Stats:
No. of players: 2-4
Amount of time to play: 30-90 min
Age requirements: 14+
Set-up time: 5 min

Sorcerer is a board game about dueling wizards. You create a custom sorcerer to summon minions and cast spells. To win you must take control of locations in London.

Sorcerer Rules Description:

This rules description will be based on a two player game.There are rules for three and four players, but I was not able to try them out. Before you start Sorcerer you need to create your sorcerer. You can pick one of four lineage, domain, and character decks. Each of these combine to form your forty card grimoire. You must also set up three battlefields that represent different locations in London. You also start with one omen token.

Each round the first player can choose to roll a d8 and all players add the result to their mana or let everyone add four mana to their pool. Then players take turns taking one action until all players have taken six.

Actions include channel energy which gains you two mana, meditating to draw two cards, activate powers on played cards or move minions on the battlefield. And of course, cast spells. Spells cost man and consist of minions, attachments or have instant effects. Minions are placed at locations and attachments are placed on minions. Some spells allow you to gain omen tokens.

Next you fight the battlefield locations . Each minion attacks once and players alternate making attacks. Combat is resolved with dice. The number of dice you roll depends on the minion’s attack. You can roll a miss, hit, double hit or critical hit. Either player, starting with the attacker, can spend an omen token to force one die to be re-rolled. The first player has the fate counter. It lets them force a re-roll of all dice that can be used once per round. Damage is then resolved as follows. The attacker distributes damage from critical hits. They can hit their opponent’s minions or the location. If a minion takes damage equal to its health it is destroyed. Once a location takes twelve damage from one sorcerer it is under control of that sorcerer and no more battles take place there. Critical hits at a location with no rival minions do two damage. After critical hits are resolved the defender assigns damage from the rest of the dice. If the defender has any remaining minions they attack. Combat continues at the left and right locations in the same manner but the second player attacks first at those locations.

The game ends once one player has claimed two of the three London locations.

Quick Review of Sorcerer:

Sorcerer takes elements you have seen in other board games and combines them into a 1v1 wizard duel (when playing with two). There are plenty of combinations of lineage, origin and sorcerers to try, so this game has a lot of replay value.

The components for this game are great. The art looks great and dark which helps add the horror theme of the game. The cards are good quality and the player board is excellent for organizing the game. The rules could be organized better but they are well written and the game is not hard to understand.

You can create unique decks that will play differently. Some may be more optimal than others but all play well together. Some players will enjoy just trying different combinations, while others might find one that matches how they want to play and stick with it.

I mentioned common mechanics above and Sorcerer combines deck construction, dice rolling, and resource and hand management. These familiar mechanics have been combined before in other games but the way they are mixed in Sorcerer is different. This makes it feel like some other games but not exactly.

If you enjoy card-dueling board games, give Sorcerer a try. It is a great-looking, fun game that combines some common game mechanics into something familiar, but not.

Score and synopsis: (Click here for an explanation of these review categories.)
Strategy 4 out of 6
Luck 4 out of 6
Player Interaction 5 of 6
Replay Value 5 out of 6
Complexity 4 out of 6
Fun 4 out of 6
Overall 4 out of 6