USAOPOLY Harry Potter Hogwarts Battle Cooperative Deck Building Card Game | Official Licensed Merchandise Board Great Gift for Fans Movie artwork For 132 months to 1188 months

I hesitated to buy this game because I've been disappointed in Harry Potter games in the past. They seemed to rely on the HP theme and didn't put enough effort into actual game play. I'm happy to say that USAopoly and Forrest-Pruzan Creative have knocked it out of the park! Or "castle," if you want to go there.This is a cooperative deck building game that has 7 Games that build on each other. Kind of a neat concept. (I'm not talking about expansions you have to purchase - everything is included in the box.) You and the other players play as Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Nevile. The object is to defeat the villians (Draco, Quirrel, Lucius, etc.) before the villians take over all your locations. That's the object of the first 2 Games, at least. Because, just like the novels, this game builds on itself 7 times. Game 1 is complete in and of itself, but adding the material of another Game box will change it in certain ways. One of the Game boxes add dice...to a deck building game that starts with no dice. I can't wait to get there!The board, cards, and tokens are all very good quality. Nothing is flimsy or wanting. The Dark Mark tokens are stellar. Molded in metal, they have a heavy weight and definitely add to the "wow!" factor with this game. After you play each Game box, the cards can be separated out again, or left together by type. (Game 1 has 2 villians, Game 2 adds 3 more, etc.) The game developers thought ahead and even gave us organizer cards if you want to keep everything all mixed together (all the villians together, all the Dark Art Events together, etc.) once you've cracked the box and moved up the Game ladder.Because of the Game 1-7 add-on feature, this is an excellent intro to Eurogames. It starts off really simple but ramps up after you get used to the mechanics. One of the great perks is that if you have kids just now reading the books, you can play this game with them up to and including the Game box for the corresponding book. That way it's completely relevant to them and nothing is given away for the later books.Harry Potter is very special to me for personal reasons that go back to 1997. I was an original fan. My hat is off to the developers for creating a solid, enjoyable game for diehard fans!

*Important notice for people purchasing the early first runs of this game. There was a printing error which lead to 4 copies of a card called Confundus being put into the box (2 in box 5 and 2 in box 6 I think). The two Confundus! cards in box 5 were supposed to be two copies of Stupefy! which are missing from some peoples game, including my own. You can contact USAopoly customer service to get replacement cards:usaopoly.com/game-care-customer-service-inquiryThis is a highly entertaining game that was well worth the purchase and should be enjoyed for some time to come. I've played with just two and multiple games in groups of four and it's entertaining with both.As a quick summary - I enjoy deck builders and this is a solid addition to our collection. If you like deck builders, particularly co-operative ones like Legendary Encounters: ALIENS, and enjoy Harry Potter this seems like an inevitable purchase. It also works as an easy way to introduce people to deck building mechanics which should work nicely for families, just be wary of small spoilers for children that haven't read through the books yet.For a more detailed breakdown of my thoughts so far:-The game evolves as you play through the chapters/games. The game has a built in tutorial for the first few games where it introduces you to the general mechanics of deck builders and the basics of this particular game. As you progress through each chapter you essentially continue to add more villains, more purchasable cards and more Dark Arts Events. If you're familiar with deck builders or are a savvy bunch you could easily start on game 4 or 5. The cards are all marked for which game they belong to so that if, at any point, you want to reset the game back you can easily do so. Game 7 represents the ultimate full form of the game with the full complement of villains, Dark Arts Events cards and the couple other unique features introduced throughout the entire series including game 7.-The game will get longer as you progress through chapters. You continue to add in villains with each chapter meaning the number of villains that you need to defeat is also increased. People have suggested on Board Game Geek that it plateaus out at about 1.5-1.75 hours with the very first game maybe being half an hour.-It both does and does not follow the events of the books and movies. As you progress through chapters it will introduce villains and Dark Arts Events from the Harry Potter series. However the game doesn't really try to tell a story and most of the villains don't come up in order. As a result it doesn't really give away major pieces of the plot. Regardless if you have a child that is reading through the books currently the best suggestion would be to only play through the games that they have read up to (game 1 matching roughly to book 1) mainly so they can relate to the villains and Events that occur. If you want to play beyond that point you can also look through the cards and maybe just remove those cards that you think might give too much away.-The game tends to be a bit harder with 4 people than with 2. Some of the Events and villains affect all characters simultaneously which makes the game slightly harder for a full group. I think overall it balances well for two players still since you also have less hero powers to make use of. It may not be the most difficult co-operative game out there, but make no mistake, the game can kick your butt pretty well depending on the villain order. You need to carefully balance damage output, heals and removing villain influence.-There is no player elimination. I don't like player elimination, especially for semi-long games. This game handles that aspect nicely, there are still health pools to track for the characters but when you hit zero you aren't eliminated. Instead you discard some cards for that turn and it helps the villains, but you are not eliminated. You bounce back to full health for the next turn. If everyone keeps getting stunned every other turn, however, you will lose. So you still need to be careful-Production quality is quite good. The pieces are all well done. The theme flows through all the cards and pieces. Overall the game mechanics, theme and cards just simply work. Very nice box and board. It feels like the designers are true fan of the series-Several groups of friends already want to play this game just from seeing a picture posted online. It has that excitement factor just looking at the game, which I think is a huge plus.-Setup and game play is quick. You can set up a game in under 10 minutes and get going. Turns tend to be straightforward and are quick to resolve.The game is easy to teach. The rules are easy to understand and everything is basically explained on the cards themselves. This helps immensely with teaching the game and being able to just play rather than making sure you have all the rules just right before each turn. This is a fantastic gateway game since you can modify the difficulty level while still introducing some major designer game concepts (like deck building) to a group. The co-operative nature of the game means you can actually help other players without ruining the game.So should you buy it?If you already own a ton of designer board games (Think like 20+ especially deck builders or maybe cooperative games). You may not get a ton out of this particular game unless you want/need the Harry Potter theme or if the game mechanics are drastically different from anything you already own. I think this game does what it does well, but nothing is especially groundbreaking. For these people that already own a lot of games I'd suggest waiting to see online plays or for reviews to come out from your favorite reviewers before purchasing. Rahdo has a nice run through of this game and Dice Tower has also covered it just to name a coupleFor those that have more limited designer game collections. Are you looking to try out (or think you might like) cooperative board games? Are you looking for a good introduction to deck building games? Do you love the Harry Potter universe or have family members that do? If you answer yes to all of these it's an obvious purchase. If you answer yes to even one it's also probably a great purchase.I bought it because I love cooperative games and there are limited cooperative deckbuilders. For me and my relatively small collection of games it ranks right up there along with my other cooperatives like Pandemic and Ghost Stories in terms of fun. It probably doesn't have the huge replay value of a game like Pandemic, but it also doesn't need to. I'm exceedingly happy with my purchase and the significant other is too, and that's all I really care about.

If you are a deck building expert you may find the game play is not as good as the best deck building games but it is a very good deck building game. If you are new to deck building games this is a terrific introduction with a seven step system that has a really easy entry point for books 1 and 2. If you are a Harry Potter fan and even a casual gamer this is a must have. In terms of implementing the theme of the series it is incredible. The cooperative nature allows for a group of varying skill levels to enjoy the evening. We play as a family with a non-gamer wife and gamer boys 8 and 10. We have played it around 15 times though now we only play it as game 7 with all the bells and whistles. I took it to my local wargaming club and they enjoyed it. Which is amazing as they hate cooperatives! The games do often turn into runaway defeats or victories but I believe that is the nature of the designer choices which heavily favor random as opposed to scripted adventures. There are many house rules you can pick and choose from Boardgamegeek to adjust the difficulty of the game or minimize the chances of a runaway. The game system is solid and so many of the best parts of the book show up it was addictive and bedtime was banished for a couple of weeks. I really love that you add a little each game. Very much a christmas morning feeling opening games 3 through 7. We paid about 40 bucks. One of the best gaming values in my 35 years of gaming. If you have any interest in designing a game for your favorite subject there are great lessons to be learned here. I can't believe this was produced by a relatively unknown company, they punched way above their weight.