Witchcraft Second Opinion

Season of the Witch

Like many gamers, my eyes were really opened to the world of solo gaming during the pandemic and as the years pass I find myself more and more interested in sitting in front of a good tabletop puzzle than staring at yet another screen. I have specifically really become a fan of more thematic editions such as the Final Girl series that really draws you into the world and the puzzle is not simply, well just that, it is a much more involved story you are trying to work through. I missed 2022’s Resist, mainly due to its theme. The Spanish Civil War, or war in general actually, has never really appealed and so despite all the accolades, I passed. Well now the system is back but under the new guise of witches! Witchcraft, designed by the same team, takes that same card based system and with a few additions presents us with the world of a Salam-esque coven seeing us recruit new spellcasters whilst trying to solve challenges, and stay hidden for fear of being sent to jail.

Black Magic Women

It’s a small box, which is always a relief, and is made up of a series of different decks of cards. Setting up is quite straightforward once the initial organisation is done. What makes Witchcraft so replayable is also what can be a bit finicky to set up and pack away. There are lots of different jurors which link to specific missions and so there is a lot of iconography going on. ‘If you are using this juror then you need the deck with this symbol on…’ etc. this means that at the end of each game you need to reorganise the decks to make for an easier set up, however that set up still includes looking through the box for specific cars. This is a fairly minor quibble in the grand scheme of things but I am not sure how much difference these decks really offer for the faff it provides. That aside, the setup is pretty straight forward. Once you have chosen three jurors and placed two conviction cards above each one, you need to find their matching challenge cards and shuffle them up with the general supply. You then select the matching mission cards and lay them down beneath the matching juror. Place the villagers deck and curse deck to the side and then create your coven deck. Creating your coven is simply the act of selecting 12 witch cards to add to your coven deck leaving the remaining cards in the recruitment deck. For your first few games there is a recommended coven but the fun comes from drafting your own. For each mission you reveal a number of challenge cards and then you are ready to go!

The basic Witchcraft win condition is to persuade the jurors you are innocent. This is done by pushing up your individual persuasion on each one by completing missions. To win your persuasion must be equal to or higher than the total number on the conviction cards for each juror. You can call a trial at any point but you only get one chance to do so too early and you will be found guilty but leave it too late and play it too safe then you might be taken down by one of the many loss conditions. If you ever run out of village cards, curse cards or draw a hand from the coven deck that doesn’t contain any witches and you are immediately done for. And these are all too easy to happen.

The gameplay is pretty straight forward but I have to say I found the rulebook a little confusing on some points but I appreciate that that may just be me. I struggled to get my head around the simplicity of the gameplay as the book sometimes painted things a little more complicated. On your turn you will play witch cards into your play area. Each card is divided into hidden and revealed. The revealed side tends to offer more powerful abilities but once they are played they go to the jail pile. There are also families of witches that will allow combo powers the more you have of them in your play area. Once you have played a selection of witches you then decide which mission you are going to attempt. You flip over all challenge cards, then all remaining coven cards. You are now ready to take on the mission. Each witch has a power presented as a number on the top of the card and the total of all of your witches is how much you have to spend to defeat missions and challenges. You will never be able to defeat everything so the interesting puzzle here is what challenge do I allow myself to fail and can I take the punishment? If you fail a mission however you flip it over and if you fail a second then the game is over! Challenge cards come in different flavours that might add curse cards to your deck or lower the persuasion on specific jurors, some will also be familiars that you can capture which offer you ongoing abilities. Once you are confident or desperate enough, then call a trial and see whether you survive. If one or two jurors are persuaded, well done you are deemed innocent but if only one or none of them are, then you are guilty and fail.

I put a spell on you

First of all, this game is gorgeous. The artwork is really evocative and draws you into the world of witchcraft and when the game is all cards then it is important that these cards all help tell the story. The only disappointing element of the production which became an increasing issue as I played was the lack of any tracker for your power each turn. There are many ways this could have been achieved from a spin dial counter through to a card based system illustrated brilliantly in Salt and Pepper’s other solo game Unreliable Wizard! Again this feels like a light quibble but when so much of the experience is gaining and spending these power points it feels like a real over oversight not to provide something.

That aside, Witchcraft is a really fun, thematic game. It is definitely on the harder side of solo gaming in my opinion and can be punishing sometimes. Also if you want a deeper thematic experience the box also provides a campaign book ‘Tales of Wildergreens’ which takes you through a series of stories adding more of an arc to the gameplay. Despite my reservations I was really charmed by Witchcraft, one might say that when I was playing it I was completely under its spell!

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