Saturday, August 17, 2019

#Blaugust2019 Day 17 -- Givin' it a Whirl

Here it is! All these months after Empyrea Part 2 was released in Wizard101, and I finally step my way into the whirlyburly ring.


The only thing going through my head right now is that this would have been super fun to play with the community on KI Live. Whirly Burly matches where I get to give a little bit of my sports commentator flair and play against the amazing fans of KingsIsle's livestream would have been the best!

Anyway, yesterday I spent more time in Wizard101 where I had some time talking with Coach Landri (nice homage there writers, nice homage) about the ONLY entertainment Aero Dwarves have in Empyrea.


So I walked up to the WhirlyBurly stand, got my instructions, and steadily lost my first geame. It took me a game to refamiliarize myself with how things work in this minigame. The order of operations where you select a card, then select a player was just a tad strange at first, and things have changed a bit from the pencil and paper days, but not by much. (There's no dragon in the middle directing which team goes first this round)

If you're looking for instructions on how to play the game, I gotta give some props to Swordroll for writing this magnificent guide.

To sum it up quickly: You have a team of three that moves along a hex map claiming territory based on cards that define movement. During 9 rounds of play, try to sneak past the other teams to grab their chests and use a rock-paper-scissors style sytem to defeat the other team's troops and send them back to their home base while scoring more points for yourself in the process.

That's WhirlyBurly in a nutshell.


It's one of those deceptively simple games that gets in your head. Also, one of those games where you can go from completely winning to last place in a single round.


It'd be nice to get to coach status so I could get one of those super cool soccer jerseys from the faction vendor, but I'm so mediocre at the game (and it requires a good bit of luck) that it'd take some serious time investment.

At the end of the day, I'm just happy another minigame was put into a world as a quest destination. It's so cool when the Wizard101 team is able to make that happen.

Happy Dueling!

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