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Wiz-War

board game

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionNov 18, 2025
Entity authorityQ8028712
Source-derived summary

Wiz-War is a four-player board game created by Tom Jolly and first published in 1985 through Jolly’s company, Jolly Games. It is described as a "beer and pretzels game".

The board in Wiz-War is made up of individual segments that form a labyrinth that the players must navigate. The layout is different each time the game is played and can also be modified by players during gameplay. Wiz-War uses cards to represent (among other things) spells cast by players.

Publication history

Tom Jolly started designing Wiz-War in 1983. After several rejections and redesigns he self-published and hand-assembled the first edition of Wiz-War, selling the game through his company Jolly Games. The first edition has low production value, consisting of photocopied typewritten rules, simply designed two-by-three-inch cards, hand-silkscreened cardboard boards, and photocopied chits, all contained in a clear plastic Ziploc bag. The second, third, and fourth editions feature higher production values and a brown box featuring cover art by Jolly. Jolly also self-published two expansions starting in 1988 and 1991, respectively.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Wiz-War” as board game. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1985, 1983, 1988, 1991—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. The account is most persuasive where Wiz-War, board and game can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as board game. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Nov 18, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q8028712. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1985, 1983, 1988 and 1991.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
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The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Wiz-War”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Wiz-War primary sources, Wiz-War archive and Wiz-War research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Wiz-War”?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Wiz-War” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.