Game 409: Chaos: The Battle of Wizards

The subtitle "The Battle of Wizards" is seen on the main menu.

 

Rebelstar Raiders might have been the start of Julian Gollop's enduring legacy, but true Speccy fans know that Chaos: The Battle of Wizards was his true masterpiece. That is, at least according to Your Sinclair's Readers' Top 100 list, which places Chaos at #5, making it the second-highest ranked Spectrum game that isn't an arcade conversion, right behind Sim City, and right ahead of, um, Manic Miner.

Screenshot by Mobygames

Unlike Rebelstar Raiders, Chaos has no plot whatsoever, and the manual is all the shorter for it. Eight (or fewer) wizards enter an arena, one (sometimes more) leaves.

In fact, gameplay is quite a bit simpler than Rebelstar Raiders. This is a turn-based strategy game, and, as in Gollop's previous game Nebula, each turn is divided into three phases, each of which cycles through all players before moving on to the next phase.

1. In the spell selection phase, each player chooses the spell that they will cast this turn. The majority of spells are for summoning creatures, but a few more provide unique offensive, defensive, or utility-related effects. But your spellbook is random, finite, and with the exception of a "disbelieve" cantrip, spells are gone once chosen.
2. Next is the spellcasting phase, where wizards cast their spells, typically by selecting a target within casting range. A player may forfeit their spell, but it will be forgotten and removed from the spellbook whether you cast it or not! Spells can also fail by chance, and this becomes more likely the more powerful your spell is, or if the spell's alignment is contrary to the arena's current affinity.
   
3. Finally, there is the movement phase, where each wizard moves themselves and any summoned creatures, and combat is resolved between any unfriendly creatures in proximity. Some creatures can fly, some can be mounted, and others can attack at a range.
   

 

"It says f⬆king cobra" - D

 

Some surface-level observations:

• The graphics are very sparse and barren, which is largely a consequence of the ZX Spectrum's limitations, but it kind of works here, to create a starkly desolate atmosphere. Pure chaos, in the classical sense, if you will - you fight for your life in a magical void, a hellish oblivion of nothing but yourself, your foes, and whatever conjurations you brought with you.
• Sound effects and animations are rather good for a Spectrum game. Fireball effects in particular burn with a surreal fluidity that stills can't convey. Sadly, the sound of selecting a unit, which you'll be hearing constantly, is this grating clown honk.
  
• You can play against the computer, which is a very welcome addition. In fact, you can play with any combination of human and AI opponents, including an all-AI match that you sit back and watch. The AI isn't the greatest, but it's better than nothing, which is what Rebelstar Raiders offered.
  
• Keyboard controls are very similar to Rebelstar Raider's, but they are less forgiving. Illegal or accidental moves can be aborted, but this forfeits your turn in part or whole. Contrast with Rebelstar Raiders, where cancelling a unit's action retains all of its unspent movement points, and you may simply re-select it and perform a different action. I made multiple calamitous input mistakes while practicing against the computer, but eventually learned to be cautious.
  

 

Following our Rebelstar Raiders campaign, The Wargaming Scribe organized an eight-player PBEM battle royale with his usual suspects. And what better way to experience Chaos than a maximally crowded arena with seven other wizards flinging magic at each other? Read his AAR of a match against seven computer opponents here.  

 

The wizards play left to right, top to bottom, assigning me (a golden figure self-styled as Ahab the Idolator) as the last player.

I have reconstructed a video of the match, using RZX recordings exchanged via email. Spell selection is skipped, as we opted to perform this in secret.

Turn 1

In a real hotseat game, where the phase screen is seen by all players, we would have knowledge of each others' spellbooks, and also have imperfect information on each others' spell selections, but in our PBEM game, we conceal the spell selection phase from each other. I do not know what anyone else has at their disposal, nor what they have selected. For what it's worth, computer players also conceal their spell selections from you.

Colors indicate the relative chance of a successful cast. White always works, yellow has a base chance of 80%-90%, cyan 60%-70%, and green 50%. More powerful and difficult spells - typically high-tier summons such as dragons - exist as well, but I have none. Each spell also has an associated alignment, of law, chaos, and neutrality, indicated by the icon preceding. A successfully cast law or chaos-aligned spell will tilt the arena in that direction, making opposite-oriented spells more likely to fail.

All summoning spells may optionally be cast as an illusion, which have 100% success rates and are just as powerful as true summons. But illusions are vulnerable to the disbelieve spell.

My summons, from least to most powerful:

• Giant rat - Weak, average in speed. High manoeuvre rating, which allows a chance to escape from combat.
• Zombie - Slow and weak, but undead, which makes it invulnerable except to magic and other undead creatures.
• Eagle - Average strength, decent speed. Flies over obstructions so long as its destination is clear.
• Ogre - Above average strength, average speed, good defense.
• Lion - Strong, with above average speed and defense, and high manoeuvre.
• Pegasus - Fast but weak flyer, with strong magic resistance. Can be ridden.
  
• Hydra - Strong and resilient, but slow.
• Wraith - Undead with above average strength and defense.
• Ghost - Flying undead. Weak, but slippery.

 

Other spells:

• Disbelieve - Instantly destroys an illusionary monster. Does nothing if the monster happens to be real. Everyone has this spell, and it alone can be cast unlimited times.
• Lightning - Medium-ranged attack spell.
• Law - No miraculous effect, but tilts the arena's affinity toward law.
• Chaos - Likewise, tilts the arena's affinity toward chaos.
• Justice - Destroy a creature.
• Raise dead - Reanimate a corpse, turning it undead and under your control.

I select my ghost, and soon after, the spellcasting phase begins.

• Morpheus summons a zombie.
• Mad Porcus a red dragon - a powerful, flying monster with a deadly long-ranged breath weapon, but notably, one with a very high chance of failure to summon, unless cast as an illusion!
• Rastignak summons a faun, an unremarkable monster of average strength, good manoeuvre, and magic resistance.
• Lynx gets a horse, a weak, somewhat fast mount creature.
• Dayyalu a goblin, a chaos weenie, but positioned as if to attack me.
  
• Scribe fizzles, which is too bad because the attempted spell, Shadow Wood, would have flooded his sector of the arena with immobile but deadly tree monsters.
• Argyraspide summons another zombie.
• My ghost comes out fine.

 

Two events occur during movement.

First, Porcus' dragon flies to the center of the arena and torches Lynx's poor horse.

 

Second, Dayyalu and his goblin move in a little too close for comfort, so I preemptively attack with the ghost.

 

One wizard down.

 

Turn 2

I am in no immediate danger, so I decide to cast Law for now. It seems that my enemies are mostly chaos-aligned, and if this can waste any of their spells, all the better for me.

• Morpheus fails to summon a wraith.
• Mad Porcus subverts Rastignak's faun, converting it to his own command!
  
• Rastignak fails to subvert my own ghost.
  
• Lynx disbelieves in the red imagine dragon, and it promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.
  
• Scribe summons a hydra.
  
• Argyraspide casts a double chaos spell.
  
• My law spell succeeds, but the net effect of the round is still chaotic.
  

 

 Predictably, Rastignak is subsequently killed by his own faun.

As for the rest:

• Morpheus and his zombie shamble toward Lynx
• Lynx, caught between a zombie and a five-headed hydra, moves toward the zombie. Best possible move, really - the hydra would kill him this turn otherwise.
• Scribe's hydra moves toward Argyraspide. Or is it toward me?
• Argyraspide and his zombie shuffle toward me.
• I recall my ghost, and reposition myself away from the corner.

 

Turn 3

Argyraspide is just close enough to be a potential threat. I prepare my wraith, which now has an 80% success rate in the arena's chaotic affinity.

 

And it fails! Thankfully, so does Argyraspide's attempt to cast Shadow Wood, which would have surrounded me with deadly trees.

• Morpheus summons a hydra of his own.
• Mad Porcus a ghost.
• Lynx casts Decree, a law-oriented spell canceller, on Morpheus. The manual says that when targeting a wizard, it can destroy all of his creations. The spell doesn't seem to fail, but also doesn't seem to do anything.
• Scribe casts Magic Wood, instantly sprouting a grove of five magical trees that can grant new spells to whatever wizard enters them.

 

Amazingly, Lynx survives being double-teamed by Morpheus' hydra and zombie. Scribe retreats to a tree, and I advance toward Argy.

Turn 4

If I were Argy, I'd be looking for a Hail Mary about now, and summon something nasty, or at least fast. If he does this and succeeds, then I'll die this turn.

If he casts a deadly illusion, then disbelief is all that can save me. If he casts a deadly non-illusion, then my spell choice doesn't matter and all I can hope for is that it fails. And if he does something non-deadly, then a disbelieve would be a waste but I'll still live. Therefore, I prepare a disbelieve spell.

 

My logic pans out. He summons a vampire illusion, which I immediately vanquish.

Meanwhile, Morpheus summons a unicorn, Mad Porcus a hydra, Lynx a red dragon, and Scribe a crocodile.

Lynx, surrounded by a small army of monsters, does not survive this round, and the dragon is expelled with him.

Mad Porcus moves southward, toward Argyraspide. Scribe moves his hydra to attack Morpheus, Argyraspide moves toward Scribe (and away from me), and I follow.

Turn 5

I prepare another disbelieve.

• Morpheus blasts away one of Scribe's trees with a lighting bolt.
• Mad Porcus summons a bear - strong, and somewhat agile.
  
• Scribe, another crocodile.
• Argyraspide, a gorilla - a fairly strong but slow creature.
• I target Argyraspide's zombie with my disbelieve, but it fails.

 

Mad Porcus's army starts moving in! I retreat and move my ghost between Porcus' bear and myself.

 

Turn 6

Another turn, another disbelieve.

 

• Morpheus summons a Pegasus.
• Mad Porcus lightning bolts his own faun. Misclick, or madness? Either way, it lives.
• Scribe disbelieves Morpheus's unicorn, to no effect. He learns a spell from his magic tree.
  
• Argyraspide summons a giant.
• I cast my disbelieve on Mad Porcus' ghost, removing it as a threat to my own.
  

 

Mad Porcus gathers his armies as my ghost closes in, while Morpheus and Scribe exchange blows, resulting in the death of Morpheus' Pegasus and hydra.

Turn 7

Safe at last, I prepare an illusion Lion summon. It's fake, but it's deadly.

• Morpheus also summons a lion.
• Scribe summons a vampire.
• Mad Porcus tries to dispel my ghost with a cast of Vengeance. It doesn't work.
• Argyraspide tries to cast Shadow Wood again, targeting Morpheus' turf. It fails again.

 

Morpheus futilely attacks Scribe's hydra, while Mad Porcus even more futilely attacks, and then backs away from my ghost.

Scribe has a very productive round indeed - the hydra kills Morpheus and vampire kills Argyraspide.

I pursue Mad Porcus with my ghost and lion.

Turn 8

I get another disbelieve ready. Unfortunately, so does Mad Porcus, who correctly guesses I was "lion."

Scribe summons an orc as I disbelieve his vampire.

 

Scribes' monsters move forward as my ghost continues to haunt Porcus.

Turn 9

Porcus fails to summon a magic castle to hide in, but succeeds in getting his faun and hydra away from my ghost even as I disbelieve his hydra. Scribe summons a gorilla and moves his increasingly large army closer still.

Turn 10

Porcus successfully casts Magic Wings and transforms into a batman. I prepare to disbelieve his hydra, but Scribe beats me to it and disbelieves it himself. I doubt his gorilla - turns out to be real.

As Scribe's army moves closer (and he hides under the last magic tree), I with draw my ghost to attack Porcus' faun. I have good reason for doing this.

Turn 11

Porcus casts law, shifting the balance away from chaos, and flies off to the side. Very quickly too - was it a mistake to let him live last turn?

Scribe gets a spell from his last magic tree, summons another orc, and starts assembling his monsters into a line formation. I summon a stronger ogre and move to protect my flank.

Turn 12

Porcus casts magic armor, boosting his defenses and further transforming his appearance, and flaps himself a bit closer. Scribe futilely disbelieves my ogre and moves closer still. I summon a zombie and move into position for the next turn.

 

Turn 13

Ineffective disbelieves fly back and forth, but I finish Porcus with a cast of Lightning Bolt.

Scribe and myself move our armies toward the front line.

Turn 14

Scribe summons a zombie of his own, and I use my chaos spell. Some fighting happens in the middle as Scribe's monsters fail to pull themselves away from my ghost, which they cannot harm.

Turn 15

Scribe attempts to blast my ghost with lightning, but without line of sight, this doesn't work.

Aided by last turn's chaos spell, I raise the dead faun, adding it to my small but nearly invincible army of undead, which continues to stonewall Scribe's monsters. The fighting continues, and my zombie eats Scribe's orc.

 

Turn 16

Scribe doubts my faun is real, but it is, and I summon a hydra of my own.

In the fighting this turn, his zombie finally destroys my ghost. You had a good run, Casper.

Turn 17

Scribe doubts my hydra, but it is indeed real. I try to lightning his zombie, but it resists and is unaffected.

Scribe's gorilla gets my hydra, but my undead faun gets his zombie. Good news - there is no longer any counter to my remaining undead. Bad news - I have an angry and rather strong gorilla after me.

 

Turn 18

Zombies prove oddly resilient to magic yet again, as Scribe flings a bolt that bounces harmlessly off mine. I summon a giant rat, placing it strategically so that the gorilla can't throttle it to death this very turn.

Unluckily for me, Scribe's alligator eats my ogre, and even worse, the gorilla manages to slip away from my undead duo and lumbers toward me. And my own creatures's attacks do nothing.

Turn 19

Scribe, out of spells other than disbelieve, forfeits his phase, and I use mine to disbelieve his crocodile.

As expected, his gorilla stomps my rat flat and the rest advance closer. My undead faun breaks from the melee, but I myself retreat into a corner.

Turn 20

Trapped, I cast my most powerful spell - Judgment. This destroys Scribe's crocodile, and turns his gorilla into a rat. My undead pair are free - but I'm all but stuck in a corner, with a deadly hydra looming close.

Turn 21

I summon Pegasus, but I can't tear myself away from Scribe's gorilla-rat to mount him. Good news - I kill it with my bare fists. Bad news, Scribe's hydra slides into my personal killzone. Best I can do is put the Pegasus between it and me and hope it lives long enough to fly away.

 

Turn 22

As Scribe's hydra and Pegasus stare down, we mutually disbelieve them.

I mount Pegasus, shrugging off attacks from the hydra and orc. If he survives the next turn's attack, I might win. If not, I almost certainly die.

 

Turn 23

Pegasus survives the attack. We fly away, leaving behind my final summon - an eagle.

Turns 24-28

Scribe concedes the match, though he might not have had he known that it ends in stalemate on turn 30. I play for both of us, and on turn 28, my zombies eat his brains.

I won, but the victory felt a bit hollow. I made a few strategic errors, though with the sheer amount of unforgiving randomness, it can be hard to tell good strategic decisions from bad ones. I made no tactical errors at all; every move either improved my position by the end of the turn or had a chance to, and no action's immediate risks outweighed the immediate benefits. Some of my opponents did make such tactical errors, whether that meant wasting a spell, or exposing their wizard to something that would kill them the next turn, and I exploited these mistakes well.

But none of that felt like it mattered nearly as much as dumb luck. Everything you do, save for the most mundane actions, is checked against one or more dice rolls. So is everything done to you - and while skilled play can give you more opportunities to deliver killing blows, and give your opponents fewer, no strategy beats a lucky potshot, and no strategy succeeds if your spells keep blowing up in your face and your opponents' don't. I survived because every high-stakes move that I made succeeded, and every chance that my opponents had to ruin me failed, starting from the second turn when Rastignak's chance to kill me with my own ghost failed, to the very end when my desperate cast of Judgement succeed against a chaotically-aligned arena and deleted two of Scribe's monsters, and his surviving hydra, having two opportunities to ruin my day by killing Pegasus, whiffed it against the odds both times.

Even the ghost I summoned on turn 1 was lucky - it had a 50% chance to fail. But in retrospect, I could have cast it as an illusion - for all the disbelieving that went on, nobody ever disbelieved that!

This PBEM match took a good month and change to complete, and in the meantime I had played some hotseat matches involving both humans and AI opponents. My wife "D" hates this game and refuses to play it again, which might have something to do with how her only move in our only match was an attempt to cast lightning bolt without realizing it was out of range, and that I got her with a dragon illusion the same turn. "B" played a few matches and enjoyed it more, but there was a pattern; matches begin with an opening salvo of sniper shots and disbelieves before turning into monster melees between the survivors, the size of which depends greatly on how many summons are real and/or successful.

GAB rating: Above average. Chaos is undeniably a well crafted game, but not a well designed one. I personally prefer Rebelstar Raiders' flavor of disbalance, where even though the attackers have a significant-to-extreme advantage depending on the map, your speed and performance still depends on how good (or poor) your strategy was.

Wikipedia offers this definition of a "beer and pretzels" game:

Rules are simple and generally explainable in just a few minutes, turns pass quickly and humor is common. Randomness, either in the form of cards or dice is essential. Fortunes may revert quickly and the game often ends suddenly and unexpectedly. Scoring requires very simple calculations.

 

That describes Chaos almost too perfectly. The rules and flow are intuitive and straightforward, even if some of the spells' conditions and effects aren't always immediately obvious, but you learn them with experience. The simple subsystems compound and interact in complex and unpredictable ways, but there isn't as much strategic depth as there might have been; the absolute success and failure chances ensure it, but that was never the goal here. I mean, wizards aren't even created equal - some flat out have better stats than others! But every duel has the potential for some crazy shenanigans, and damn if it isn't entertaining to see how it all unfolds. And big matches probably play even better in hot seat, where complete turns take minutes, and losers can stick around to watch the wizardly mayhem, and then demand a rematch.

 

Here are a couple of Chaos' more egregious examples of being unbalanced:

• Easily the most common example - strong, fast, flying monsters, like dragons and vampires, are almost pointless to cast except as an illusion to kill someone on the same turn. If a player going before you does this, then the only defense is to have picked disbelieve as your spell for the turn - hence my midgame paranoia.
  
• If a player going after you summons a powerful illusion, then your only defense is to kill them before they get to move.
• Undead, as we've seen, are nearly invulnerable, very capable of clogging up the battlefield, and a wizard without undead of their own can't do much about it.
• Better still - if you can manage to cast "raise dead" on a horse or other rideable creature, then you get a zombie horse that you can ride and become nigh-invulnerable!
  
• There are a number of instant summon-kill spells with unlimited range, and when cast on an enemy wizard, this removes all of their summons. Against a wizard with poor magic resistance, this has a pretty good chance of working. Especially the varieties where you can select three targets - just target the wizard three times!
  
• Shadow Wood has an insane range for a spell with a 60% base success rate and lax line of sight rules that can instantly surround an enemy with killer trees. It's a miracle that this did not happen to me during the match.
  

  

  Ahab eats it, Saruman-style.
  

  
  
• All flyers have a non-LOS ranged attack, and I assume this is a bug. By moving onto an enemy, instead of next to it, you attack without moving!
  
  

  

  Ok, who gave Batman a sniper rifle?