In a missed opportunity for a double-colon game title, The Op recently released the second expansion to the Hogwarts Battle franchise, originally released in 2016. I referenced this game in my review of their House Cup worker placement game as a better example of using this theme and art assets to further gameplay. As noted in that review, my wife and I are big fans of the Harry Potter books, movies, and butterbeer. I want to tell you about how this expansion adds to this game, but let me give you an overview of the original since it has not been reviewed on this site.
Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle is a cooperative deckbuilder game in which you start the game playing one of the main characters from the movies: Harry Potter, Hermione Granger, Ron Weasley, or Neville Longbottom. The game play proceeds through the stories one at a time, so you start the game as 11 year old tween wizards facing off against bullies like Draco Malfoy and (spoiler alert) Voldemort stooges like Professor Quirrell. You begin each turn with a Dark Event that can damage or disrupt your hero from the plot of the 1st book and then potentially an attack from one of the villains you are trying to defeat. You use your magic and influence to fight back against the villains and acquire more spells, items, and allies while they try to overwhelm your current location with their malign influence. Each time you successfully complete a game, you get to open a new box that has story elements from the next book in the series – new villains, new locations, new dark events, new cards to recruit, and often new rules, game elements, and powers. Eventually Voldemort shows up midway through the cycle and you have to battle more powerful versions of He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named as the final boss of those later games.
The game that it reminds me most of is Marvel Legendary. Just from the base game, Legendary is more versatile and replayable with multiple combinations of heroes, villains, and bosses that has gone nearly infinite by adding multiple expansions over the years. Hogwarts Battle is a simpler version of this with less replayability: replaying a book’s challenges will vary primarily in the order of the dark events and villains (which can matter in later games as you face more than one villain at a time) and the order of the spells/items/allies cards that come out each game. This bit of luck can push the game towards a win or a loss, but the overall game at each level is about the same. New players will find some of the early games challenging, but seasoned deck builders will understand how to cooperate in order to heal and buff each other and concentrate fire on a troublesome villain (I’m looking at you Lucious Malfoy).
This new Charms and Potions expansion is not the first (that distinction belongs to the creature heavy Book of Monsters) but this expansion levels up the complexity of this game in ways that seasoned gamers will find manageable and exciting. First off, the game introduces the option for a 5th player and a new character, Ginny Weasley. Also, if you are playing with less than 5 players, the unused characters have ally cards that can be shuffled into the main deck. Next, the games are themed around a series of side encounters that were important, but not part of the main story line and therefore not represented in the chapters from the main game. These encounters must be defeated by achieving some separate goal, like buying an expensive card, rolling certain faces on the House dice, or even zapping the card directly with magic (instead of the villains). They have a negative effect until you complete them, but then offer a small reward when you do. Now with dark events, negative encounter effects and 3-4 villains ganging up on you, you’ll need to find some help in the form of charms and potions.
In the base game you get the chance to customize your character by selecting a magical proficiency that you are especially skilled with giving you a conditional power that can aid you or your allies. Because of the increased power level of the challenges in this expansion, it further mitigates this by letting you cast a charm on your character that lasts the entire game. I think everyone remembers how Cedric Diggory cast a Bubble Head charm onto himself to help him breathe underwater during the Triwizard Cup. Each charm increases in power the more wounded your character is, which allows you to further customize the effect of the charm by taking on damage or avoiding the opportunity to heal at a key moment. For example the Healing Charm allows you to heal any hero when you play an ally, but when you are near the bottom of your health, you can heal ALL the other players. The Defensive Charm allows you to transfer damage from one villain to another when you are at peak health, when you are half-wounded you get to peek at the top events card and banish it, and then when you are nearly stunned, you can discard a card to roll a Slytherin die that can give everyone resources. There are 10 different charms which you can deal out randomly or play with your favorite ones.
After opening the 2nd of the 4 chapters included with this expansion, you gain the ability to brew potions. There is a board extension that tracks the available potions and the ingredients you will need to collect to brew them. The ingredients are collected at the end of your turn depending on either events that happened on your turn (like defeating an enemy, gaining a card) or a board state present at that point (like 1 player having full health or having an ally card available to acquire). You will likely gain at least 1 ingredient each round and might be able to influence your actions or the board state to gain 2 or 3. Each potion takes 2-3 specific ingredients to brew, though one of the ingredients is also wild. Beware dark potions that get used against you from the dark events deck as those must be dealt with before you can brew new potions and poison you with an ongoing effect until you and your teammates brew the antidote. When you brew a potion, it can be discarded immediately for a big effect or go into your discard pile to get shuffled into your deck for a recurrent smaller effect, or just to save that big discard effect for a later turn.
If you are a fan of the Harry Potter stories, get the base game and you will have fun working together to defeat the villains from the movies. The art is a combination of movie stills and original art that does a good job staying true to the style of the movies. The powers that the spells, items, and allies grant are thematic for this magical world. The Dark Events, troublesome encounters, and villains all have thematic effects as well. You feel like you are fighting your way through the events in the movies in a fun way. This is even more true with this expansion which adds some much needed complexity that elevates this game even more for hobby gamers.
This review is written by our friend Jason who has done in-depth reviews in the past of other games he has played. He enjoys the Harry Potter Universe and is the 2nd string Seeker on his semi-professional Quidditch Team.
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