We recently told you about Harry Potter: Master of Spells, a board game that through some exams makes you one of the best magicians ever. Following this line of challenges and skill learning comes, again thanks to Asmodee Italy, Harry Potter: The Wizarding Challengea party games set in the last days of the school year in Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The eight final exams they will decree the best wizards and the best witches of the school and every exam is essential to help your house to win the Cup of Houses. Will your Home be up to the challenge? Will you be able to win the coveted House Cup?
Harry Potter: The Wizarding Challenge unboxing and materials
Harry Potter: The Wizarding Challenge presents a sales package with very compact dimensions to be easily transported and a construction quality that makes it resistant to shocks and safe against accidental opening. The weight of almost one kilogram (862 grams to be exact) proves that inside there are several game components. Once the box is opened, in fact, we find: 1 board, 1 regulation, 1 hourglass, 8 pawns, 88 tokens, 43 Magical World cards, 50 Spells/Defense against the Dark Arts cards, 30 History of Magic cards, 25 Potion cards, 10 Divination cards and 16 House Cup cards.
THE materials used are all of good quality: the game board hey counters are made of cardboard with the former having a rubberized protection to protect it from continuous bending, the plastic bases are well carved, while the cards unfortunately they do not have particular textures so we recommend the use of protective bags to avoid damaging them during shuffling. The prints they are minimal and elegant, as well as being easy to understand for adults and children and the characters feature photos of the famous actors who impersonated them. There hourglass it is the classic one present in many board games, but embellished with a yellow powder. Finally nice idea to insert a cloth pouch black, instead of the classic transparent plastic bags, to keep the various markers inside and we also appreciated the subdivision of theorganizer cardboard especially with the compartments that avoid having the cards “navigate” throughout the box.
Harry Potter: The Wizarding Challenge, otto exams and many obstacles to win the Cup of Houses
Harry Potter: Wizarding Challenge it’s a title they can play from 2 to 8 players Of age over 7 years with a average duration between 20 and 45 minutes. The setup The game is immediate and consists solely in choosing a pawn from one’s favorite House and placing it on the starting square. Then the 6 decks of cards are shuffled separately and placed around the game board. Each player must then take a sheet of paper and a pen to carry out some exams and finally a participant is selected who will be appointed Prefect and will have to write down the points of each player during the game at the end of each exam.
During each game round, players will have to try to pass an exam by indicated time. If the exam is passed, the pawn is moved forward by as many boxes as indicated by the exam itself, otherwise the pawn is moved backwards by the same number of boxes. In case the movement ends on one of the four squares Common roomthen draw one House Cup card which can have positive or negative effects to be resolved immediately or to be resolved during the game. There are a total of 8 exams and we summarize them briefly:
- Care of Magical Creatures Exam: draw a Magical World card with the red side and in 30 seconds you will have to guess the subject illustrated on the card by drawing it on a sheet of paper.
- Transfiguration exam: draw a Magical World card with the yellow side and in 30 seconds you will have to guess the object or character shown on the card by miming it.
- Arithmancy exam: Draw a random Wizarding World card and show only the name by hiding the number at the bottom of the card. Then in 30 seconds or 1 minute (depending on the value of the card) the player will have to guess the numerical value of the word shown to you (for example DRAGON is worth 45 because D is the fourth letter of the alphabet, R the eighteenth and etc).
- Spells Exam: draw a Spells/Defense Against the Dark Arts card and in 30 seconds you will have to memorize the formula, the type, the definition and the movement. Then in another 30 seconds you will have to recite the formula, name the type of spell, give the definition and draw or mime the movement.
- Defense Against the Dark Arts exam: Choose another player and challenge him to a duel. Then you both draw a Spells/Defense Against the Dark Arts card and in 30 seconds memorize the formula and movement of the spell. After 30 seconds, give the cards to the other players who will be the examiners. Then stand back to back, count to three by taking three steps forward, turn around and cast the spell. The fastest and most accurate will be the winner.
- History of Magic exam: draw a History of Magic card and in 30 seconds you will have to guess as many questions among the 6 present. In case of an incorrect answer, the round ends immediately.
- Divination exam: place the 10 Divination cards face down in front of you and in 30 seconds you will have to turn over one card at a time. If a white crystal ball appears, reveal another card, if a black crystal ball appears you have failed the exam, if a Deathly Hallow appears you have passed the exam.
- Potions exam: in 30 seconds you will have to arrange all the Ingredient counters in front of you as you prefer, then draw a Potion card and you will have two turns of the hourglass to find all the ingredients.
The game ends when one of the players reaches the Great Hall in the center of the board. The player with the most House Cup points is the winner of the game.
Exams of variable difficulty, but not always well balanced
Harry Potter: Wizarding Challenge it’s a party games dynamic and with fairly simple game mechanics to learn that somehow resembles the Game of the Goose in a magical key and where instead of throwing dice you have to solve challenges. The possibility of being played up to 8 players it allows you to organize game sessions even with fairly large groups of friends or relatives, also because the more you are, the more fun you have and the better the various game mechanics blend. We dare say maybe it would have been better to put 3 as the minimum limit of players. Some challenges, in fact, require an impartial third person and the regulation itself explicitly says “be honest with each other”: it is obvious that this is not always possible and could create discussions and quarrels.
In any case, the eight exams present offer a good dose of reasoning and the difficulty is mixed going from very trivial tests to highly complex challenges. If in Care of Magical Creatures and Transfiguration, in fact, you have to be good at draw or mime the character or item on the drawn card, in Spells and Defense Against the Dark Arts must have one good memory to remember the spell drawn in every detail, with the duel phase which also requires skill and a certain precision. With the Potions Exam, however, you have to train the visual memory to be able to remember the position of the right ingredients present in the drawn card among the 88 counters scattered on the table, considering that you have barely 30 seconds to position them as you like.
The exams we found instead a bit divisive or in any case not very balanced they are Divination, Arithmancy, and History of Magic. The first is the only one of the eight exams that does not require any initial preparation because it focuses solely on the luck factor of the player. Try, however, to imagine the sense of frustration in having to turn over 10 cards and hope to find the only card with the Deathly Hallow symbol. There is no strategy that can be applied, however in case of failure you will go back from one to three boxes depending on what is indicated on the black crystal ball card, while in case of passing the exam you will go forward 11 boxes, an exaggeration! Arithmancy, on the other hand, is an exam with a increasing climax of disproportionate difficulty: you could come across words like dog or phoenix with an acceptable value of 23 or 42, but also words like Orvoloson Gaunt’s Ring or Invisibility Cloak with a respective value of 280 and 260 points. You understand very well how, in just one minute and without the use of a calculator, it is practically impossible to guess the exact value.
Finally History of Magic is an exam that it only benefits well-rounded connoisseurs of the books and films of Harry Potter because some questions don’t have multiple answers and some are impossible to know if you haven’t been paying close attention to the details while watching or reading. Obviously, a Harry Potter game is only suitable for fans, but with the possibility of letting children over the age of 7 play, things become decidedly more complex in addition to the fact that even the older ones do not necessarily remember which either the type of dragon that Cedric Diggory faces in the first trial of the Triwizard Tournament (Swedish Grunohorn) or how many Harry Potters are spawned from the Polyjuice potion in the escape from Privet Drive (six). By the way as soon as a wrong answer is given, the turn ends, so this is a decidedly punishing exam. Interesting, however, the rule that penalizes the player who deliberately reads the questions slowly: loses 4 House Cup points and the pawn will move back 4 squares, while the questioned player will move forward 3 squares and will get 3 House Cup points.
Conclusions
In conclusion Harry Potter: Wizarding Challenge is a very addictive game that requires a good deal of attention and effort. At first its simplicity could mislead into imagining that you are in front of a trivial and not very engaging title, then once you enter the magical world of Hogwarts you immediately realize that it is not all as easy as it seems, indeed sometimes it is even far too complex. This last point could give the right stimuli for the more experienced players accustomed to this kind of games, especially if they are lovers of the world of Harry Potter, but it could be quite frustrating if not limiting for newbies and for those who the Wizarding World know little or haven’t followed him for years. Finally, we advise you to play it in as many people as possiblebecause in two players almost all the magic is lost!
