Seeker of Spells Review - I Put A Spell On You, And Now You're Book's Mine
Transcript
Hello and welcome out to the Dice Tower. I'm Wendy Ye
and I'm Joey Evans.
And today we are reviewing Seeker of Spells. So this is a mindwar game and it is designed by Ellie Dixs.
Anything you want to say about it, Joey?
Oh, I love the name Seeker of Spells, by the way. That's like I am the seeker of spells.
Yeah, actually it's a cute little theme. like we're little mushroom wizards and we're in this big competition, the mycelium games.
Yeah. Anyways, I'm going to show you briefly how this is played and then we'll come back.
In Seeker of Spells, players are participating in the great Mycelium games and they're these cute little mushroom wizards. They have two of each one of their colors that's associated with the deck of cards. And what players are going to be doing is they're going to be trying to move around and steal books from each other, collect books from the area, jump through portals, and do fun stuff, all to collect the books at the end of the game and get the most points. All right, so let's talk about round structure. Uh during a round, players are going to simultaneously reveal one card that they chose and then in player order, starting with the lantern, they'll go through and they'll actually uh do whatever the card says, whatever direction they chose. So, for example, blue over here chose to go north. So, blue would move north and they would move continuously until they run into something. Now, they happen to run into this gold book first. So, they collect this gold book. It goes on the top of their stack. Then, they also move their other wizard once again as far north until they hit something. That would be this blue book right here. Now, purple would be doing the same thing.
They would be going south. So, they go south right here to this green one. And then south right here to this green one. Whoops. uh yellow would go east. So they would move east until they run into something. Now this yellow one happened to run into the green pond. So instead of collecting a book, they would stop on the green space. They would share that space with them and they'd actually steal the topmost book from green. Now yellow's next pawn is also going to move east, but they're going to bounce into this stone wall. This stone wall stops their movement completely. And so this little character will not move anymore. Finally, green gets to move east. And as green moves east, they're going to hit a portal. That portal will automatically make them jump to the next matching portal. So red jumps to red. And then they're going to continue in the direction they were currently going. So they were moving east and they'll move here and they'll grab this book. Now books are mostly worth points. However, the purple book does also give them one of these spell cards. These spell cards are worth points if you don't spend them, or you can choose to spend them for a special ability that happens during the game. Finally, Green's other pawn would move east, collecting this last book. And then that is the end of the round. At the end of the round, first player moves, and then players are going to choose to simultaneously choose another card. Now, the cards that they picked will be discarded and they will have a smaller set of hand to pick from, but eventually when they're down to one card, they can choose to pick up all their cards so that they always have
options to choose from. Now, talking about the spell cards, they have different special and a sunundry ability. Sometimes it's to jump over books, sometimes it's to jump over walls, or to hop to specific portals, turn tiles, interact with players and their stacks of books in a variety of ways. They're also worth a variety of victory points. uh anywhere between zero and two. And so they just do various necessary things like switch the order the two spell books at the top of your stack. So play will continue as we talked about until there's either one red book left or until players books have reached a certain count and that depends on player count what your goal is for that. Then at the end of the game you're going to count up score. Now score is based on the books that you get and the spell cards that you have. Uh, so red books are minus one point, green books are three, purple are worth one, but they give you spell cards during the game. And then blue books are worth six.
Um, but you also then hand out spell cards to other people. And then gold books are worth negative or positive points depending on how many you have. Now, one last thing that I didn't mention is that as you steal books from other players, they also get spell cards. So, if uh back when green stole from yellow, yellow would get a spell card after that green was stolen. All right. Well, there you go. That's a brief overview of Seeker of Spells. All right. So, that is a brief overview of Seeker of Spells. Um, and just as a kind of a a note that we were played to play this live
and we were paid to play it at Gen Con.
Not me though.
So, uh, not Joey. He
I played it voluntarily,
completely independent. However,
I was included in that. So, I just wanted to put that out there. I played at Gen Con, too.
You know what? And I actually had a great time at Gen Con. I played this with some kids and they were all brothers and there can be some meanness to this and they just loved poking at each other and talking trash. So, that was kind of fun.
It's fun. And the artwork in here is so cute.
It really is like I mean it's I know other mushrooms and stuff, but the artwork and the quality of it quality first off surprised me how how well done it is.
Yes. Like those nice little book tokens and the shape of books.
I know.
My only thing with stacking them is that when you're trying to get 20, it falls over like 15 or 20 that you got to make two stacks.
But you're glad they're not cardboard. Yes.
You're like, I'll deal with having a having a little jingga game mini game going on to get those nice books.
Well, if they were cardboard, I wouldn't be able to see what you had.
That's Yes.
Because they're stacked. And so, I love that I can see and I'm like, "Oh, Joey has a lot of gold, but not enough gold to make it to make it worth it yet."
And that's a fun thing to see how the game evolves at later. That matters because you're like, "All right, you have enough spells to start to do fun stuff." And that's what I like, too. It's such a simple game at the beginning and then later as you learn the first couple turns and you're like, "All right, well this spell is gonna negate that, right?"
Or it's like you're gonna go one of four ways then one of three ways then one of two. It's like very limiting. It's like oh but wait I could do this or I could jump over you that type or I could hold on to those for points. I like that.
Yeah. I think the spell cards add a lot of fun to the game or you can hold on to them for points which I always appreciate. I think You never do that. Do you ever do that?
I do do that.
Oh, yeah. You do. You do it. You like to win.
I do. You just want to mess with everybody. I do. Like, as soon as it as soon as you get it in your hand, you're like, I'm playing it.
So good.
I can't even play it right now, but I'm playing it.
I just I wouldn't tell people about it.
Yes. Now, one thing I
I think is a little bit confusing for the spells. And so, to me, this could be a little bit advanced of a of a practice is some of them require like a clockwise and a counterclockwise thing. And I've had those moments where I'm like, "It's your turn
and you're about to play something, but I have a card that may or may not affect you."
And I have to sit and think about it to be like, "Wait, wait, wait, wait. Don't take your turn yet. I might play a card."
If I rotate this clockwise, then that means you picked east. So then you're going to go east. No, no, I don't want to use that one. Okay. If I rotate it counterclockwise, like I to me, it just there's a little bit of that interruption on some of the spell cards. Not all of them and not very often, but there are those moments where I'm like, I could use this to real benefit, but I don't want to interrupt the game too much, so I'm not going to use it.
That's funny because there's a lot of like when playing my daughter, there's a lot of redconning, little minor things like whether it's that or whether it's like I wish I would have grabbed that spell first to put that book on top and all that. Oh, yeah. Those little things you're like, just little twists and stuff. I do like that. Well, and another thing that I appreciate with that is that because you're moving both wizards, you get to choose which wizard you pick first. So, when you're picking up two books on a turn, you can always choose which one goes underneath. That way, you can protect the top.
And I like that for children because they get that choice. And if they don't make the right choice initially, they can still fix it
because, you know, there's that little bit of flexibility that comes with which one did you move first?
Yeah. Yeah. And I love that. It's it's I really enjoy that aspect of it.
Yeah. So, uh any other thoughts you have on this, Joey?
No, it's just very clever how the board opens up and I like again the progression of the game I think is perfect because it starts off simple then everything starts becoming wider and wider and I like games that you have a programming element to it and I like games that matters the order matters. You know you what you're going to go for you better be first or somebody else going to move in front of you. This is going to happen. There's so many things that can happen chaotically. And you said it right where it's not mean. It's as mean as you want it to be.
Yes.
You know.
Yeah. It really is.
And and you can feel out the table of like, all right, that's how we're going to play this game. Then okay.
But also with that, I really love that when someone steals something from you, you get a spell card.
Yes. It doesn't feel bad.
It doesn't. And it's like instantly, oo, I got one or two points. Cool. Or I got a cool thing that'll let me steal even more from you later. And so I I think that there's never that sense of like, oh, you just messed me up and now this is terrible,
right?
Like there's always a point where you get something, a little consolation prize. And I think that that's I think that's jolly good. All right, so I'm going to come in at a seven for this. I think it's super cute for what it is. I like the movement and I really appreciate that it teaches some of those uh movement skills of how to look ahead and see where is my guy going to end up. And I think that that is very good for the brain to be able to, you know, think about that and kind of plan ahead and have those visual moments. I do think some kids will struggle with that. However, it is a good chance for them to, you know, just pick a card and see where it goes, right?
And so I don't think you have to be that forward thinking if you don't want to be. You can just kind of play and see what happens. And there's still fun chaos and excitement that happens along the way. So this one is a seven for I think that there's enough positive and good things going on as well as enough like track trash talk and just meanness available if you want it.
Yeah, I'm at a seven as well because of that reason. It's so fun to play. It's bright, it's colorful, the artwork's great, the components are great, and it's just fun. And I love introducing like Juliet to that programming aspect and especially seeing her like little wheels turn and it's like, huh,
how do I get there? I was going to do that, but now you I love that, you know, and that really it it does it incrementally throughout the game and this is I I like it a lot.
Very awesome. Well, thanks for joining us today. I'm Wendy Ye.
I'm Joy Evans.
And have fun playing in the Wizards Cup Championship. Myelium Games.
I am the secret of spells.
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