Dinner and Wizard

We had our family dinner on Monday as has been usual practice for years now although we broke the tradition quite often during earlier COVID restrictions. We had a long layoff in both the first and second waves, but I have since lost count of the waves, so let us just call this the O-wave.

The province has gone into a circuit breaker although I don't think they have used that term. The resumption of school has been postponed by two weeks, and dining in restaurants has been curtailed. You can guess the various other restrictions. Hopefully, these measures will get this incredible explosion under some sort of control. Also hopefully, maybe this wave will soon subside as seems to have been the case in South Africa.

We felt safe and within limits as the 5 of us got together. I can't remember all of what was said, but I think all three tested before coming over. Shauna did for sure.

We served Mexican lasagna with layers of tortillas alternating with meat sauce which included corn and black beans. It is a very good dish that we tend to repeat several times a year.

Afterward, we played a game of Wizard. We had played it with JJ on his Christmas sleepover, and he loved it (first photo, below) and wanted to play again. Shauna had played it in the past, but it was Danica's first time (second photo below). We had a blast.

Long long ago, we used to play with an ordinary deck of cards and called it Oh Heck! The Wizard deck is just an traditional set of cards with two types of wildcards added — 4 Wizards and 4 Jesters.

We start by dealing one card to everyone and turn up the next card to be trump. Everyone bids on whether they think they will take the trick or not. Obviously, a person can only say 1 or 0 in that round. But the bids cannot add up to 1 in total, for someone must lose. For example if the first of 5 people bid 1 and the next 3 people bid 0, the last person, the dealer, would be forced to bid 1. Likewise, if all 4 people bid 0, then the dealer, would have to also say 0 even if they were holding high trump or a Wizard. 

If you made your bid in that case, you would get 10 points or 11 if you made your bid and you had also bid 1. This is our adaptation of the scoring system, which is a little different than the official Wizard suggestion. It comes from how we used to play Oh Heck.

The nest round is 2 cards each and so on. We go up to 7 and then back down to 1. You can go higher; we used to go to 10, but holding that many cards becomes a little unwieldy and also makes the game long, so seven seems about right. 

The game is completely unpredictable, which is what makes it so much fun. You can actually take a trick that you don't want with a very low card if the others are out of that suit. On the other hand, you could also lose an ace of trump if someone were to play a Wizard. You can also lose your Wizard if another player plays theirs first. This actually happened during the game.

As I said, it is fun, and we had a lot of laughs.