Abracada...What? – Magic Deduction Game

Goal: be the first wizard to climb the scoring tower to 8 points. The twist that makes the game special: your five spell stones stand in front of you turned towards the table, so everyone can read them except you. You memorize them once at the start of each round, and from then on you must deduce what is still in front of you from your own casts, the public board and your misses.

The 36 Spell Stones

There are 8 spells, and the smaller the number, the more powerful — and the riskier — the spell:

• 1 – Ancient Dragon (×1): roll the die; every other wizard loses that many lives. If you chant it without holding it, you roll and lose that many.
• 2 – Dark Ghost (×2): all other wizards lose 1 life, you recover 1 (max 6).
• 3 – Sweet Dreams (×3): roll the die and recover that many lives (max 6).
• 4 – Owl (×4): pocket a secret stone from the middle pile, face-down (in this version it is drawn at random and shown only to you). Secret stones cannot be cast; each is worth +1 point if you survive the round.
• 5 – Lightning Storm (×5): both neighbours lose 1 life (in a 2-player game, the other wizard loses only 1).
• 6 – Blizzard (×6): your left-hand neighbour loses 1 life.
• 7 – Fireball (×7): your right-hand neighbour loses 1 life.
• 8 – Magic Potion (×8): recover 1 life (max 6).

Setup (each round)

• All 36 stones are shuffled face-down and each wizard receives 5 stones, placed facing the table — memorize yours on the opening screen.
• In a 2-player game 12 stones (in a 3-player game 6) are revealed onto the board's number areas — public information that powers the deduction.
• 4 more stones form the round's secret pile; nobody may look at them (except through the Owl).

Your Turn

• Chant a number — you are guessing that one of your stones matches. If you are right, the stone moves face-up onto the board's number area and the spell's effect resolves. You may then chain: chant again, but the next number must be equal or greater than the last one.
• If you are wrong, the magic backfires: you lose 1 life (the Dragon: roll the die and lose that many) and your turn ends immediately.
• You cannot pass before your first successful cast of the turn — a wizard must chant.
• Ending the turn (after at least one cast, or after a miss): draw from the pile back up to 5 stones. Stones drawn this way you never get to look at.

Ending the Round and Scoring

The round ends immediately when either a wizard's stones are all gone or a wizard's lives hit 0 (everyone starts with 6, the cap is 6):

• Hand emptied: the wizard who cast their last stone wins the round instantly: +3 points. Every other wizard's lives are zeroed and they score nothing.
• A wizard dies: the wizard behind the last attack gains +3; if nobody attacked (e.g. a Dragon backlash), the dead wizard is the sole loser. Every surviving wizard gains +1, plus +1 per secret stone still held.

All 36 stones go back into the bag, lives return to 6, and a new round deals 5 fresh stones. The first wizard to reach 8 points tops the tower and wins the game; if several cross 8 in the same round, they share the victory.

What the AI Sees

The AI plays fair: it reads the same public board you do, remembers its own opening five (with a human dose of forgetfulness at lower difficulties), tracks every cast and miss, and keeps candidate sets for the stones it can no longer be sure about — exactly like a careful human player.

Memorize by story, not by list. "I opened with the Dragon's neighbour set: 2, 3, 3, 6, 8" sticks better than five bare numbers. Every cast you make shrinks the set — narrate your row to yourself after each successful chant so what remains stays crisp.

Plan the chain low-to-high. The chain rule only moves upward, so casting your smallest useful spell first keeps every bigger spell legal afterwards. Opening with 8 (Potion) locks you out of everything but more Potions; opening with 2 or 3 keeps the whole tower open. Heal before you attack — Dreams and Ghost first, Fireball last.

Count the board. The number areas show how many of each spell are already face-up. If all three Sweet Dreams are on the board, the number 3 is dead for you (and everyone). If only one Blizzard is out and you never cast a 6, the odds a six sits in front of you are good — that is the whole deduction engine of the game.

Respect the Dragon. There is exactly one, and chanting it on a hunch costs you 1–6 lives. Chant it early, when your memory of the opening five is freshest, and ideally only when a multi-target hit wins you the round.

Hunt the wounded. A neighbour at 1–2 lives is a Fireball or Blizzard away from dying — and a kill is worth +3 points plus a survivor's point. When you hold the right number, chaining into it is usually better than banking a safe heal.

Weigh the Owl. Secret stones are points, but they can never be cast — a wizard holding them can no longer empty their hand for the instant +3. Take the Owl early in the round when lives are safe, skip it when the table is bloodthirsty.

Know when to stop. Chaining further is free only while you are sure. After a refill your new stones are strangers: if the next legal number is one you did not start with, ask what the board says before you chant — a miss hands your rivals a life and ends your turn anyway.

Abracada...What? is a deduction and memory board game designed by Gary Kim, first published in 2014 by Korea Boardgames / Divedice, with a 2015 English edition from Z-Man Games and a German edition (Simsala... Bumm?) from Pegasus Spiele. Its cover and board art by Marie Cardouat — the illustrator of Dixit — gives the wizard tower its storybook look, and the game earned a place on the 2015 Spiel des Jahres recommended list. It plays 2–5 wizards in about 30 minutes and is recommended from age 7+.

Chinese-speaking players widely know the game as 《出包魔法师》 ("the clumsy magician"), the name used by its Chinese distributor and most Chinese tabletop communities — a translation coincidence that has nothing to do with the Japanese manga series To Love-Ru (出包王女). Despite the language barrier the game needs no text to play: eight numbers, eight effects, and stones that everyone can read except their owner.

This page is an unofficial, fan-made web implementation with CSS-drawn stones and lucide icons (no official artwork). It seats you against 1–3 AI opponents across three difficulty tiers, follows the official rules — ascending chain chants, the Dragon's die, the secret Owl stones and the 8-point tower — and keeps the signature twist intact: your own stones stay face-down to you.