Charmed, I'm Sure

Now that J. K. Rowling seems determined to repeatedly set herself on fire in the court of public opinion, Harry Potter isn't the escapist fun it used to be. One of those ways it was really fun was the deck-building game based on it -- Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle. It's one of the best "based on a license" games I've played, a campaign experience that progresses from "you really could get the non-gamers in your family to play this" to "sophisticated enough to satisfy even veteran deck-building fans."

The game is still a lot of fun. So is its expansion, The Monster Box of Monsters, which added four new "scenarios" to the core game's seven. It would have been a complete no-brainer for me to pick up the new Charms and Potions Expansion, absent the question of whether giving J.K. Rowling any more money (in the form of buying Harry Potter merchandise) is an appropriate thing to do. I came to this conclusion in this instance: this game publisher secured the license some time ago, and stands to lose a lot more money than Rowling from a decision not to purchase the game. (Should they opt to renew the license when the time comes? That would likely change the calculation for me.)

But what about the usual question you ask when buying a game or its expansion: is it any good? The short answer is yes. But the Charms and Potions expansions is notably different than the previous expansion. The Monster Box of Monsters was a "light touch" expansion that added just a few new elements that were substantially similar to things already in the core game. It wasn't really very different, but in adding new scenarios to a campaign game, it was perfectly fine.

Charms and Potions is a lot. It's an expansion for the experienced gamer, not appropriate for the more casual crowd. (And that too is fine, if you're the target audience, and you know that.) It adds a significant number of supplemental "Charms" boards you pick from to augment your character, each giving three different powers you use by managing the amount of damage you've taken. Most of the powers are just "strictly better the more damage you've taken," but a few add some intriguing new gamesmanship and strategy to the idea of who you heal and when.

And once you pop open the second of four boxes (containing the expansion's new scenarios), you get a quite elaborate Potions systems. (Spoilers, I suppose, since you don't unlock these right away.) Each game gives you a list of five event triggers to watch out for during your turn. For each trigger you meet, you choose one of two available potion ingredients (there are five different kinds, plus a wild), and assign all ingredients you collect to one of two face up potion cards. Each card requires some number of ingredients to complete, whereupon you then choose whether to immediately trash the card for a one-time effect, or to add it to your deck where (when played normally) you'll get the choice of a repeating power or that original one-time trash effect. I think it's perhaps not quite as complicated as I've just surely made it sound... but it is ultimately a choice leading to choices, leading to another choice, leading to another choice. The complexity of play has taken a big jump, and the pace of play slows down a bit too.

But the difficulty has not jumped. Where the Monster Box of Monsters continued to ramp up the difficulty level from the already difficult scenarios in the back half of the core game, the four boxes of Charms and Potions all seem quite easy. Admittedly, some of this can come down to luck of the draw in which villains are randomly added to the scenario when you set it up (and my friends and I got quite lucky in this once or twice). Still, we beat each of these four games in one attempt, which was decidedly not the case in games 5, 6, and 7 of the core game (or the Monster expansion). Charms and Potions gives the players a lot more new options and abilities than it seems to give the villains, and this leads to the outcome you'd expect: it's easier to win.

I get the sense that even if J. K. Rowling had not through her transphobic comments made the Harry Potter license toxic, this would probably have been the last expansion for this game -- because it is scraping the bottom of the barrel for material to depict on the cards. There are new villains cards to defeat and new character cards to add to the main deck, but a great many of these are people they'd ask about on special Harry Potter Trivia Night at the bar. There would be that one team maintaining a perfect score, of course, but most of us mortals would ask "who the hell is that?" and return to our beers.

I should note that Charms and Potions also allows you to add a fifth player to the game. Monster Box of Monsters kept the player count at four while adding a fifth character option (giving you six playable ones now when you add Charms and Potions). I haven't had a chance to play with five, so I have no thoughts on whether the game accommodates the extra player well. But I wanted to mention it, as it's a major selling point of the new expansion that I have not otherwise mentioned.

I respect that they tried something different and more complex here. And it is fun to play. But I'd say that the Charms and Potions expansion doesn't quite measure up to the core game or first expansion. I think you will like it if you liked those. But in being less of a challenge, more complex, and more obscure, I think it inevitably is going to feel "not quite as good." I give the expansion a B. But I think it's worth having in your collection -- if you're still collecting Harry Potter things, anyway.