I bet you thought this post was about crypto.

Shockingly, it is not.

Wizard Miners is instead a card game I played at a small gaming convention named Mepacon on Saturday. It was an entire all-day commitment, with me leaving the house at 8 AM and not getting back until 4AM the following morning. One of the activities I signed up for was this Wizard Miners game, because how could I not?

Very much sounds like a Bitcoin thing, and I got to the booth early and was talking with one of the game developers about BTC. He admitted that he tried to learn about it once but it was simply too complex to grasp. I attempted to give my EIL5 speech on Bitcoin mining (lottery) but he regrettably informed me that he was still just confused as ever about the whole thing. That's fair, as it's easy to forget how complex crypto is when you've been swimming in it for six years straight. Also these guys were clearly Gen X gamers and a bit older than me so it makes sense that crypto would elude them.

Other games that I played.

We played Blood on the Clocktower twice. Once during the middle of the day and the second starting at 10 PM (not ending till 3 AM because max 20 player game). I had never played this before and it was a social deduction game like Mafia or Werewolf. However I think this version was a bit better because it was a tiny bit more complex with more strategy, and more importantly when you get killed you can still talk and participate in the game.

Also played a simpler deduction card game called Spyfall which was interesting. And a Settlers of Catan game with the people I was with (I easily won).

But for the most part I thought I'd focus on Wizard Miners.

Which I not only lost but was definitively in last place.

https://petrogaminggroup.com

Spooling through this video this is actually an old version of the game. The dynamite in the version I played looks like actual TNT (3 dynamite sticks bundled together with a fuse coming out of them). This game is not for sale and has only existed as a prototype since 2017. The creators have been pushing to generate some funding so that they can go mainstream with it, and I hope they have some success, as I would actually buy this game.

Simple but balanced.

There's only one way to win Wizard Miners, and that is to mine out your mine and acquire all the gems therein. The mine is represented by a stack of 42 cards. Once this deck is empty: victory. This is accomplished via buying tools like a shovel, pickaxe, or drill to increase your chances of success. It's a deceptively simple win condition.

RNG

Every turn someone will roll two 8-sided (D8) dice, resulting in an output of 2-16. Every time that number shows up on a tool you've purchased you draw one card from the mine and get to keep the gems collected. These gems can then be used to buy more tools, upgrade the current tools you have, purchase extra magic spells, or even acquire TNT to sabotage opponents. You're allowed 3 tools maximum (5 total available) and each tool can be upgraded 3 times for a maximum possible of 9 of these mining cards being stacked in front of you.

Rubble Handicap

One of the best things about this game is that it has very good risk/reward mechanics that will end up punishing you gravely if you end up getting too greedy. Whenever you mine gems the gem card is put into a discard pile. This discard pile represents a pile of rubble that still exists within your mine. A reoccurring theme of the game is that cave-ins can occur which returns rubble from the discard pile back on the top of your deck. Before you can make any more progress one must mine out the rubble of a cave-in.

The rubble in the discard pile can be destroyed, but at significant cost. Not only does it cost 1 gem per card to destroy rubble, but it also has a limit of 5 cards per turn and this counts as an action (and you only get 2 actions per turn, one of which includes mining). In the game I played one player got extremely greedy and rushed way ahead and then a brutal cave in ended up piling 20 rubble cards back into their mine. They couldn't do anything for multiple turns except mine out the rubble for zero reward.

Game Phases

1. Perform actions (buy tools/TNT or clean out mine)
2. Cast spells
3. Roll to see who mines what
4. Draw a free spell (+option to buy another for 2 gems)

Perform actions

Buying 1 tool counts as one action. Cleaning out the mine for 1-5 cards for 1-5 gems is also an action. Each player gets 2 actions per turn, but mining during your own turn on your own roll counts as an action. Thus it is often discouraged to actually use both actions per turn because then you don't get to mine on that roll, but everyone else does. There's even a special "dealer button" that signifies if you're digging on your turn or not which is represented by a mining helmet (one side the helmet is lit, the other is not lit).

Casting spells

There are a wide range of spells but the two I remember most clearly are cave-ins and tool-breaking. A cave-in card will allow you to sabotage an opponent for 1-3 rubble cards, while tool-breaking includes temporary out-of-service cards and permanently destroying the artifact. Other incantations of note allow you to counter or redirect these spells to avoid them.

Roll

You roll 2 D8s and everyone mines according to their toolkit. Players who performed two actions are exempt from mining on their turn. Pretty straightforward.

Draw a spell

A nice mechanic is being able to draw a spell every turn. Also purchasing an extra spell for 2 gems can be a nice bonus assuming one has an abundance of gems. For the most part it seems like spells are a bit better in the late game unless you can cripple exponential growth in the early game. Again it's well balanced to the point of needing to figure out when the right time to buy extra spells.

Cave-in card

This is the ultimate handicap that stops exponential growth and drags out the endgame just long enough to create a fair game. The CAVE IN card is placed half way through the 42 card deck at position 21. The instant you mine it, a cave in occurs. In order to see how bad the cave-in was one must roll a D6 and check the grid for instructions.

6|all

To give a quick example if you rolled a 3 but you had 4 dynamite on you at the time the total would be 7 and your entire discard pile would go back on top of the deck. Ouch.

• Dynamite is purchased during phase 1 of the game for 2 gems (after buying a tool) and targets the player of choice.

After the cave in card is drawn another D6 is rolled with the two D8s during the roll phase. All side of this D6 are blank except for one side which is a cave in. Anyone who's drawn the cave in card when this happens have to perform the process all over again. Thus once you get into the late game cave ins happen all the time and the incentive to clean out rubble during your turn skyrockets, greatly slowing down the potential exponential growth of the early game.

Promotional Swag

Luckily 2023 is not a COVID year so nobody was wearing masks or anything this time around. However, I did get one of these ridiculously baller Fantasia wizard caps. The creators insist you play with the cap on for promotional purposes or whatnot. I wore mine for a little bit longer after the game ended just to be a good sport.

I also received a wearable pin of their logo of a wizard with the wand and the pickax featured at the beginning of this post. Clearly they're taking this whole marketing thing seriously, and I wish them success in their journey.

Hexadecimal Wizardry

The usage of two D8 dice for this game made me realize that it's compatible with hexadecimal, and therefore SHA-256 hashing. I actually have code written that could implement this type of RNG using the BTC hash algo. Each a byte of hex would be one roll. For example: 5A would be a roll of 3+6=9. FF/FE/EF/EE would all be a roll of 8+8=16.

It's just funny to me because a game like this would be more fun than 99% of all the other web3 games out there, and yet here we are making these unfun Ponzi's that people only play thinking they can make some money. But I digress.

Conclusion

IIRC I've basically described the entire game. There are likely some few minor details I didn't mention but whatever. The game is pretty fun and I thought it deserved what little attention I can give it here. Apparently the kickstarter for marketing and mass production it will be a thing soon™. I may or may not give an update when that occurs.

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