Clash of Magic Schools – Guide your School to Victory!

Obviously, Harry Potter reigns supreme, but let’s not forget about The Magicians, or even The Irregular at Magic High School. In Clash of Magic Schools we are introduced to two more.

Clash of Magic Schools was designed by Uwe Rosenberg and Hagen Dorgathen, and published by Iello. Compete in the Tournament of Sorcerers as Headmaster of either the Blancgriffon or Dragombre schools.

Let’s ignore the weirdness of moving students around, flinging spells at each other, and dig into this two-player duel together. Does Clash of Magic Schools cast an enchanting spell, or does the magic fizzle out?

Gameplay

Setup for Clash of Magic Schools looks just like many other dueling board games that we’ve reviewed like RiftForce or Fight for Olympus. Lay the tournament board between the players and stack the trial cards between the Emblem markers. The first player (Dragombre School, black) takes three cards. The second player (Blancgriffon School, white) takes five. Put the starting Trials below each Emblem marker.

On each player’s turn, they’ll draw three Student cards, take actions, and then announce the next two Trials.

Actions

After drawing cards, you may take as many actions as you want, even the same action multiple times. But you may only Summon Students once. Any action only applies to your own Arenas, unless a spell says otherwise.

• Move – Discard a card matching an Element to move the Emblem marker to that Element Arena.
• Assign Students – Play any number of Student Cards from your hand into the Arena with your Emblem
• Pass a Trial – Move the top trial from either announced trial column to the Arena with your Emblem. This trial may only be one higher than the trial currently in the Arena (unless you use a special ability). You can only take (and pass) the trial if you have at least as many students in that Arena as the trial level. This action is mandatory on the first turn.
• Summon Students – Once per turn, move exactly three students from any one of your Arenas to any other of your Arenas.
• Cast a Spell – Discard a student from the Arena with your Emblem to cast a spell. That student must be flanked by students of the same Element (above and below in the column). The spell is either that student’s elemental spell, or a Maleficio curse. These spells do things like forcing the other player to discard all of their students in the Arena, passing a trial and skipping a level, or even removing all of a player’s Trial cards from an arena. The Maleficio curse forces a player to discard half their hand, rounded down.

After finishing your actions, draw two Trial cards from the Trial deck. Put these in your Trial column with the lower level Trial on top.

Winning the Game

Play continues back-and-forth until one Headmaster has enough trials to sum to 15 or more, while their opponent has less than 10. If both players are above 10, the game moves to Overtime. In Overtime, the game instantly ends if one player exceeds 20 Trial levels, one player falls below 10 Trial levels, or you run out of Trial cards.

Impressions

This was a confusing game to sort out. The tight battle between two players changes dramatically depending on the style of play. Clash of Magic Schools can be a very mean game, with players savaging their opponents Trial stacks or students. It was also unclear at the beginning that both columns of Trials were available for completion by either player.

My Struggles

I found Clash of Magic Schools to have a fair amount of luck-of-the-draw, in the Student and Trials decks. The last thing a player does on their turn is reveal Trials. If these line up well with their opponents’ needs, they can be sure they will be snatched up. However, we’ve also had games with a dozen trials in a player’s column, because the available trials were always too high to use, or just didn’t line up at quite the right time.

Similarly, we’ve played games where we had the Ticket to Ride effect. Everyone wants one more student of a certain color before they can let their plan unfold. Turns trade back and forth, building voluminous hands of cards because the right colors didn’t come out.

I also struggle with the game length being way too unpredictable. We’ve had games take ten minutes, and we’ve had games last an hour. These marathon sessions feel like an exhausting game of Uno or War. It doesn’t feel like someone’s out-strategizing someone else, they’re just waiting for the right card combination to show up to deal the killing blow.

Redemption?

This isn’t to say Clash of Magic Schools isn’t fun. Two of our kids love this game, and Naiade’s art is engaging and captures many different moods in the faces of the students. Our kids loved the idea of building up the powers to cast spells, without being as deeply strategic as most CCG card battlers.

So, I think Clash of Magic Schools does stay in our collection, at least for a little while. Any game my kids ask me to play is a game I’ll keep around.

You can get your own copy to play with your kids from Amazon or at your friendly local game store.

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Flat River Group and Iello provided The Family Gamers with a promotional copy of Clash of Magic Schools for this review.

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