''Magic Wood'' is a 1979 board game published by

International Team International Team (IT) was an Italian game company founded in the 1970s and active until the early 1980s. While the company started as a jigsaw puzzle producer, it is mostly remembered as a Wargaming, wargame company, a business that IT approached ...

. When it first appeared in the U.S., the suggested retail price of the game was $17.95, considerably more than many other board games of the time.

Gameplay

''Magic Wood'' is a game in which elves, gnomes, goblins, and trolls all work to capture one another using foxes, ferrets, and martens for help. There are no dice; each player is simply given a move of seven that can be divided between any of the pieces the player currently has.

Reception

In the May 1980 edition of

Dragon A dragon is a Magic (supernatural), magical legendary creature that appears in the folklore of multiple cultures worldwide. Beliefs about dragons vary considerably through regions, but European dragon, dragons in Western cultures since the Hi ...

(Issue 37),

William Fawcett William or Bill Fawcett or ''variation'', may refer to: People * William Fawcett (actor) (1894–1974), American actor who was awarded the ''Légion d'honneur'' * William Fawcett (author) (1902–1941), English journalist and writer on horses, hun ...

found the gameplay of ''Magic Wood'' to be too simplistic and the graphics too childish to appeal to devoted gamers. He thought the rules booklet was "a poor translation from the Italian, and it took me several readings to figure out a playable set of rules. This is perhaps the game’s greatest failing... Many areas are not covered or left ambiguous and unclear." Due to its childish simplicity and high price, Fawcett did not recommend the game, saying, "Considering the high price tag of ''Magic Wood'', most gamers will probably decide that there are better games that will offer more challenge and variety for the money." In the January 1981 edition of ''

The Space Gamer ''The Space Gamer'' was a magazine dedicated to the subject of science fiction and fantasy board games and tabletop role-playing games. It quickly grew in importance and was an important and influential magazine in its subject matter from the la ...

'' (Issue No. 35), Elisabeth Barrington found the game to be suitable only for a younger audience, and recommended it "to gamers 6-12 years of age."

References

{{reflist Board games introduced in 1979 International Team games