Wizard Kittens

We're back with a new playthrough, this time it's a card matching game called Wizard Kittens.  So, the idea is that you are kittens trying to clean the master wizard's lab while he's away, so you are supposed to match ingredient cards to the combinations shown on curse cards to clear the curses and score the points ... before the boss gets back.

Setting up the game is a bit of a pain the first time, about 7 different types of cards that have to go in the right places.  But resetting for a second game is much easier, since they are already sorted by type, more or less.  I don't really like games with long setups, but it had a nice clear guide for what goes where.

 

Here's a look at a game in progress.  Anne's cards are up top facing left, my cards are bottom left, and the curses we are trying to clear are in the middle.  Each turn, a player gets one of four moves: draw a card, discards two cards, move a card to another player's hand, or swap two cards.  A little marker shows your last choice so you can't make the same move next turn.  The "boss" is marked by a card called CAUGHT which is shuffled into the bottom ten cards of the draw pile.  The game is over when all curses are cleared or the boss comes home.

You basically have two individual hands, called Chapter 1 and Chapter 2.  The Chapter 1 cards can match the Chapter 1 curse, Chapter 2 cards match the Chapter 2 curse.  When you clear a curse, score the points shown on the curse card, minus one point for each ingredient in your hand that does not match the symbols shown on the curse.  And some curses have additional bonuses shown on the bottom o the card.

Here is Anne (top left) with the cards she needs (blue, blue, green) to clear that top curse:

It's simple enough once you get it setup, and the art is cute.  For the two player game, just limit it to six curses.  You can probably clear those before reaching the bottom of the deck.  More than two players, you get a Chapter 3.

It was good to see that there are lots of additional cards and rules, like a Chaos Cat card that can throw new rules into the mix, and an Extra Credit card you can add for some variation on points.  Even additional Chaos Mode cards with more rules.  Plus a page of Advanced Rules.  Those all sounded fairly confusing, so I figure you should play some rounds with the stripped down rules first and choose which variations you want to add.

It was not clear whether the "swap any two cards" action was limited to you own cards, or all cards shown by all players. The game played just fine when limited to your own cards, and you can already throw a card onto a player's chapters using a different move, so I don't see why you need two of the four possible actions affecting all players.

It was a fun little romp.  We played about four games and had something else to get to.