Let me get it out early. If you really like Harry Potter and are a fan of board games, you should enjoy Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle. Notice I said “really like Harry Potter.” If you’re the person who has read the books multiple times and can quote the movies, this is for you. Unfortunately, the actual game design has some flaws serious enough to not recommend it to everybody. I like Hogwarts Battle because I am a big Harry Potter fan. While I see the flaws, I am willing to overlook them.
Hogwarts Battle is a “cooperative deck-building game.” Playing as Harry, Hermoine, Ron, or Neville, players work together to defeat all the iconic villains from the stories. Players start with a small collection of cards and build their decks with more powerful cards throughout the game while fending off Dark Arts attacks. One of the nicer aspects is the division of the game into seven games, one for each book. Game one is incredibly easy while game seven is incredibly difficult. Enemy strength and the complexity of game mechanics rises as players progress through the games.
The game oozes theme. It is obvious the designers knew their source material. This is why the game is so much fun for Harry Potter fans. The Alohomora spell card earns the caster coins to buy more spells. This is clever because Alohomora is the spell used to open locks; like on a safe. The character ally cards are great. Each ally’s ability reflects the character’s personality. Viktor Krum adds his power to the player character while the Weasleys show their generosity by giving coins to all players. Especially at the lower levels, it is always a good time to recruit your favorite characters. The character artwork all comes from the films.
The game-play however is not as well done. There are two major deck-building problems with the game. First, the Hogwarts Cards market to buy spells, allies, or helpful items does not reset. The only way new cards come into the market is when a bought card is being replaced. This problem is especially bad in the early game when playing on higher difficulties. To play the higher difficulties you combine all the Hogwarts Cards from previous games. What might happen is on turn one or two of a level six game, the entire market will be mostly powerful but expensive level five and six cards. Unfortunately in the early game, it is hard to generate the necessary income for such expensive cards because you must discard all your unused coins at the end of the turn. The second major problem builds off the first. There is no way in the base game to evict cards from your deck. Even if it is the end-game and everyone is face off against Voldemort for the future of Hogwarts, you will end up drawing the basic Alohomora card from the very first turn and earning a wimpy one coin even though your deck has cards that can earn three coins and restore health. As a deck-builder, Hogwarts Battle falls flat.
The good news for Harry Potter fans who want better mechanics is the game is good enough that many people on BGG have developed house rules and variants to fix some of the problems. The designers also worked on some fixes in the two expansions. Even without the fixes, the vanilla game is still fun played with HP fans.
The Keasy Depot 