Warhammer Magic, the Card Game

5th edition Magic was as monstrous a beast as a Chaos Lord on an Imperial Dragon with three magic items each worth 150 points.

It was a big box, filled to the brim with magic item cards, cards for spells, cards for The Winds of Magic, templates, counters and a thin paperback book with the complete rules for magic and magical items. The smart marketeers of GW put this set together in such a way that it actually required each player to have his own set, for the occassion that players used the same lore of magic, or wanted the same magic items (no one would take the field without at least one dispel scroll). Most lores had 10 spell cards, except Skaven magic, which had 13.

The Magic phase was the end of any turn (except for dwarf players), it featured drawing a random number of winds of magic cards dealt to each player equally (odd cards to the casting side) reading "Power", "Dispel", "Destroy spell", "Escape" and "Total Power". Each spell, randomly drawn at the start of the battle had a required number of power cards, and Total Power caused a single spell to be cast without the possibility of having it dispelled. there were dispel scrolls (max 2 per army) and a destroy scroll (max. 1) who could auto-block spells and possibly destroy them, except for spells cast with total power.
I'm actually not sure about the auto-block... it could have been a way to try to dispel if you didn't get the right winds of magic cards to do it.

When spells were cast, the casting player could spend a number of power cards on the spell, and the opposing player could try to dispel the spell if he had a dispel or destroy spell card. This required a d6 roll of 4 or better, modified by wizard level and the number of power cards played to boost either the spell or dispel. It was a bit of a betting game, and humiliating defeat or the slim chance for victory could hinge on a single dispel-roll depending on the type of magic used.
The "Assault of Stone" spell for example could move a hill to crush all units it could reach... if you had big hills in your deployment zone, or wanted to use their advantages, you'd better have some scrolls on hand or pray for that destroy spell card...

The escape card was a nice feature, it allowed you to return a slain character (it escapes me if it had to be the wizard, I don't have the book at hand) to the table-top... kind of nasty if you just killed the enemy's best character with extreme effort and massive loss of troops. "Yay! I killed Teclis the Loremaster! Finally I stand a chance to win this game!"... "Ah, see, I saved this card here for just such an occassion, 'escape', tee-hee, Teclis Lives!" (rather unfair, as the elves also had Apotheosis which practically had the same effect)

also nice for magic-light armies was the Drain Magic spell. I recall it was a dispel that, when successful, ended the magic phase.

Gw actually tried to make it a balanced system.

seems I'm still not so possitive, does it?

But then, I actually enjoyed this system, it had a bit more depth than the new dice-based system. It was the choices you had to make, "do I dispel that nasty Curse of Years still in play or will I use my power cards for that Teleport spell to set up a flank attack? I'm one level lower than the other guy, I really need power to boost the spell to -3 dispel"

truly a game within the game.

I think that we also did some Wizard Duels as part of our private 4-player tournaments. The supplement made such mini-games quite exiting, more strategic than a wizard duel in the current rules.