resuming Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle

I bought and wrote about Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle last year. I played up to Game 3 (of 7) then, and stopped. I recently resumed playing. I started over at Game 1, and this time I made it all the way to Game 7. I did Game 1 and 2 with my wife Michelle and younger daughter Chen Rui. They hadn't played the game before. Elder daughter Shee Yun did Game 1 to 3 with me last year. I bought the game mainly because I had hoped to play with her. She is a big fan of Harry Potter. Unfortunately she is not exactly a big fan of boardgames. For Game 4 & 5 all four of us played. Chen Rui later lost interest, so only Michelle, Shee Yun and I forged on till the finale. It was satisfying to finally beat the game.

Spoiler Alert: If you have not read the books or watched the movies, there are many spoilers ahead. If you already know the story, then what I share below will be familiar. Do note that when you play the game, new content is added at every new level. I will be showing new content which is only available from Game 2 onwards. I will discuss strategy too.

Overall I found the game easier than I expected. Last year when I played, I found 4-player games much harder than 2-player games. This time round the 4-player games did not seem particularly hard. Maybe we have a better grasp of what to do and what not to do now.

I think the key to the game is defending your locations. You need to defend your first location for as long as possible, maybe even past the mid point of the game. Defending locations should not be proportionate to the number of villains. Let's say you have 3 locations and 15 villains. You should not benchmark yourself at having defeated 5 villains by the time you lose the first location, and 10 by the time you lose the second. You probably want your first location to last until the 8th villain or so. Subsequent locations trigger more event cards, and these can easily overwhelm you. Cards which can remove the enemy's control markers are precious. You need them to push back the enemy's advances.

Dumbledore is Santa Claus. Everybody gets attack, money (well, influence), health and also draws a card. Best headmaster ever!

House dice are used from Game 4 onwards. The dice are not equal. They have four icon types - attack, health, money and card. Each house die has a different distribution, emphasising one specific aspect. E.g. the Slytherin house die has three attack icons and one each of the other icons.

The Dementor is a scary villain, dealing two damage every turn.

From Game 5 onwards, you have three active villains at all times. Sometimes when they synergise, you'll have a hard time. It is not always easy to prioritise which one to target first. When you play this game you will get to know the villains more than the good guys. In every game you play, you must defeat all villains to win, so you will see every single one of them. However you most likely won't see every ally. The Hogwarts deck is thick and so far I have never exhausted it. It depends on your luck which allies get drawn and become available.

Whenever Professor Snape turns up I exclaim, "Always!"

Professor Umbridge is an annoying character in the books and the movies, and she is just as annoying in the game. She bleeds you whenever you buy any half decent card. We called her a b....ad woman.

One particular spell allows you to temporarily neutralise a villain's ability. This is quite handy. Barty Crouch Jr on the left is now neutralised. See that Hogwarts school emblem on him. His power prevents any control marker from being removed from locations. Peter Pettigrew on the right is another very annoying villain. He forces you to reveal the top card of your deck. If it is not one of your 0-cost starting cards, you have to discard it and you have to add a control marker to the location. Not only is he wasting your good cards, he is also expediting the fall of the locations. If he shows up in the early game, the risk is still small, because most cards in your player deck are still your starting cards. Unfortunately in one of our games, despite him turning up early, we were so unlucky that we kept revealing non starting cards. It meant losing the good cards we had bought, and also losing locations quickly.

Voldemort starts appearing in Game 5. He has a health of 10, which is higher than other villains. He is always placed at the bottom of the villain deck. He's the boss afterall. You only get to fight the boss after you've beaten all other minions.

Game 6 introduces Proficiency cards, one of which is on the right. During game setup, everyone gets to pick one. Proficiency cards give additional abilities. It seems to me some are better than others, so I wonder whether some Proficiency cards will never get selected. Maybe a variant is needed - everyone randomly draws one card instead of getting to choose. This forces you to adapt. Or maybe draw 2 and pick 1. Proficiency cards are based on the school subjects, which is a nice touch. In this photo, Flying Lessons let me remove control markers by spending $5. Unfortunately in this game I was cash-poor most of the time, and rarely made use of this Proficiency. What a pity.

This is a new (and stronger) version of Voldemort introduced in Game 6. Games 5 to 7 each has its own Voldemort. You play a harder one each time you move up a level. There is an advanced variant where you play with all three Voldemorts. You stack the three of them at the bottom of the villain deck, and you need to defeat all of them one after another to win.

I later switched to this Proficiency card, which I found much more useful, almost too good to be true. I could discard two spell cards to allow everyone to gain $1 and draw one card. In our games it was mostly Shee Yun buying spells, because that jived with her strengths. Most of the time the spells I had in hand were Alohomora spells - the weak starting cards giving $1 each. Discarding two of them meant losing $2, but I was going to get $1 anyway, and often that extra card I drew was an Alohomora spell. Then I'd get $2 anyway - nothing to lose. In fact I would be going through my deck slightly faster, which was a good thing. More importantly I was helping my teammates gain money and cards. This Proficiency came into good use in the early game, when a big portion of my deck was Alohomora spells. Even in late game, it was often useful, helping me swap weak spells for better cards.

This item on the left is the Elder Wand, and Shee Yun loves it. She played Hermione, so she specialised in buying spells. If she played four spells on her turn, she could give $1 to any one player. When playing the Elder Wand, you gain attacks and health based on how many spells you have played in the current turn. In this photo you can see six spell cards played. So the Elder Wand is generating 6 attacks, which is a big deal. In one of our games it was the Elder Wand which defeated Voldemort.

The Proficiency card History of Magic (bottom right) let Shee Yun give $1 to anyone whenever she bought a spell card. Hermione was all about spells, spells, spells.

The key new mechanism introduced in Game 7 is the horcruxes. There is a stack of six of them. The topmost horcrux does something bad to you. You need to roll dice to destroy horcruxes. The first few horcruxes need either one of two icons. The next few need two specific icons. The last one needs three specific icons. You can't roll dice at the start of the game. You need to buy cards which let you roll dice. So you likely won't start destroying horcruxes any time soon. After you destroy a horcrux, you claim it, and it becomes an item which helps you. Some horcruxes let you roll dice, so they help in destroying the remaining horcruxes. Whenever a horcrux is destroyed, the next one immediately takes effect. You need to destroy the last one before you can fight Voldemort.

In our game, Michelle destroyed 4 of the 6 horcruxes. She played Ron and she specialised in buying ally cards. Many ally cards let you roll dice.

Only one Hogwarts card is added in Game 7, this Sword of Gryffindor. Also, in Game 7, the character cards are replaced. This ultimate Harry card is stronger than before. The previous Harry gives anyone 1 attack whenever a control marker is removed from the location card. The new Harry gives two players 1 attack each.

Our Game 7 ran quite long. It took about 1.5 hours. I guess this is not surprising. Every new game there are more villains added. With Game 7, there are 6 horcruxes added too, and that's like 6 more villains to beat. One good thing about a longer game is you can better see the results of your deck-building. You can feel your deck getting better and better. It feels good to see those expensive cards you buy cycle into action.

The ultimate Voldemort has 20 life points! He adds a control marker to the location card every turn, which is very scary. However our Game 7 was overall quite easy. We defended Location 1 well, and only lost it quite late in the game. Halfway through the game I was already confident we would win. We defeated Voldemort with the Sword of Gryffindor. The basic 2 attack of the sword was already enough to beat Voldemort, but we rolled the red die twice anyway. Just for kicks. We happened to roll attacks, so we enthusiastically kicked the unconscious Voldemort. It was like a scene in a Chow Sing Chi movie.