Wizard Duel - TV Tropes

"Wizard fight... Wizard fight!"

— Henry, Fire Emblem: Awakening

A Wizard Duel (also Wizard's Duel or Wizardly Duel) is when two (sometimes more) characters with magical or magic-like powers (spells, usually) battle each other using them. A trope found mostly in Fantasy, though it may apply to characters with magic-like powers of other genres.

If both the heroes and villains have a wizard on their side, you can be assured this will happen at some point. Usually at or near the story's climax, probably because such a battle tends to be visually impressive. Of course, if the protagonist of the series is the sorcerer, then it happens all the time, since Magic Must Defeat Magic. The battle doesn't have to be between enemies; it can occur between friends or rivals, a master and his apprentice, and so on.

Sometimes, there are specific rules that have to be followed in the duel, especially if both characters belong to a special caste or organization. Of course, if one of the participants is dishonorable, expect him or her to cheat.

If such rules prohibit direct attacks on each other, or the work's demographic would make serious violence inappropriate, or the duel is just more of a friendly rivalry than an all-out fight, the participants may limit themselves to ostentatious spell contests instead. In this case, Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better, can mean something like "any fish you can summon, I can summon bigger," if you will, and then they might have the "fish" fight on their behalf. This kind of duel goes right back to The Bible, if not earlier.

Curiously, one trick rarely used is to magically silence the opponent. This may be because it would make the duel too easy... or because an unspoken assumption of the setting is that it would not actually work. (Not all magic depends on incantations, and as long as the caster isn't physically prevented from speaking in the first place an invocation's effectiveness rarely seems to depend simply on how loud it is, or perhaps all competent magi have some defense against such spells.) One exception is in Role-Playing Games, where Silence spells are fairly common.

If the win condition involves the death of an opponent, see Duel to the Death. If the magic users are specifically using Voluntary Shapeshifting spells to get the upper hand, it's a Shapeshifter Showdown. When you've got full armies of wizards going at each other, it's a Wizards' War.

Examples:

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Anime & Manga

Battles in Frieren: Beyond Journey's End are predominately magical, given two of the protagonists are an elven mage and her human apprentice. In general, mages of the setting tend to master one signature spell or field (solid illusions, paralysis, hair manipulation, etc.) to compliment "basic" offensive and defensive spells, though masters like Frieren and Denken naturally know several powerful spells (Demons, meanwhile, go into Crippling Overspecialization by honing one spell, and one spell alone, to supposed perfection). Indeed, one of the most spectacular duels is when Frieren fights a magically created replica, leading to the two unleashing successively larger spells in an attempt to overpower each other until Fern simply uses her talents as a fast-firing stealth mage to ambush it with boring, basic offensive magic. Madhouse's adaptation in 2023 added even more flair with elaborate animation and Orchestral Bombing.
As you'd expect from a manga literally named "Sorcery Battles", just about every fight in Jujutsu Kaisen revolves around wielding jujutsu sorcery.
Unsurprisingly since the main characters are mages, the Lyrical Nanoha series has quite a few. The big, decisive battles for the seasons are often such, such as Nanoha vs Fate and Nanoha vs Vivio.
Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid: Shouta gets challenged to a magic duel by a bully during the mage exam arc. He takes them out in about three seconds by teleporting behind them and casting a sleep spell.
Naruto: As Ninjutsu progressively establishes itself as Magic by Any Other Name, with a fairly elaborate rules and complexity system, the battles become more and more arcane as the manga goes on. The Final Battle is essentially a contest of energy attacks, shapeshifting, summon magic and reality warping; and the fight with the Post-Final Boss is more of the same, only with Combat Breakdown at the end once the combatants have exhausted all their chakra.
In Negima! Magister Negi Magi, wizardly battles handle mostly like an Action RPG. In particular, Invoked spells can be held for 20 second, simple spells can be thought, and some spells can be activated within another spell already active. This makes for some interesting strategies for piling spells atop each other, leaving the only limitation up to the magic-users magic pool.
Lina Inverse vs. Vrumugun and Zelgadiss vs. Copy Rezo in the first season of the Slayers anime. The later seasons do not involve enemy wizards or sorcerers, moving on to Demon Lords and Archdevils, Eldritch Abominations and so on.
Zatch Bell! is about a series of Wizard Duels between 100 children to decide the next ruler of the Demon/Mamodo World. Combined with the Mon genre, given that the Demon/Mamodo children have human partners who read their spells from their spellbook to activate their powers.

Comic Books

Atomic Robo: The final issue of The Deadly Art of Sicence sees Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison blasting each other with lightning. Though the source of their power is more technological in nature, Edison still makes the analogy of 'blasting each other like wizards'.
Batgirl (2009): When Stephanie Brown unintentionally insults the bonnet-making-craftmanship of a witch in Limbo Town, she is challenged to a standard duel, to be conducted per the guidelines set in Alchan's Book of the Damned, Third Edition, Twice Removed. Stephanie opens the duel with "accio fist", though she admits afterwards that "accio face" would be the more accurate description.
The Blood Queen from Dynamite Entertainment sees the witch main character Elizabeth battle the Court Mage in a magic duel so no one will stand in her way of taking over the kingdom.
Alley-Kat-Abra of Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew! has gone toe-to-toe with a variety of wizardly foes in classic duels, including Salvadore Doggi and the Great Gnudini in her solo stories and Feline Faust in a pseudo-crossover with the JLA (Just'a Lotta Animals).
Doctor Strange has participated in many wizard's duels, considering that he is Sorcerer Supreme and the majority of his enemies are either rival wizards like Baron Mordo (as pictured in the page image) or extradimensional wizard-gods like the Dread Dormammu and Nightmare.
In Eight Billion Genies, two wish-proofed enclaves engage in a wish war against each other. This consists of a rapid depletion of genies on both sides, as each attacking wish is met with a counter-wish that nullifies its effects. The war ends in less than a minute, and the survivor is left with only three genies remaining.
Ewoks—Shadows of Endor: Logray and Charal cast elemental spells on each other in a fight over the Sunstar-Shadowstone and Charal reanimates several skeletons to help her. She loses the fight when Paploo non-fatally stabs her from behind.
The Multiversity: Amusingly subverted in Society of Superheroes: Conquerors of the Counter-World #1. The issue appears to set up a Mirror Match between Doc Fate and Doctor Faust, but when Faust shows up before Fate, Fate just kicks him in the balls and drags him away.
Robin (1993): Tim ends up stuck in the middle of a fight between Klarion the Witch Boy and a criminal from Limbo Town. Tim notes he's way out of his depth and things have gotten incredibly weird in record time seeing as Klarion's opponent is fusing magical creatures together to make a giant monster.
The first volume of The Sandman (1989) has a variant of this crossed with Shapeshifter Showdown. Main character Dream of the Endless challenges a high ranking demon named Choronzon to "the Oldest Game" in order to get back his helmet. The challenge plays out as a competition where each character essentially shifts into different forms to counter the other, describing how their new form will do so. It's essentially a game of wits that is over when one person can't think of a way to counter the other's latest form.
Shadowpact: In issue #2, Enchantress engages her Evil Counterpart Strega in a magical duel. Strega wins and captures Enchantress but the next issue reveals the Enchantress wasn't actually trying to win the duel; she knew Strega outmatched her and was instead studying her magic to see how her spell on the town could deactivated.
The Smurfs: In "Sagratamabarb", Gargamel duels with his titular cousin when he magically copies Gargamel's house on Gargamel's own property, and Gargamel tries to destroy it, only to find out that destroying the copy also causes damage to his own house. Gargamel makes a Deal with the Devil that if Beelzebub would give him the victory, he could have Gargamel's soul as his prize. Though Beelzebub is chased off by a centaur summoned by his cousin, he still soldiers on and calls upon all the powers of darkness to defeat his cousin. Eventually, Gargamel wins, though it not only costs him his house, it also costs him his eternal soul, as Beelzebub shows up at the end to claim his prize.
Smut Peddler Presents: Silver: "Rivals" starts with Korbla and Sishmu fighting with impressive sorcery, having been lifelong rivals that runs so deep that it's become romantic infatuation.
Subverted in a Suicide Squad comic when Nightshade and Incubus get into a standard wizard duel only for Deadshot to abruptly shoot Incubus in the head, killing him instantly.
Wonder Woman (1987): Circe fights the White Magician in issue #100, but unfortunately her clinging to and recent transition from her mortal Donna Milton persona greatly weaken her despite her superior magical knowledge. As a result, her biggest contribution is teleporting his brainwashed and magically enhanced mooks away, while implying the magic he's using is going to kill him soon anyway. She's not wrong, but he manages to finish off Artemis before he dies from a combination of his magic and Diana beating him to death.

Fan Fiction

Arcanum: Subverted with Ruby versus Goodwitch. Ruby does very little impressive spellcasting, especially not to attack Goodwitch. Mostly, she just uses quick spells to counteract Goodwitch's own attacks. Goodwitch being a 'wizard' and treating the fight like a 'wizard duel' leaves her completely unprepared for an opponent who doesn't care to stay at range and trade spells, when she has two perfectly good fists to use instead.
Child of the Storm: Played with, and usually played for laughs.
- Dumbledore and Grindelwald's legendary duel is mentioned. Also mentioned is a previous duel between Doctor Strange and Grindelwald, the latter having become equivalent to a Greater God via a Deal with the Devil or half-a-dozen. The duel itself all but levelled Berlin and left Grindelwald in an exhausted heap, reduced to "just" his native magical powers. Strange, by all accounts, quite literally strolled away whistling, leaving him on a plate for Dumbledore.
- In chapter 60, Loki, hunting Death Eaters, notes that when people think of wizard duels, they imagine bursts of multi-coloured power, Stuff Blowing Up, and maybe a Shapeshifter Showdown.
  Transforming opponents into stone statues is a classic, and much applauded, though it is usually expected after a long and exhausting duel. It adds a certain mystique to the battlefield. Shrinking them down and pocketing them, however, does not. The amount of fucks that were given by Loki at this point coincidentally happened to be exactly zero.
- In the middle of the Big Badass Battle Sequence in the finale of the first book, Strange does this again, this time against Evil Sorcerer Gravemoss, already a Loki-level Necromancer before he'd got hold of the Darkhold. He comfortably holds his own, while simultaneously using Astral Projection to give Jason Todd a Rousing Speech to get him to complete his Heel–Face Turn and take up Fidelacchius, the Sword of Faith. Once that's finished, he returns to his body and utterly crushes Gravemoss.
- Harry Dresden and Carlos Ramirez get into one in the sequel with Voldemort. Who swats the former like a fly and spends the entire time toying with Dresden and rifling through his brain for useful information until Dresden gets lucky and manages to hurt him. Cue an enraged Voldemort cutting the crap and almost killing Dresden in about three seconds flat, only being prevented by Wanda's intervention.
- Prior to the above, Wanda ends up in a full on sorcerous slugging match with Cowl, an exceptionally powerful necromancer. It's very even, forcing him to sucker-punch her, and her to resort to risky tactics to disrupt his rite of ascension, whereupon he decides to cut his losses.
- In Unfinished Business, the sequel's side-story, there are a couple.
  - First, Strange eventually gets in a vicious duel with Nimue, who's amped up with the full power of Project Pegasus, making her a godlike repository of magical power. Unfortunately for her, Strange has spent eons fighting beings like her, and thanks to her successful psychological warfare, is ragingly pissed off. This results in a brutal duel which is mostly her trying to survive as he beats the pants off her. She's last seen vomiting up pieces of her soul, and vowing to a) complete her ascension beyond physical form, b) never go near him ever again.
  - Second, she gets in a slugging match with Merlin, who manages to ground out most of what she's doing/prevent the fight from levelling a continent, while also trying his best at Talking the Monster to Death. It nearly works, too.
  - Third, after the initial duel between Strange and Nimue, he ends up using Swamp Thing as a giant Magic Music amplifier and countering every single bout of chaos and horror that Nimue sets in motion, mitigating her at every turn... and also picking his music selection specifically to annoy the shit out of her.
- In the third book, The Phoenix and the Serpent, while neither character is technically a wizard, there's an absolutely mind-boggling, if brief, one between the Grandmaster a.k.a. Annihilus and Anakin Skywalker in full Mortis mode. Yes, somehow It Makes Sense in Context. It involves a great deal of Reality Warping, and the Grandmaster at one point petulantly transforming into a miniature star, which Anakin instinctively snuffs out, much to his own surprise.
Duel Nature: The most important Wizard Duel happens between Twilight Sparkle and Luna, a sparring match that quickly goes out of control when Twilight attempts to make up for the difference in strength with psychological warfare after finding out that Luna hadn't been trying at all in their fight, repeatedly pushing Luna's Berserk Button in hope of breaking her concentration.
In chapter 3 part 2 of Finally Home, a Sengoku Basara fanfic by SilfofinaDragon, sorceress Kyogoku Maria has one with Kagehime (the daughter of the late Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Nene).
Guardians, Wizards, and Kung-Fu Fighters:
- As per Jackie Chan Adventures canon, there's several magical fights between Uncle and Daolon Wong. Results vary depending on the fight.
- In Chapter 22, Nerissa decides that Wong is a threat to her plans and takes him on, leading to a clash of her Raw Magic against his Chi Magic, with both also using the Talisman powers they stole earlier in the story. It ends with a draw.
- Chapter 24 sees Wong finally make his move against Phobos, leading to a magical throwdown between them. Wong wins, only to be backstabbed by Miranda and Roberta, allowing Phobos a chance to take back the upper hand.
Half Past Adventure features several wizard duels. The first season has a showdown between Huntress Wizard and her Evil Mentor Forest Wizard, and the second season finale has a battle between newly-minted wizard Robin and original-series minor villain Ash, which Robin loses.
Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality features some of these. Friendly examples (which Quirrell disparages as a sport) include Daphne challenging Neville to a duel when he and Harry attack her mock-army — hostile examples include Quirrell vs. Auror Bahry.
In Let's bungle in the jungle, a Discworld fic by A.A. Pessimal, Ponder Stibbons finds himself facing off against a native Howondalandian witch-doctor. Fortunately for Ponder, he is being advised by his Assassin girlfriend, who is steering his hand as if he's a useful weapon. The native Wizard realises he's currently outclassed and retreats hurriedly. Ponder, on the other hand, has unleashed his inner Mustrum Ridcully, in the exultation of winning a magical duel. It takes some time to bring him back to Disc again.
The Moonstone Cup centers around Twilight Sparkle being invited to and participating in a major formal wizard tournament — in which more than just ponies compete for the eponymous prize and not everyone looks too kindly on her being chosen as the Element of Magic.
My Choices: Twisted Tales Through Time: In the past, insults and feuds among wizards were resolved using duels of magic, where the two individuals faced off and went at each other with their full magical power, sometimes resulting in grievous injuries for one or both participants. By the present day they're long since outlawed and viewed as a barbaric custom, leaving Twilight rather flat-footed when, while newly stuck in the past, she accidentally insults Starswirl V and finds herself challenged to such a duel.
The Powers of Harmony: Twilight and Trixie engage in one when they confront each other in the Hollow Shades. Thanks to the combat spells learned from her Guards, Twilight eventually overpowers Trixie, only for Trixie to retaliate thanks to the power of the Alicorn Amulet... until she realizes it's corrupting her and fights it, which causes her to pass out.
Queen of All Oni:
- Jade and Uncle engage in a Beam-O-War style one when Uncle shows up to prevent Jade from stealing the Oni masks and the Talismans from the Vault in Section 13. She manages to hold the advantage for about ten seconds before he pushes her back and defeats her.
- Jade engages in another one with Tohru during the fight in the Hall of Ice. And by this point, Jade's powers have increased to the point that the only reason she loses is because the homunculus she summoned turns on her.
Shinji and Warhammer40k had a spectacular battle between Shinji and Kaworu. True, no actual magic was involved — but Shinji's godlike expertise with psychics and AT-field manipulation was utterly awesome.
This Platinum Crown: Unicorn nobles have these when they have a dispute they cannot otherwise peacefully resolve. First a time, a place, and a type of weapon (a variety of baked good) are selected and treated with a contact sedative. Then, each unicorn attempts to cream the other with said baked good until either one hits the other, humiliating them, or each pony runs out of ammo. If both run out of cake, cupcake, pie, or what have you, then they can either decide to walk away amiably with their honor sufficiently defended, or go for a duel à outrance. In the second case, they then go at each other with every magical ability they can call up, and keep at it until one party surrenders, is too incapcaitated to continue, or dies.

Films — Animation

Aladdin: The Return of Jafar features the titular Jafar — now a genie — and the other, blue-er genie having one of these over the course of the Villain Song "You're Only Second Rate", with the two constantly changing themselves and each other into various forms, until finally, Jafar emerges victorious.
In Barbie and the Secret Door, Alexa and Malucia get into a duel with their magic wands.
The reasonably-official Discworld animated short "The Duel" is about two wizards in Unseen University fighting over a book, with increasingly powerful magics being used in the process. It doesn't end well for either of them.
The climax of Mickey's House of Villains has Mickey, assuming his identity of Sorcerer Mickey from Fantasia, challenge Jafar to one of these, to decide the fate of the House of Mouse. Mickey wins thanks to Aladdin offering Genie's lamp.
In The Sword in the Stone, Merlin and Madam Mim hold a Shapeshifter Showdown, complete with cheating and creative twisting of the rules. They actually use the words "Wizard's Duel".
"The Whizzard of Ow" begins with one of these between two Evil Sorcerers standing up on high rocks. It results in a Mutual Kill, with their equipment landing in Wile E. Coyote's lap, beginning the cartoon proper.
Subverted in Wizards. Avatar and Blackwolf plan to have one, but Avatar simply pulls out a pistol and shoots Blackwolf instead. They did play it straight in the backstory, complete with Shapeshifter Showdown; Avatar won.

Films — Live-Action

Big Trouble in Little China: The magicians Egg Shen and Lo Pan have a Beam-O-War battle in the middle of the grand melee at Lo Pan's wedding. The duel is inconclusive, though Lo Pan seems to claim victory. At the very least, he claims that Egg Shen could never beat him.
There's one in Conan the Destroyer, although it's more understated than most examples, as Conan's ally Akiro mentally/telekinetically wrestles the leader of the Horn Guardians for control of a door that's keeping the heroes and Guardians separated. No special effects beyond a little blown smoke, but very atmospheric.
Disenchanted (2022): Giselle confronts Malvina at the festival, intending to usurp her as queen of Monrolasia. The two duke it out with magic, beginning with a Beam-O-War and following with Giselle transmuting Malvina's attacks into birds and butterflies.
In the climax of Doctor Mordrid, the heroic sorcerer Mordrid and the villainous sorcerer Kabal do battle in the halls of the Museum of Natural History. Further complicated because Mordrid is only present through an astral projection, so Kabal can't assault him directly while Mordrid can do everything right back to him. This prompts Kabal to animate a Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton and have it attack random people to make Mordrid back off, but Mordrid fights fire with fire by similarly animating a Mastodon skeleton to hold off the dinosaur while he deals with Kabal.
Toward the end of Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, the sorcerer Simon faces off with Sofina, who's a Red Wizard of Thay. The scene is set up like a Showdown at High Noon, complete with a basket blowing across the square like a tumbleweed.
Happens in Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters between the evil witch queen and a good witch who happens to be Hansel's love interest. Unfortunately, the good witch is killed.
Harry Potter: Most one-on-one wizard fights qualify, although they are usually more mundane than in the books, and wands can be replaced with multi-set ray guns for all the wizardry involved, especially in the last movies, where it's basically Call of Duty, cover-based combat and all (probably to facilitate the production of the tie-in games). Dumbledore and Voldemort's battle in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is a much more traditional example than most in the movies, with moves like turning glass shards into powder and manipulating water.
In the Name of the King: Merrick duels with Gallian as a distraction for Farmer's infiltration. It pretty much involves multiple swords dueling in mid-air, while the two magi are talking. Muriella does this later with Gallian with a flame spell, providing Farmer another distraction to move in for the kill.
Marvel Cinematic Universe:
- Curiously, there aren't any proper wizards' duels in Doctor Strange (2016), given that most of the combat involves a mixture of martial arts and close-quarters spells; the nearest equivalent is the brief siege of the Sanctum Sanctorum, with the hopelessly-outmatched Doctor Strange himself attempting to fend off Kaecilius with a mixture of magic artifacts around the building, and Kaecilius retaliating by warping space in order to slow Strange down and tip him off balance.
- Hilariously subverted in Thor: Ragnarok. Strange drops Loki into another dimension for about half an hour so he has time to talk with Thor about Odin. When he finally brings Loki back, Loki is furious and quite ready to throw down... so Strange immediately teleports both Thor and Loki to Norway, avoiding a battle.
- Avengers: Infinity War:
  - Doctor Strange gets a much more conventional wizard's duel with Ebony Maw, with Strange finally getting to show off the magic he's spent the last few years mastering, and Maw using his telekinetic powers. For a time, Wong is also around to help out with an impressive bit of portal work, but eventually he's drawn away by the battle with Cull Obsidian. In the end, unfortunately, Maw wins.
  - Later in the film, Strange gets an even more impressive battle with Thanos himself. Despite the fact that Thanos is armed with four out of six Infinity Stones by this point, Strange actually manages to hold his own for a time, accomplishing such feats as sending out walls of kaleidoscopic shields, transforming an incoming singularity attack into a swarm of butterflies, and pulling off a very trippy-looking Doppelgänger Attack. Ultimately, it still ends with Thanos overwhelming him — but Strange has bought enough time for Iron Man to recover and charge back into the fray. It is later revealed that after seeing over 14 million possible futures, he threw the fight, knowing it was the only way they could win.
- Doctor Strange gets into three duels with the Scarlet Witch in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness with both present in Kamar-Taj and two more with each fighting an alternate counterpart via Dreamwalking using the Darkhold. Each duel showcases the combatant's strengths with Strange exhibiting complete mastery of his magic while Wanda has the good doctor beat in terms of raw power and persistence. Strange also has another duel with his alternate counterpart, Sinister Strange, where they essentially try to one-up one another with creative usage of magical musical notes. Mainline Strange proves to be smarter at the whole Musical Assassin thing.
Mythica: Several of these take place between good and bad wizards.
- Gojun Pye takes Szorlok, the Big Bad, to Another Dimension to fight him personally for a long time.
- Marek battles Caia-Beck, a rival female wizard.
- Later as well Marek battles Szorlok too.
The 2004 film adaptation of Night Watch has Anton and Zabulon on a rooftop... dueling with a sword and a halogen lamp instead of spells. To be fair, though, Zabulon at that point would've wiped the floor with Anton if it came down to a standard Wizard Duel.
The climax of Oz the Great and Powerful does this twice in succession with different twists:
- The first is actually a subversion, as Oz doesn't have actual magic, just cleverness and special effects. He's still able to use this to appear like he's shrugging off everything Wicked Witches West and East can throw at him and manages to scare them both off. Evanora (Wicked Witch of the East) retreats to her throne room, where...
- Glinda the Good Witch of the South is waiting for her. They proceed to have an actual Witch Duel, culminating in Glinda breaking Evanora's power and banishing her from the Emerald City.
Craven and Scarabus undergo a seemingly formal duel of wizards at the end of The Raven (1963), mostly involving waving their hands while sitting on their comfortable chairs, summoning snakes and levitating and flinging magical missiles.
Force-wielders in Star Wars frequently battle each other by using the Force to throw each other around, throw objects at each other, shoot lightning, block lightning, etc.
- In Attack of the Clones, Yoda and Dooku have a telekinesis-and-Force-Lightning wizard's duel, before fighting it out with lightsabers.
- Yoda and Palpatine's battle in Revenge of the Sith is half lightsaber-fight and half Force battle. Simultaneously, while Obi-Wan and Anakin/Darth Vader duel almost exclusively with their lightsabers, they do have a moment where they use Force Push on each other, stalemating momentarily before pushing each other bbackwards.
Tolkien's Legendarium:
- The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring:
  - Gandalf versus Saruman. Does not happen in the book, though he does battle the Witch King (to a draw) on Weathertop in Fellowship of the Ring, seen from afar by the hobbits.
  - Gandalf versus the Balrog is at least implied in the first film. DOES happen in the book in which an exhausted Gandalf states that he put a shutting-spell on the door. In the film the Balrog apparently can't follow them directly and takes another path, rather shaking things up as he does, implying that Gandalf (who does look pretty haggard by then) did something to impede him.
- Gandalf gets into one with the Witch King in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King...and loses. The only reason the Witch King doesn't kill him is The Cavalry arrives, and he leaves to deal with it. In the book, the arrival of Rohan prevents the duel from actually taking place.
- Gandalf's battle with Sauron in The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. Definitely the most epic (and most horrifying) so far.
- Galadriel vs Sauron in The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, trumps all previous examples in terms of epicness and hamminess.

Literature

The Afterward: Ladros fights and wins against a female mage during a battle the seven companions have. It isn't hard, since he's the strongest mage in Cadrium.
During the party in anachronauts: First Age, Lilith insults Emily so much she decides to wipe that smile off the Alpha Bitch's face and challenges her to a witch duel. As the rules allow each participant to put a condition on the duel, Lilith chooses Solitary Spell — each participant can only cast once. Emily's condition is Heart's Guardian; anyone who cherishes the duelists can stand by them in the fight, which means her friends can join in, while Lilith, who only has lackeys (and her sister is the arbiter, so she can't interfere) stands alone. Lilith and her fireball lose to Una's Deflector Shields and Emily's Perfectea. Directed right into Lilith's lungs. Then Emily adds insult to injury by saving her life with CPR.
Arabian Nights: Happens in The Story of the Second Dervish when a princess fights a Djinn, with the two transforming into different creatures and attacking each other, a lot like in The Sword in the Stone.
The Belgariad:
- After 3000 years, Belgarath finally gets a chance to duel the singularly loathsome wizard Ctuchik. It starts with lightning, escalates to the two of them ripping reality open to batter each other with things from outside it, and remarkably, Ctuchik manages to hold his own against the most experienced and second-most powerful (Garion being a special case) sorcerer in the series. It ends with Ctuchik accidentally annihilating himself in a panic when he sees Garion apparently about to get his hands on the Orb of Aldur - Belgarath wins, albeit barely, and the entire city of Rak Cthol is more or less levelled.
- The final showdown between Belgarath and Zedar is so emotionally charged that neither side can summon up the focus to wield any magic, so their epic confrontation, millenia in the making, degenerates into a combination shouting match and fistfight... until Belgarath does manage to focus, opens a rift into the bedrock, taking them below, and ends up sealing Zedar in the rock. In the sequel series, it's mentioned that he's still there. And still alive. Belgarath makes it entirely clear that since no one can mimic someone else's thought exactly, and that sorcery is thought given form, he's stuck like that. There's a reason that people are scared of Belgarath.
In The Black Magician Trilogy, formal mages' duels are held in an Arena with an exceptionally powerful Anti-Magic barrier, with each combatant's personal shields augmented by adjudicating mages. The setup allows the use of deadly magic but prevents it from doing anything worse than pushing a combatant to exhaustion.
The climax of Castle Hangnail is a magical duel between the protagonist, a Wicked Witch, and the villain, an Evil Sorceress. It's specifically referred to as 'the type people write songs about' (because Sorceress spells are powerful and flashy, while witches are stubborn and tricky).
Codex Alera: Pretty much everyone in the dominant human society has Elemental Powers, and they also have a formalized duel for settling disputes called the juris macto, so among the upper ranks magical duels are fairly common (magically-assisted sword duels are also popular). Subverted in a fight between two Canim ritualists in the final book, where Master Marok One Hit Kills his younger, more ambitious rival by forcibly expelling his guts from his body before he can so much as cast his first spell, without even bothering to turn around.
Counselors and Kings:
- Played with. Heroine Tzigone has both wizard magic and Anti-Magic powers, so even though she's only an apprentice she thinks she's got a duel with a Smug Snake archmage in the bag. Unfortunately, it turns out that while he can't hurt her directly, he's fully capable of, say, summoning a giant air elemental and telling it to pick her up and drop her. She winds up having to goad him into breaking the rules (which counts as a forfeit) in order to win.
- Subverted in the trilogy's climax during King Zalathorm's (Tzigone's dad) battle against his Arch-Enemy Akhlaur. Since both are archmagi of almost exactly equal power and are tied to the same Soul Jar, neither is capable of permanently harming the other — until Tzigone and fellow main protagonists Matteo and Andris destroy said Soul Jar, at which point Zalathorm sacrifices himself to kill Akhlaur for good. Zalathorm gets better; Akhlaur doesn't.
Fairly frequent in the Deryni works, and usually to the death.
- Cinhil vs. the priest who poisoned his infant son, in a spur-of-the-moment affair.
- Cinhil vs. Imre, although this one is subverted when Imre kills himself.
- Alister Cullen vs. Ariella, which ends in death for both combatants.
- Donal vs. Sief MacAthan, also spur-of-the-moment when Sief realizes he's been cuckolded by his king.
- Brion vs. the Marluk, as the climax to a battle between their armies.
- Kelson vs. Charissa, played straight (even including "throwing down the gauntlet") after a slight delay.
- Kelson/Morgan/Duncan/Arilan vs. Wencit/Lionel/Rhydon/Bran Coris, to settle Wencit's invasion of Gwynedd. However, it's subverted by "Rhydon" revealing himself to be Stefan Coram, who supports Kelson and Gwynedd in the war, and chose to rig the duel by poisoning himself, Wencit, Lionel, and Coris.
- Kelson vs. Conall, to clear defeat only. Kelson had no wish to give Conall an honourable death in combat.
- Liam-Lajos/Kelson/Matayas/Morag vs. Mahael/Teymuraz/Branyg, prompted by Mahael's attempt to Mind Rip Liam during his investiture.
Desolate Era: Ning engages in a series of magical duels called Dao Debates with more senior students as a form of hazing.
Discworld: Wizards occasionally duel, but due to the nature of magic on the disc, it is discouraged, as "There are still places where nothing grows" due to wizard duels, and the whole thing with the Dungeon Dimensions. There's a general analogy of "magic-as-nuclear-weaponry", with talk of standoffs, "First Use of magic", and mutually-assured destruction — "It's hard to tell which greasy smudge was the winner."
- In Sourcery, the Sourcerer Coin walks into the great hall and challenges the most powerful wizard in the Unseen University to a duel. Even at this point in the series when Klingon Promotion is common at the University, they use mundane traps rather than magic because of the enormous quantity of defensive spells they all have. But because Coin is about ten, they find the challenge amusing, and one of the wizards eventually decides to demonstrate some magic, casting a very difficult but harmless spell that creates a tiny garden in the palm of his hand. Coin asks why it isn't bigger, enlarges the garden so they all fit inside, dismisses it, and then obliterates his opponent instantly. The rest of the book has this on a grander scale with a second round of the Mage Wars, with various Towers of Wizardry rising, as a result of Coin's nature as Sourcerer, a literal source of raw magic, and the malign influence of his evil father, whose ghost is inhabiting his staff, believes wizards should rule the world, and is prone to Electric Torture when Coin doesn't do as he's told.
- Equal Rites features a duel between Granny Weatherwax and Archchancellor Cutangle which took the form of a Shapeshifter Showdown where the clash was more conceptual than physical (at once point Cutangle transformed into a snake and Granny Weatherwax countered by transforming into a basket). It's interrupted by the approach of abominations from the Dungeon Dimensions, to Cutangle's great relief since he had a nasty feeling he was going to lose; he compared fighting Granny to being like trying to swat a fly that keeps landing on your own nose. Notably it's one of the few times in the series that Granny disregards headology completely and engages in full-blown physical magic.
- The Witch Trials in "The Sea and Little Fishes" and A Hat Full of Sky are the "friendly competition" type. Although that's "friendly" by witch standards; as Nanny Ogg puts it in A Tourist's Guide to Lancre, "a witch is the kind of person who'd play Snap with kiddies for ha'pennies and play to win".
The Dresden Files has institutionalized this, in which one of the acceptable forms for a formal duel is a contest of "energy", meaning solely magic. Harry, though, tends to do various other interesting/crazy/insane things to win fights.
- In the first book, Storm Front, Harry's greater strength and experience gave him an advantage he needed to make up for fighting on Shadowman's home turf.
- Harry has his first formal magical duel in Changes, in which he fights the ancient vampire Arianna Ortega. She's put at a significant disadvantage by this, because as a vampire, she's unaccustomed to purely magical combat - and as a particularly ancient vampire, she's also unaccustomed to adapting. Namely, she tries a strategy - water to counter his preferred weapon of fire, vanishing into the resultant mist under a veil, and sucker-punching him with a lightning bolt - that would have worked against him not that long ago. However, it doesn't work, in part because he's now the Winter Knight and with armour courtesy of Lea. Then, to his disbelief, she tries it again. This time, he freezes the entire cloud of mist and propels it into her as countless spears of ice, before blasting her head, and most of her upper body, off with a single bolt of power..
- There are also duels of will, where two supernatural individuals attempt to exert their will over a medium. In Death Masks, Harry ends up in a duel with Red Duke Paolo Ortega where the two participants attempt to will a mote of mordite (instant kill-anything stuff from beyond the borders of reality) towards one another.
- The laws of magic the setting tend to mean that any informal duel between good and bad human practitioners is going to handicap the good one. While the evil sorceror is going to be throwing fireballs with gusto, a good-aligned wizard, like Harry, can't try and kill the other one with magic lest he break the first law (it has a self-defence clause, but that one gets very beady examination). Meaning on those few occasions Harry's up against someone who's not an acceptable target (such as in his confrontation with the Shadowman), he's forced to find another way to subdue the enemy. Harry being Harry, this occasionally involves his .44.
- It doesn't go as planned, but Harry gets challenged to one of these in one of the short stories by Darth Wannabe and his goth buddies. When they ready their wands and crystals and what not, he opts out by drawing his .44 and snarking at them.
The Elenium:
- Sephrenia and Otha get to have a go at each other: each of them ancient sorcerers and the most privileged acolytes of their respective deities. Otha has more raw power, but Sephrenia has the advantage of not being a total drooling idiot — and Sparhawk ends up cutting it short by killing Otha's patron god anyway.
- In the sequel, The Tamuli, Styric archmage Zalasta engages in two wizards' duels. The first, in Domes of Fire, is an impressive battle between him and a very powerful enemy wizard, although the effect is ruined later when he's revealed to be working for the enemy himself, and the entire battle was an illusion. At the end of the trilogy, Zalasta returns to stop Sephrenia and Vanion from getting married. Unfortunately for him, he's opposed by Sparhawk, who now wields the power of the Bhelliom, and Zalasta has absolutely no chance against him.
In Fear Street Seniors: Wicked, there is the battle between novice witch Marla Newman (with some assistance from Muggle Kenny Klein) and her murderous mentors Roxanne and Elena. Marla opens a chasm beneath her enemies, briefly sets one of her opponents on fire, and then distracts Roxanne with an illusion at a pivotal moment in the fight.
In The Goblin Emperor, the emperor always has two bodyguards with him, one of whom is a magic user. The protagonist recalls having read that the one time a magic user attacked the emperor, this lead to an epic wizard duel between the attacker and the emperor's bodyguard.
Harry Potter:
- This obviously happens multiple times, although the descriptions rarely get more picturesque than "X was battling Y" or "X was casting spells". Most duels are as simple as throwing a disabling spell at an opponent and hoping to take them out before they hit you with little in the way of counters, although Shield Charms are mentioned. This isn't entirely surprising, given that magic is almost entirely dependent on wielding a wand, meaning that while most people look down on Harry's reliance on the relatively simple Disarming Charm, it's perhaps the most Boring Yet Practical combat spell in the setting. One notable exception is Dumbledore vs. Voldemort in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, which is truly epic and arcane. Another briefer but still impressively technical example, featuring the use of multiple different disciplines of magic, is McGonagall and Flitwick vs. Snape in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. As a subversion, a dueling club is introduced in the second book, but it only lasts for one session.
- A silencing spell is used at least once in Order of the Phoenix, but the opponent is able to cast spells all the same:^note in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, it is explained that experienced wizards can do magic without talking, which Hogwarts students begin to learn. (That aforementioned Dumbledore vs. Voldemort duel, for example, is fought without a single spoken incantation.)
Haruhi Suzumiya:
- Yuki versus Ryouko. Data manipulation rather than magic, but that hardly matters from the audience's point of view.
- Parodied with Yuki versus Mikuru in "The Adventures of Mikuru Asahina Episode 00", which consists of Yuki waving a wand and producing extremely low-budget special effects.
Howl's Moving Castle has the duel fought between Howl and the Witch of the Waste just before the climax. The effects are quite dramatic: both participants battle among the clouds, causing direct upset in the weather (including the destruction of an entire ship) before they resort to shapeshifting and illusions. At the end of it all, Howl is exhausted and still intent on moving the castle in order to escape the notice of the Witch.
Inheritance Cycle:
- Given an interesting twist in the series. Since deadly spells activate instantly, if two mages were to meet in battle they would just kill each other simultaneously. However, mind-reading is a pretty standard ability for those that practice magic. Thus, when two magic-users meet they attempt to read each other's minds and discover what the opponent's spell will be so that they can neutralize it and come away from the duel alive. Defending your mind and attacking your opponent's at the same time is difficult; doing both while sword-fighting is even harder.
- In the final book, Carn and an Empire magician enter a wizard's duel. Carn manages to gain the upper hand, and the enemy magician panicked and tried to cast a death spell. Carn is incinerated, but before he was killed, he managed to get one last spell out, which drained the enemy magician of all the water in his body, causing him to crumble to dust.
The Jeremiah School has a "wizards versus prophets" duel, where the prophets of a Christian boarding school can call down fire, control the elements of nature, command animals, and even literally speak life and death. The first one in the story is with Peter Stone and the three students of Luciferian Academy, which is hardly a duel as Peter easily disarms the wizards by causing lightning to strike their wands and destroy them.
The Kalevala:
- Hot-Blooded young sorcerer Joukahainen seeks to dethrone Old Master Väinämöinen. Their magic doesn't seem to have a distinction between "insight into" and "power over", so when the old man goads the youngster into showing his stuff, the youngster launches into a recitation of agricultural facts like he was a Poor Richard's Almanack. Some of his knowledge is pretty impressive, such as the birth of iron, but the old man goads him until he boasts of having helped to plow the oceans and forge the sky. He then becomes Too Dumb to Live by not backing down when the old man goes "Funny, I would've remembered seeing you there." The battle that follows is entirely one-sided.
- This is pretty much the main form of combat, and all casting is done in the form of song. Another good example is when Lemminkäinen crashes a feast in the castle of the Master of the North. When Lemminkäinen demands a beverage, the Master conjures a river for him, but he summons a giant ox to drink it up. An exchange of insults turns into a battle of spells and counterspells: a wolf is summoned to kill the ox, a rabbit to distract the wolf, a hound to catch the rabbit, a squirrel to distract the hound, a weasel to catch the squirrel, a fox to catch the weasel, a chicken to distract the fox, a hawk to catch the chicken. It's pretty much a Shapeshifter Showdown in the form of summoning woodland animals. Finally the Master gets tired of the whole mess and challenges Lemminkäinen to a swordfight instead, only for Lemminkäinen to decapitate him with a single swing of his flaming sword.
The Kingkiller Chronicle has a few:
- Sympathy fights are garden variety voodoo. If you got someone's blood or hair and strong enough will, you can kill someone pretty horrifically. There are also indirect duels, where two Sympathists try to exert their Alars in conflict. It's regularly noted that knives are easier than either method, but tracking spells and Binder's Chills are nothing to shake a stick at.
  - However, attacking a person with Sympathy in earnest is highly illegal. "Malfeasance" has been outlawed for centuries, and it's been nearly a century since anyone's been caught doing it before the events of the book. It's a sort of internal policing amongst magicians to keep the muggles from burning them at the stake.
  - Also, there is a type of charm, called a gram, that when worn renders someone immune to direct sympathy attack. These seem to be expensive and difficult to craft, but would tend to render such fights pointless.
- Namers can have much more primeval fights — they command raw forces of nature if they know its name. There's only been one duel between two people who know Names as of the second book, and it tore up the surrounding countryside. When Kvothe related it to Elodin, the latter was seriously impressed.
The Malazan Book of the Fallen has quite a few examples. Quick Ben Delat gets into a few himself, including one where he blows away both Korbal and Broach in a matter of seconds.
Of Fire and Stars: In Zumorda, this is a common practice apparently (the people all do magic there).
Pan Tadeusz: A Story Within a Story told by one of the characters describes a wizard duel between (again, of all people) Napoleon Bonaparte and Alexander Suvorov. Apparently, it was a rather classic shapeshifter duel where each tried to up-end the other by transforming into ever stronger animals.
In Prince Khaemwase and Si-Osiri, an Egyptian tale dating to the 1st century CE, the story-within-the-story features a duel between an Egyptian wizard and an Ethiopian wizard at the royal court in Memphis. The effects are quite dramatic: starting fires, manipulating the weather, creating flying boats, turning into invisible geese, causing humongous blocks of stone to materialize in midair, et cetera.
In The Quest of the Unaligned, these are called duels of power, and have the slight quirk that the rules are enforced by the magic of the world itself, and so are physically impossible to break. As there are only three such rules (1. If the challenger has a genuine grievance against the challenged the duel cannot be refused. 2. If you are in a duel, you can't use magic on someone outside of the duel, and if you are outside of a duel you can't interfere. 3. Duels end only through death or unconsciousness), this is generally not a problem.
Reign of the Seven Spellblades: Kimberly Magic Academy is a Wizarding School for an order of Military Mages called the Gnostic Hunters, and its curriculum therefore puts significant emphasis on use of magic in combat. An entire class is devoted to teaching "sword arts", i.e. the use of blades and spells together in close combat.
- Nonlethal duels with both magic and sword are a common way of settling student conflicts, and Tullio Rossi organizes a dueling tournament in volume 2 to decide on the strongest first-year. In volume 6, Teresa Carste also gets into an argument with a classmate, Dean Travers, which they agree to settle with a duel, which devolves into a playground brawl when he hits her Relative Button.
- The climax of volume 1 pits Oliver and Nanao in a duel against fourth-year Vera Miligan, in order to rescue Katie after Miligan kidnapped her to do some exploratory surgery when she was able to get Marco the troll to talk.
- In the epilogue of volume 1, Oliver faces Professor Darius Grenville, one of his mother's murderers, in a Duel to the Death, which Oliver wins in a Single-Stroke Battle by using the Fourth Spellblade to cut Darius's hand off.
The Revolutions contains multiple examples of magical combat, but the only proper duel happens between Lord Podmore (newspaper magnate/powerful magician) and Archer (terrifying old woman), in the middle of a crowded restaurant. Much collateral damage ensues, not least because by the end of it they're actively mind controlling the patrons en masse and making them fight each other.
In the Rivers of London short story "The Home Crowd Advantage", Peter is challenged to a formal wizard duel. "No gods, no staffs, first man to stay down for the count loses and we suspend the contest if the building collapses." Peter tases the guy while counting them in. It's later established that casting any powerful spell would probably have killed him, and he probably knew this.
Schooled in Magic: Several of these occur in the books, such as Emily fighting necromancers. Some sorcerers also engage in them to settle quarrels or as entertainment for others.
In Septimus Heap, the Bottomless Whirlpool of Bleak Creek was created during a Wizard Duel long ago.
Shades of Magic: The Essen Tach are an annual international contest of Elemental Powers where participants face off in a tournament bracket. It's ostensibly well-refereed, fair, and non-lethal, but accidents do happen. Further complications arise when Kell and Lila, both Masters of All, enter under false identities.
Shannara: The battle between Allanon and The Dagda Mor in The Elfstones of Shannara is a Wizard Duel that also doubles as High-Altitude Battle, since Allanon's on a Roc, and the Dagda Mor on a Bat Out of Hell. Also, the Isle Witch versus the Morgawr in The Voyage of the Jerle Shannara, and Rimmer Dall versus everybody in the conclusion to The Heritage of Shannara.
The Silmarillion:
- The duel between Finrod (Galadriel's big brother) and Sauron, "which is renowned" (though neither character is technically a wizard, Middle-earth having a strict definition of that term, they're both powerful magic-users). It consists of the two of them singing Songs of Power at one another, and though most of The Silmarillion is prose, it goes into poetry for about a page to describe it. Unfortunately, Sauron wins "and Finrod fell before the throne".
- Melian and Sauron have a constant Wizard Duel around the borders of Thingol's realm that rather resembles No Man's Land in World War I, even including unfriendly fire or in this case unfriendly magic, which makes Beren's life almost as uncomfortable as Sauron's magic. Not to mention there are also Omnicidal Neutral spider demons skulking about in the no man's land.
Star Wars Legends:
- The Approaching Storm: Played for laughs. It isn't an actual fight, but Tolut, an obstinate, Force-sensitive local councilor, levitates a pitcher of water (with great effort) to demonstrate that the Jedi are nothing special. Luminara then effortlessly lifts several pitchers of water significantly higher than Tolut managed to and dumps them on his head. Tolut sheepishly concedes that he was wrong about how powerful Jedi are.
- The Hand of Thrawn: Vision of the Future explains the Dark Side cave on Dagobah as the result of a Force duel between Yoda and a powerful Dark Jedi, with the cave still retaining a "stain" from his death when his Dark Side power was released.
Sweet & Bitter Magic: Tamsin and Marlena, both witches (along with twin sisters) have a vicious, lengthy spell battle toward the end of the book.
Wizard duels are a frequent occurrence in the Thousand Sons trilogy, since Ahriman and many of his allies and enemies are all powerful sorcerers. These fights often see the combatants blasting each other with telekinesis and elemental powers, enveloping their weapons with fire or lightning, deflecting attacks with telekinetic shields, invading each other’s minds, having their souls leave their bodies to engage in astral combat, and more.
Tough Magic: Incuel is a Fictional Sport that involves kung-fu wizards duking it out. As it a fairly major part of the series, wizard duels abound.
Villains by Necessity: Valerie engages in one with a Good mage, but their spells keep cancelling each other until they're used up, and it ends in a draw, with them going their separate ways.
War God (Series): Wencit of Rūm engages in a number of duels with dark wizards. They tend to be rather short and one-sided affairs in which he's rarely in any real danger — he is, after all, the oldest, most experienced, and most powerful wizard alive — but his white wizard's oath requires that he give dark wizards the chance to defend themselves before he kills them.
Happens frequently in The Wheel of Time, especially at the climax of a book. Because the One Power is much better suited to causing wanton destruction than containing it, magical battles are mostly tactical, with the combatants trying to gain the element of surprise or distract their opponent enough to hit them with a deadly attack or a shield that will disable their magic. If they're very close in skill and power, they can prevent one another's attacks from forming, resulting in a duel that looks to a Muggle like two people just staring at each other.
Several magical type duels occur in The Will Be Done, special mentions including when Myssia wins five duels in a row, and the final battle between her and Praen.
The Witch of Knightcharm is set at an evil Wizarding School where the students are encouraged to fight in these in order to boost their class rank and gain extra privileges. One of the first things the protagonist sees after joining the school is a duel between the top-ranked student and a talented newbie who wants to show what she can do. The top-ranked student effortlessly kills the newbie, showing how dangerous the duels can be.
Xanth: In Castle Roogna, there's an interesting version. Given that the Magicians of the setting each only have ONE type of spell, it's hard to have a simple face-to-face duel. Instead the 'good' Roogna (can alter spells) must finish building his castle before a certain deadline, meanwhile the 'evil' Murphy (bad luck magic) tries to skew events so the castle never gets finished.

Live-Action TV

Though Kamen Rider Wizard mostly fights against Phantoms, there are times when he faces other wizards, such as Sorcerer in the movie and the White Wizard/Wiseman in the series.
When Meemy first arrives in Mahou Sentai Magiranger, he challenges the heroes to one, besting each of them in their own magical specialty, and then becomes a giant so tall that their Humongous Mecha form only reaches the tops of his feet.
Merlin (1998): Merlin has a duel with a dark fairy goddess at the end of the miniseries.
Merlin (2008): Merlin engages in a few of these with fellow sorcerers over the course of the series. He wins all of them.
Once Upon a Time (2011) only features a few direct magic battles throughout its entire run, highlights being a street battle between the Wicked Witch of the West and the Evil Queen and later Emma Swan vs. Merlin. The spinoff Once Upon a Time in Wonderland features the earliest onscreen battle between Aladdin's Jafar and the sorceress Amara.
In Spellbinder, one of these is held between Regent Correon and Spellbinder Ashka. Slightly subverted, as the Spellbinders employ advanced Lost Technology rather than magic, but since they don't really understand how any of it works, the power suits that Correon and Ashka blast each other with are treated as magical.
WandaVision: The final episode is centred around an all-out magical brawl between Wanda and Agatha Harkness, conducted while Vision and other allies are preoccupied with their own battles around Westview. Wanda has the advantage of being immensely powerful, but unfortunately lacks self-control; her opponent is much more experienced, much more manipulative, and able to absorb Wanda's magic — so every time Wanda manages to land a hit, the weaker she gets. In the end, Wanda is able to win by using Agatha's Anti-Magic rune trick against her, disabling her enemy's powers and allowing her to take back all the power that was stolen.
The Witcher: Blood Origin: Good mages Zacaré and Syndril take on the Evil Sorcerer Balor in Episode 4.
In Wizards of Waverly Place, this is how control of the family wizarding power is resolved; the child who wins the Family Wizard Competition becomes a full wizard and gains complete powers, while the losers are Brought Down to Normal. In The Movie, Alex and Justin are forced to execute the duel significantly earlier than expected to Set Right What Once Went Wrong. In the series proper, no actual duel occurs at the end of the series, but the competition instead involves a series of three different challenges which include multiple Secret Tests of Character.

Music

Steeleye Span performed an old English ballad, "The Two Magicians", in which a wizard and a witch engage in a shape-shifting battle involving continual transformation into, er, male and female archetypes, in a homage to the duel between Granny Weatherwax and the wizard Cutangle in Equal Rites (above). In a funny sort of way, both parties can eventually claim, by the last verse, to have "won"....
The American stoner/sludge metal band Weedeater's most popular (and aptly titled) song "Wizard Fight".

Myths & Religion

The Book of Exodus has the "magical competition of one-up-man-ship" variation with Aaron dueling against the Pharaoh by turning his Magic Staff into a snake; the Pharaoh sends his own sorcerers to turn their staves into snakes, but Aaron's snake swallows the Pharaoh's snakes. The Ten Plagues incident also involves Moses dueling against Egyptian sorcerers, but it only lasts until the plague of lice, when the Egyptian magicians try to mimic the plague but are unable to.
In Buddhist myth, Tibetan yogi Milarepa is told by a dakini spirit that fellow master Dampa Sangye is coming. In order to test Sangye's spiritual awareness, Milarepa uses his power to turn into a clump of flowers, but Sangye sees through it and kicks him, and further reveals that, in fact, he had a meeting with spirits last night and all together cursed Milarepa to teach him a lesson for his arrogance. Milarepa finally acknowledges his inferiority and praises him, and is initiated in Sangye's wisdom.

Pinball

Magic Girl is ultimately about helping the titular protagonist challenge a Big Bad Wizard Classic for possession of the Wizard Ball.
Seawitch depicts a battle between two Sea Monster-riding witches.
This is the premise of Sorcerer (1985), which has the player challenging an Evil Sorcerer.

Tabletop Games

Ars Magica: Certamen is a formal contest of wizardly skill that channels the magi's arts in flashy but non-lethal forms, usually ending in exhaustion at worst. It's the preferred method in the Order of Hermes for settling disputes that have gone beyond just words, generally including most legal disputes. It's designed as a less-violent alternative to Wizard's War, where wizards can kill each other without legal repercussions.
Blood Bowl: The background plays this trope for laughs. The reason each team is only allowed one wizard on their coaching staff, who is only allowed to cast one specially pre-approved spell during the game, is because wizard Blood Bowl fans supporting rival teams tend to get so out of hand in their excitement that before this ruling was introduced a game of Blood Bowl could often degenerate into a wizard's duel. Which is not what the other fans turned up to watch.
The indie game Brawl Arcane 28 is so much about this that the list of required miniatures is essentially one wizard and their summoned minions.
Dungeon Crawl Classics has an adventure module dedicated to this. In Enter the Dagon, one of the party members (if they are a magic user), is invited to take part in a legendary tournament where wizards duel each other until only one is left alive. Between duels, the other party members work to sabotage the other contestants.
Dungeons & Dragons:
- Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition: The High-Level Campaigns supplement has alternate rules for staging a wizard's duel, mostly to avert the standard rules' tendency for the wizard who'd won initiative to blow the other duelist away in a single round. The combatants generate a shared Mental World with special rules for turn-by-turn advantage and interactions between different types of magic, and may dictate the consequences for defeat.
- Mystara: The Dawn of the Emperors boxed set includes an Alphatian spell called Duel-Shield. It traps two wizards in an impenetrable force-field sphere, allowing them to battle each other to (always) the death, without risk to bystanders or property. Alphatian law forbids all dueling except inside a duel-shield, so wizards there only risk it if they really, really hate each other.
- Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition:
  - Preventing the other wizard from casting is a valid tactic. If he can't speak, he can't use spells with a verbal component (this can be overcome with the metamagic feat Silent Spell), and immobilizing his hands will block him from casting spells with a somatic component (the counter is Still Spell).
  - Complete Arcane has rules for formalized magical duels that don't end in one of the participants being carried out of the ring in a bucket... unless you take advantage of the rules for cheating, anyway. They follow protocols for preparing defensive spells and, in the case of non-lethal duels, regulate which types of magic can be used.
- Forgotten Realms likewise allows for "mageduel" within a magically enclosed area, although here the same magic also keeps them nonlethal. Given and policed by local gods of magic, so they and the participants get to show off without the counterproductive parts where wizards get killed and viewers are too busy running away to enjoy the show. Of course, wizards still duke it out "for real" all the time, formally or spontaneously.
The entire conceit of Epic Spell Wars of the Battle Wizards is assembling spells from various ludicrously named component cards and killing your rival wizards with them. For a very loose definition of the word "wizard".
Ironclaw: Thaumaturgists seem designed for this, their apprentice spells comprise a magic Deflector Shield and two universal Counterspells, one of which is Silence, and their Journeyman spells include defenses that redirect spells back at their caster. But they have no directly damaging spells so many learn other forms of magic such as Elementalism, or melee combat in the Witch Finder's case.
Mage: The Ascension features the rite of Certamen, a tradition by which two wizards engage in a duel to resolve their problems. It converts their magic into a non-lethal form that still lets them throw flashy effects at each other to the point of exhaustion.
Mage: The Awakening carries on the tradition as the Duel Arcane, wherein each participant chooses one Arcana to serve as sword, and another to serve as shield. The Duel takes place in a magically created arena so that their sword and shield Arcana manifest as flashy illusions to attack and defend with. Most Duels will have the combatants attack one another's willpower first and eventually moving on to actual physical damage. The Duel Arcane is the preferred method of resolving disputes in mage society, since it is quick, has no collateral damage, and will probably leave no lasting harm on participants (duels to the death are rare, if they are even legal). Occasionally, mages engage in less traditional duels.
The very purpose of Magic: The Gathering is to simulate a Wizard Duel. Depicted and encouraged in Arcane Melee by making spells easier to cast for everyone.
Flavor text: Debates between wizards are never purely academic.
Magi-Nation is another collectible card game with the same concept as Magic: The Gathering, with the same beast-summoning spell-hurling gameplay.
Pathfinder:
- Spell duels are actually pretty rare, as wizards would prefer not to waste a bunch of spell slots on one enemy. As a result, spellcaster conflicts usually consist of exactly as many "save-or-die" spells needed to take one side out of the picture rather than showy explosions and lightning bolts. Technically supported at the same time, as the game provides rules for formalized spellcasting duels. These rules expand on the counterspell system, making it easier to help prevent duels from ending in a single round and making them more dynamic as casters decide which spells to spend slots on countering and which to let land.
- The sourcebook Occult Adventures introduces Psychic duels that draw the contestants into a shared Mental World, manifesting mental constructs to defend themselves and attack each other. Despite the abstract arena, the damage caused is real.
Shadowrun: In the supplement State of the Art 2063, some magicians in the Sixth World are stated to participate in formal magical duels with their opponents. One of the major magical groups, the Illuminates of the New Dawn, has a set of rules similar to the old rules for dueling with weapons. They include the challenged party being allowed to determine the terms of the duel, the dueling area being warded to prevent the spells from affecting bystanders, and the presence of seconds and a judge to keep things orderly. The opposing magicians are sworn to accept the outcome of the duel, such as resolving the dispute between them.
Warhammer has these in spades, both in the background and on the tabletop.
- The spellcasting system in the game means that your wizards are essentially in a constant duel with your opponent's wizards throughout the battle, with his wizards attempting to thwart and dispel the spells of your side and vice-versa (although a lot of the damage tends to accrue to the army the wizard is accompanying rather than necessarily the wizard himself). The 2011 Storm of Magic supplement takes this up to eleven by introducing a range of super-powerful spells and cantrips for more direct wizard-to-wizard duelling and scenarios which are won by occupying magical node points with your wizards and denying them to the opponent.
- Magical duels to the death are almost innumerable in the background books, but the most prominent example of the (usually) non-lethal kind is the octannual ritual duel between senior Imperial College Wizards for the honour of becoming the Supreme Patriarch of all the magical colleges for the next eight years. The goal is to be the first wizard to grasp the Patriarch's staff of office at the centre of the ritual duelling chamber.
Warhammer: Age of Sigmar:
- The "Broken Realms" campaign includes a suitably epic one between two mage-gods: Teclis, the god of knowledge and magic vs Nagash, the god of death and necromancy. Teclis wins with outside interference.
- From a more mechanical standpoint, wizard duels occur pretty frequently on the tabletop, as enemy wizards attempt to cast their own spells while unbinding the spells of their opponents. of course, these duels often end with someone else interfering and killing the wizard, but them's the breaks.
Yu-Gi-Oh!: Considering that Duel Monsters was originally a Bland-Name Product for Magic: The Gathering, it's unsurprising that it's very similar to the earlier game. It would take a good number of releases before it became a truly different game.

Video Games

While frowned upon by the faculty of Academagia, it is possible to duel other students. There are even specialized dueling actions, skills, and spells.
Using Clarke's Third Law with Lost Technology, Assassin's Creed does this on a number of occasions:
- In the first game, Altaïr fights Al Mualim at the very end, countering his opponent's use of the Apple of Eden to summon the ghosts of his first nine targets and then his Doppelgänger Attack with Aura Vision, using it to see through the illusions.
- In Assassin's Creed II, Ezio and Rodrigo Borgia both use their respective Pieces of Eden to fight each other at the end of the game, with Ezio in particular imitating Al Mualim's Doppelgänger Attack from the first game.
- In the Assassin's Creed III DLC The Tyranny of King Washington, both Connor and Washington use more overtly magic-like abilities — Washington's are still derived from an Apple of Eden like most of the other "magic" throughout the series, but Connor's is never given a realistic explanation and is explicitly related to spirit animals that he encounters.
Baldur's Gate II:
- Irenicus in has a few cutscenes where he combines this with a Curb-Stomp Battle, dispatching multiple enemy wizards in a manner of seconds. There are also several spells usable in game that are specifically designed for wizard duels, most notably the ones that protect the user from spells and the ones used to remove those.
- There is also a part in the tavern in the Drow City where your party mage can participate in such fights. Finally, Edwin apparently tried this with Elminster in the epilogue, but lost and got turned into Edwina again.
In Clive Barker's Undying, the battle against Keisinger in Oneiros. Both of you have an identical and sizable array of spells (with the exception of flight, yours is limited, his isn't,) which you've painstakingly acquired through the length of the game, you're both flying around at the top of a ziggurat floating in his insane pocket dimension, ducking behind columns, using shield counter-spells and charging up blasts of lightning and fireballs to cast at each other with distinct gestures for each hand in first-person.
In The Daily Spell, veteran magical scribe Andrea Argent shocks onlookers by reviving the centuries-dead tradition of magic duels, challenging mundane arcanist Cat Keller to a familiaric duel after Keller and Argent's ex-apprentice Thalia Smythe go public about collaborating together. It's a power play: as a mere arcanist, Keller has zero familiars of her own to Argent's three. Argent wins the duel handily, but by summoning a familiar before the crowd, Keller earns other mundane arcanists a lot of respect.
As the vast majority of characters on Chaos's side in Dissidia Final Fantasy specialize in magic, and Terra is the only warrior of Cosmos that does, many of her battles turn into this. Several of her comrades also use magic, but she's the only one who does so exclusively. Her cutscene battles with Ultimecia and Kefka also sorta count.
Dragon Age:
- In the Dragon Age II DLC Legacy, a mage Hawke will briefly engage in a magical duel with Corypheus before killing him, though not completely.
- Dragon Age: Inquisition has one between Magister Erimond and Warden-Commander Clarel. It's pretty one-sided, as she brushes aside everything he throws at her and smacks him around like a rag-doll. It only ends when Erimond brings in the Red Lyrium Dragon.
The Elder Scrolls:
- In Morrowind, Mages Guild Archmage Trebonius Artorius is a talented Battlemage, but proved so hopelessly incompetent at managing Guild affairs that his mainland superiors Kicked him Upstairs to run the Guild branch in the most backwater district in the Empire where he could do the least amount of damage. While there is a peaceful way to claim his title, it leaves you co-head of the Guild with Trebonius, which is obviously less desirable. More likely, you'll challenge him to a duel to the death in one of these. Given that, unlike future games in the series, factions in Morrowind have attribute and skill requirements for advancement, you will both likely be quite magically skilled for said duel.
- In Skyrim, if your magic skills are at a high enough level, you may encounter a "challenger" in your travels who wishes to duel you with magic. This rarely plays out straight, though, seeing as how there's nothing stopping the player from simply FUS RO DAHing him over the castle walls and watching him plummet to his death, or simply drawing your huge greatsword and cleaving him in twain the second the duel begins. And that's if the guards don't intervene first: apparently, no-one told the challenger that the Nords don't like the idea of someone flinging fireballs around in the castle walls. (This encounter becomes particularly hilarious if you happen to be the Archmage of the College of Winterhold, a position you didn't claim by being a magical weakling.^note It also gets funnier if you drain his magicka with a load of lightning magic or magicka poison. He whips out a tiny dagger and starts wailing on you with it, and then when you pull out your own weapon and do the same, he starts bitching that it's supposed to be a magic duel, fought with magic).
Eternal Darkness pits a supernatural spellcasting monster called a Black Guardian against Peter Jacob, who is in fact a normal human who realized his capacity for magic only about an hour before the fact.
Fire Emblem:
- Duels between sages tend to not be all that impressive, as they have extremely high magical resistance. However, in a battle between a sage and a physical unit..... Except in the 4th game where offensive magical units have generally mediocre magic defense but can use extremely powerful magic or have skills making their power ridiculously high when activated (Tiltyu's wrath ability can double her 40ish power, and her daughter can double 50ish power on characters with a maximum of 30 resistance).
- There also is the "Magic Triangle" of Light Magic beating Dark Magic, and Dark Magic beating Anima Magic, which beats Light Magic.
Heroine's Quest ends with one against the Big Bad Egther, if you're playing as the sorceress. Earlier in the game, you can face Magic Knight Skrymir in a duel in a mindscape, as well as regular svartalfar in a random encounter.
Mass Effect 2:
- One of the later loyalty missions features Justicar Samara and her daughter Morinth engaging in a biotic duel to the death. However, though Samara is the more experienced of the two, Morinth is equal to her in terms of sheer power; as such, after blasting each other against walls and battering each other with furniture, they end up caught in a Beam-O-War that can only be resolved by Shepard intervening, possibly killing Samara in the process.
- If you let him, Niftu Cal tries to engage the mercenary Captain Wasea in one of these. Unfortunately, since Niftu Cal is a) a Volus merchant with absolutely no combat experience pitted against an asari commando^note, and b) tanked up on drugs that have him believing that he's a "biotic god", the confrontation is hopelessly one-sided: he fires one biotic blast the size of a pea that fizzles just in front of Wasea's nose, and promptly gets imploded by Wasea's riposte.
During the battle in West Harbor at the beginning of Neverwinter Nights 2, the town's resident wizard Tarmas engages the githyanki mage leading the attack in a rather spectacular wizard duel. His apprentice Amie tries to help her master, but the githyanki basically rolls his eyes and one-shots her with a flame arrow spell.
In Plants vs. Zombies 2: It's About Time, the Witch Hazel (which permanently turns zombies into puff-shrooms) targets and prioritizes transforming Wizard Zombies (which temporarily turns plants into useless sheep until he's killed). According to Word of God, she's the arch-nemesis of Wizard Zombie.
In Puyo Puyo, Puyo matches in-universe amount to this, according to ports of the first arcade game; the spell Owanimo is used to convert four similarly-colored creatures (such as Puyo) into energy that attacks the opponent. Probably best not to think too hard about how an Un-Sorcerer like Rulue can not only play the game, but be pretty good at it.
If you're playing as a Magic User in Quest for Glory III, you get to engage in one of these against the shaman of the Leopardmen. It ends badly when the shaman, enraged at being outclassed, summons a demon to possess him. You can either fight him normally or use a Dispel potion to cancel the possession, which makes a bigger impression with the Leopardmen, as well as winning the shaman's thanks for saving him from his impulsiveness.
Used as the penultimate boss fight in Blue's game in SaGa Frontier. The winner absorbs the loser's magic and personality, giving them the ability to master opposing schools of magic. During the battle, every other turn, a different type of magic becomes more powerful.
The Secret World features one of these at the very end of "Sympathy For The Devil," the second dungeon of the Hell Dimensions arc. Here, Eblis Dominus Inferni in Profondis decides to end the demonic revolution that's been undermining his rule over Hell by taking out the ringleader, the Oxford magician Theodore Wicker. While this might seem hideously once-sided at first, it turns out that Wicker is a lot more resilient than he looks: not only is he the single greatest practitioner of portal magic seen in this Age, but the rituals that allow him to survive the Hell dimensions have left him effectively immortal, allowing him millennia to hone his affinity for combat magic. With both combatants effectively too evenly matched, they end up getting stuck in a Beam-O-War, forcing them to finish the battle through proxies: Eblis calls in an Oni hit squad, while Wicker calls upon the players to defend him.
Naturally, with characters like Ganondorf, Ness, Palutena or Robin, Super Smash Bros. has a lot of these. Virtually every character can hurl some kind of spell or use some kind of psychic powers.
Touhou Project: The very basis of Spellcard Duels in Gensokyo is to resolve conflict amongst the land's residents in a nonlethal way, with magic missiles/bullets — lots of them.
- It can be made lethal too, as happened in extra stage of Touhou Eiyashou ~ Imperishable Night with Fujiwara no Mokou, who is immortal. The characters reason that, since she can't die, there's no point in holding their magic back. Mokou herself endorses this; being supremely powerful and immune to both death and injury, she reasons that all she has left to train is her pain endurance.
- Similarly, fairies are presumably killed when shot, but like the above, re-spawn immediately if killed. In Yousei Daisensou ~ Touhou Sangetsusei, where the only playable character is the fairy Cirno, this is represented by the usual Lives counter being replaced by a Motivation bar. You have as many lives as you could ever need; you only lose when Cirno stops having fun and wants to stop.
- In the even more ancient days of Gensokyo, there was no regulation for Spellcard Duels. It's highly implied that the regulation is enforced to prevent the (relatively) already cramped sealed-world from collapsing entirely.
Wizard101: How else would you fight things?

Visual Novels

The wizards' duels in The Book of Gray Magic lean heavily on the multiple types of magic in that world and the teamwork between users of opposed magical styles. The climactic duel in the first chapter, Brilliant Shadows, ends tragically, with multiple deaths on both sides of the conflict.
Fate/stay night:
- Caster and Rin have a duel. Both admit that it's kinda ridiculous because a schoolgirl is no match for an ancient sorceress, but Rin has an ace up her sleeve: she's also trained in hand-to-hand combat, so the duel is just a ruse for Rin to get close enough to tear Caster apart.
- The Holy Grail War is an ancient ritual where 7 mages summon Servants and fight to the death until one Master and Servant pair is left standing. The winner has their desires granted by the Grail.
Umineko: When They Cry has Beatrice vs Virgilia and Battler vs Beatrice, which, while framed as "debates", happen to be the bloodiest, most spectacular debates the world has ever seen. End of the Golden Witch has similar debates, albeit with laser scythes and the summoning of angels to prove that one's points have "greater merit". It doesn't even have to be a real debate, either: bickering over candy is enough of an excuse to break out all the spectacular spells and summons in Umineko.

Web Animation

DEATH BATTLE!, being a show that pit two characters with similarities against each other, has done this multiple times.
- "Raven VS Twilight Sparkle" pits two powerful emotion-fueled mages^notevoiced by Tara Strong and their repertoire of spells against each other.
- Likewise, "Doctor Strange VS Doctor Fate" pits two powerful practitioners of magic from rival comic companies against each other.
- "Steven Universe VS Star Butterfly" pits two young teens with magic or magic-like powers against each other.
RWBY:
- In the very first episode, Glynda Goodwitch tries to prevent Roman Torchwick's plane from escaping, but ends up engaging in a magic battle against the pilot, Cinder Fall. What ensues is a duel where Glynda controls the weather and transforms the ensuing debris into large objects, only to be countered by Cinder's spontaneous outbursts of fire.
- "The Lost Fable" has the largely offscreen battle between Salem and Ozma that triggers their Forever War and seems to consist mostly of them throwing raw magic at each other. It winds up destroying the castle they're in, killing their four daughters, and both combatants dying but coming back.

Webcomics

El Goonish Shive has Terra vs. Magus match, which seems to be more a contest of skill, if rather Hot-Blooded, than genuine attempt to fry each other. And a fight here (some spoilers).
Nixvir: At the climax of chapter XXVI, the Faerie Redmane and Randalf del Rey get into one. It appears to be the standard "passing lightning bolts and magic stars back and forth" kind, although it leaves the Faerie Redmane significantly weakened. However, this doesn't stop her trying to take out Erik as well.
The Order of the Stick:
- In the prequel book, Start of Darkness, we get to see the epic battle between Xykon and Dorukan. It mostly consists of Xykon casting "Energy Drain" over and over until Dorukan is helpless.
- Also in Start of Darkness, the battle between Xykon and Fyron (Eugene's teacher); rather than winning through magic, Xykon feigned defeat, then bashed in Fyron's head when the wizard's guard was down.
- Vaarsuvius versus Zz'dtri of the Linear Guild. It isn't a particularly impressive battle, though, as Zz'dtri is able to effortlessly counter anything V could throw at him. Except Summon Lawyers.
- Vaarsuvius and Zz'dtri go at it again in the Empire of Blood arc, but this time V gets the upper hand by dominating the Linear Guild's kobold rogue and using him to fight Zz'dtri.
- The duel between Redcloak and the High Priest of Azure City. With lots of special effects.
- By contrast, V and Xykon threw down with a rather higher special effects budget. Arcanists get all the perks...
- Durkon vs. Malack, reclaiming the dignity of divine spellcasters everywhere.
- The appropriately-named "Caster Fight!" showcases a duel between V and the psion Laurin. V wins by pointing out that Laurin's expended a lot of power today already, while V has a ton of spells left, which prompts her to just teleport away. Though in this case, V had been told beforehand how Laurin preferred to fight — bring out the big guns as early and often as possible — and deliberately conserved their power, in addition to forcing Laurin before the battle to cast Dimension Door a number of times in pursuit of the Order.
The climactic duel in Schwarz Kreuz, which technically is a vampire duel, but full of illusions, turning into mist and Voluntary Shapeshifting.
In Sneaky Goblins, Sonya and Murdock fight over whether she gets to use his seeing-orb on this page and the next.
Unsounded:
- In his youth, Duane was deeply involved in Alderode's dueling culture, partially because he was not from a wealthy family and is an excellent wright with a mutation that gives him an edge in spellcasting and the wealthy can pay someone else to duel for them.
- Duane and Quigley duel each other when they first meet, with Duane winning and then dumping Quigley on the ground and telling him to stay down. Sette also steals Quigley's battle pymaric "Swarm" during the duel when it started giving him an edge over Duane.
- Quigley fights two Ethelmik wrights using spellcasting the night the Deadly Nevergreen is destroyed. He manages to kill both of them, one being blown up by his own backfiring spell when Quigley blocks his attack.
Wizard Duels are a staple of The Wotch, and tend to be marked by high mobility. Those wizards aren't about to stand and get spells hurled at them — they move.

Websites

The Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids: At the climax of the Grand Finale Story Arc The Fall of the Consistency Palatium, the series' two recurring Evil Sorcerer villains, Emperor Steer and Mandragora, ended up fighting over who would get to reap the rewards of the latter's masterplan and ascend to Godhood. The fight starts out as a classic Wizard's Duel, with Steer employing brute attacks of bolts of energy, while Mandragora draw glowing sigils in the air as protections and counters; however, when it becomes apparent their magics are evenly matched, the fight soon devolves into a schoolyard scuffle with kicks to the shins and even, at one point, Steer biting Mandragora's nose.

Web Videos

1 For All: Nixie fights a wizard in "Wizard vs Sorcerer" and she defeats him with her sorcerer's spells.
Critical Role:
- The first campaign features many prominent battles where the group's bard must use all his magic to keep an enemy wizard from annihilating the party with a massive Area of Effect spell. Amusingly, an early episode features the bard engaging in such a duel with the party's sorcerer, as they keep staling Anti-Magic effects against each other in the midst of bickering.
- In the final episode of the second campaign, the party wizard's former master comes to kill him and the group, along with the wizard's former friends. The wizard's master uses magic items to stop time, uses magic rings to block magical attacks, casts an Invincibility spell on himself, and has his fellow students counter the wizard's own spells. The group has to combine all their magical knowledge and prowess to identify the spells the wizard's master is using and dispel them one at a time before they can defeat him.
- The seven main characters of the third campaign are tasked with restraining a single wizard before they can teleport away and it takes all their magic just to keep her occupied. They try to grab her telekinetically only for her to plant herself to the ground, trap her in cages of force only for her to dismiss the spell, try to tie her hands down with vines to keep her from casting only for her to switch hands, and finally, they have to drain all magic from the room to let their barbarian physically hold her down without getting enchanted.

Western Animation

The Adventure Time episode "Wizard Battle" portrays an annual tournament where many of Ooo's greatest wizards gather to prove whose magic is the strongest, and to get a kiss from Princess Bubblegum.
Avatar: The Last Airbender:
- Agni Kai, a duel between two firebenders, is a formalized version of this in the Fire Nation. Three major examples involve Zuko. The first one was against his father, Fire Lord Ozai, as punishment for speaking out of turn in a strategy meeting. The second was against Zhao with the prince's pride and honor on the line. The last was against his sister Azula, with the title of Fire Lord on the line.
- Most fights between benders qualify, but also standing out are Katara's duel with Pakku and her fight with Hama.
- The most extreme example would be Aang Vs. Fire Lord Ozai in the finale. During the duel, Aang manages to finally unlock the Avatar State, giving each gesture an absolutely titanic effect — for example, clenching his fist crushes boulders to a hundredth of their size.
Parodied in Fanboy and Chum Chum's first episode "Wizboy" when Fanboy, still under the belief Kyle is a pretend wizard, "challenges" him to a "wizard-off" after school, which he reluctantly goes along with to prove he is an actual wizard expose Fanboy as the fake. He ends up "winning" when Kyle gets taken away by the griffon Fanboy unknowingly summoned at lunch prior.
In The Legend of Korra, the Sequel Series to Avatar: The Last Airbender above, "pro bending" is a team version popular as a spectator sport.
The Mighty Nein: "The Zadash Job" sees Trent Ikithon and the Volstrucker trying to defend the Beacon from Essek Thelyss and his Kryn strike team, who came to take it back. Things quickly become so dangerous the Mighty Nein have to flee into the sewers as neither side have any regard for collateral damage, with Trent throwing around arcane fire and lightning, and Essek creating gravity distortions and even summoning a black hole.
My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
- In "A Canterlot Wedding – Part 2", Princess Celestia faces off against Queen Chrysalis in a magical duel that, for bonus points, overlaps nicely with Projectile Spells. To everyone's surprise, including her own, Chrysalis had absorbed so much power from consuming the love shared between Princess Cadance and Shining Armor that she was able to walk away the victor.
- The later episode "Magic Duel" features the "I can do it better" variant between Twilight Sparkle and Trixie. The first time Trixie uses an Amplifier Artifact to perform an age spell which Twilight can't do and she is forcefully removed from Ponyville. She returns for a rematch and uses a false amulet and smoke and mirrors to fake three even more powerful spells in order to get Trixie to steal the powerless amulet and removing her real one.
- In the legend told by Rarity in "Campfire Tales", Sable Spirit and Mistmane battle by using powerful unicorn magic. Both make plants grow to surround the opponent like a cocoon, and summon dragon spirits to clash against each other.
The Owl House:
- The first season features three duels. The first one is between Luz and Amity, but really just consists of the former running away from the latter's abominations while Eda's traps trigger. Then there are the two duels between the Clawthorne sisters, which have stunning animation and incredibly creative usage of magic on both sides.
- The second season features an intense duel between teen prodigies Amity and Hunter, with extensive uses of Abomination magic and teleport attacks, respectively.
- Enforced in the Grand Finale when Fake Amity challenges Luz to a "Witch's Battle" instead of a Witch's Duel as it is normally called. This allows Luz to see through the Collector's illusion and pinpoint that's not really Amity.
Papa Smurf has a few duels with wizards in The Smurfs (1981), one of them being with Hotap in "Papa's Family Album", another being with the druid leader in "The Smurfs' Time Capsule".
Subverted in the South Park episode "Cartman's Incredible Gift", in which Cartman pretends to be a psychic detective. At one point, he is forced to have a "psychic battle" with a group of rival psychic detectives, but because both Cartman and the detectives are just pretending to be psychic and don't have any real powers, the "battle" consists of them shouting sound effects and waving their hands at each other while looking constipated, before declaring it a draw.
Even Star Trek: The Animated Series gets into the act with "The Magicks of Megas-Tu", an episode of the somewhat-obscure animated season which aired in 1972. The episode involves an alternate universe where magic works, and Kirk is forced into a formal magical duel with one of the Megans.
The Transformers: One of these happens in the third season when some Autobots pursue a fugitive into another, magical dimension.
The Uncle Grandpa episode "Tiger Trails" starts In Medias Res with Uncle Grandpa and a boy named Caleb in a "wizard battle" with an evil wizard named Evil Wizard.

Wizard Duel
(aka: Wizards Duel)

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Wizard Duel (aka: Wizards Duel) 12 Following

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Mickey vs. Jafar

Alternative Title(s): Wizards Duel, Magic Duel

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Mickey vs. Jafar

Wizard Duel
(aka: Wizards Duel)

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