodlord lineage. This comes with a unique blood track.
Where the player focuses on gaining blood to enhance attacks, however, the primary use is to play minions at a cheaper cost from the graveyard, or at a higher blood cost from anywhere in the grimmoire.
Each of the three decks chosen will also contain a skill card. The skill cards are a really important factor to compiling your deck. Each skill card has any ability that can be exhausted at any time that is applicable to activate a bonus ability. During the game each player will have three of these skill cards, one per deck. The challenge of these skills are that they can only be activated in the location your character is in. During the game the placement of your character becomes pivotal when factoring in these skills.
Phases:
Until two battlefields are conquered by one player, the game will continue in rounds that contain four phases; ready phase, action phase, battle phase, and end of round phase.
Ready Phase:
This phase will not be needed in the first round of the game. For the remainder of the rounds players will partake in numerous setups steps. This includes un-exhausting all the cards, gaining one omen token, setting the action tracker back to 6 and changing who holds the first player marker (fate counter). There are two other pivotal sections to this phase. Firstly, each player can move their character to any battlefield and the first player will decide how much energy the players gain by either rolling the energy die to gain the value it lands on, or gain a safe 4 energy. This is an important decision for the first player as you cannot gain an excess energy past 10, so they have to weigh how important energy is for them vs what could be gained by their opponent.
Action Phase:
Back and forth, starting with the first player, everyone will choose one action to perform. These actions consist of:
- Meditate - Draw two cards. This action is essential as drawing cards is not a part of the end or start of the turn.
- Cast a spell - pay energy to play a card from your hand. Attachment cards have to be attached to a minion.
- Activate a Power - some players cards can have an ability called ‘action’ that can be activated by performing this action.
- Reinforce - Move a minion to an adjacent battlefield, swap two minions in adjacent battlefields, or move a minion to any battlefield if they contain a flying icon on the top-left side of their card. As a free action when reinforcing you can move your character to any battlefield.
Battle Phase:
Following the action phase, the battles will commence, starting with the left-most battlefield on the first player's side then continuing to the right. On the lateral battlefields the second player will activate first, whereas on the centre battlefield the first player will activate. Players will exhaust one minion at a time, gaining the dice shown on their attack. This can be amplified or have special effects applied by the tactic abilities on attachments and skill cards. The attack determines how many dice are rolled to a maximum of seven. These dice faces consist of two blanks, two single damage, one double damage, and one critical. The defending player assigns the normal damage when they choose between the battlefield and their minions. When you roll a critical dice the attacking player instead assigns the critical damage (this will translate to two damage if the battlefield starts undefended). These battles will keep occurring until all minions are exhausted.
End of Round Phase:
Some cards will have certain end of round effects that will resolve during this phase.
Interaction:
This is a highly interactive game as it is important to both attack and defend the battlefields. Players will be using their six actions per round carefully to reinforce the battlefields and counter their opponent. Besides having minions on the field, one of the key ways to defend the battlefield is by gaining omen tokens. These tokens can be gained when playing certain cards with the omen symbol seen on the top left. Each time an omen is spent you can re-roll one die.
It does not matter if you are attacking or defending, it is only crucial to stack these tokens to turn the tide of battle in your favour. If you really need fate on your side, the first player marker doubles as a fate counter. This will allow the first player once per round to re-roll all used dice.
The placement of your character and minions is essential as the skill cards you have can only activate where your character is. This placement is also important to your minions as many of their effects will contain a symbol in the text box that means only the minions in their battle can be affected and targeted.
Determination:
- Plenty of back and forth tactical decisions of positioning yourself around the battlefield.
- Great variability in the lineage decks.
- Skills are crucial to constructing your grimoire.
- Heavy on luck due to dice rolls, however, factoring this in and managing omen tokens while choosing the best times to use them are pivotal to gameplay and strategy.
Sorcerer appears to be very similar to other head to head games that came before it. Once play is underway, however, it has many things going for it. Sorcerer is a very tense back and forth game, where during the action phase you have six actions to best set up the battlefield. This includes setting your battlefield but also how you can hinder your opponent. During the battle phase it may feel random with the dice rolls, although, this luck actually adds a lot of strategic nuance. Players have to factor in their omens, as well as the first player in their decision on how they attack and where they assign the damage. Even at the start of the game there is plenty of decisions due to the shuffle-building mechanic. Not only are players deciding the type of cards that are going into their deck, but they are also deciding which skills they will have to work with during the game. If you enjoy head to head games, and particularly love a good gothic theme, Sorcerer is a great game that left me pleasantly surprised.
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