I think I originally planned this to be a short post, but it went long since I tried to be thorough.
My girlfriend's birthday arrived so I finally got to unbox Harry Potter Hogwarts Battle. We played games 1, 2, and 3 today. I believe someone asked for comments, so I'll give impressions now and more impressions after we've played later years. Year 4 in particular has a big box to open.
Overall:
I'd say it's a no-brainer for someone who is a big Harry Potter fan and likes medium-weight card games. The presentation is quite well done, the quality is good with satisfying metal enemy control tokens and nice art design, and the gameplay is decent without being super punishing (at first).
Game concept and complexity:
The game is sort of like Dominion and the Warhammer Adventure Card Game combined and simplified. A 10-year-old could probably play it reasonably well, especially if an adult runs the game and coordinates the card effects, but by year 3 it gets reasonably involved. The rules are maybe 10-15 pages with lots of nice visual design and pictures, and you can basically figure things out from reading cards. There is no extensive reference.
We played years 1-3 even though we have played deckbuilders before to get the full story experience. More allies/items/spells get added through the years, as in the books/movies. We also used 2 characters each, which worked well because I'm not sure how much replay value there will be, and this way we can see all the different cards.
Mechanics:
The game starts out very similar to Dominion with a 10-card deck and basic cards to buy. Turn order is more flexible than Dominion. You basically play whatever you want in whatever order you want, and buy as much stuff as you want. There are coins representing "influence" you can gain, but it's basically Dominion purchase money you can sometimes track in your head. One important difference is that you can gain coins from effects that other players trigger, so you might have accumulated coins from other players' turns.
The goal of the game is to defeat a big stack of villains from the books/movies. At first only one villain shows up at a time, then two, and I assume eventually 3. Each enemy has persistent effects which trigger on various things and can combo with a "Dark Arts" deck. The "Dark Arts" deck is a bunch of bad effects which trigger once per turn, then eventually more times per turn as the villains gain control of more locations. Once they gain control of all locations, you lose. If you stack lightning bolt damage tokens on them, you kill them one by one and win. Each villain gives you a nice reward when wiped out, and you can use certain effects to reverse the location progress.
The game is NOT super strategic like Dominion. Buying itself is limited to 6 random cards that show up on the table. If you don't want them, or they're all too expensive, you could theoretically be kind of stuck. If you shuffle well at least 2-3 of them should be affordable. After you buy, you cannot trash cards, only discard or use cards that slowly cycle your deck, and new cards are drawn for purchase. As a result of all this, the game is a bit random and swingy, but it works ok for a dungeon-crawl-ish experience.
However, there is still strategy. You can make decisions about which cards to add to your deck and which cards to save for other players. You can focus coin donation, lightning bolt donation, and targeted healing. Some cards give you a choice about dealing a damage or healing yourself, so you can play risky if you want. Depending on the villain combo, it may be smart to leave one relatively harmless villain out and burn down the others first. You can also get some effects that let you buy certain cards direct to the top of your deck.
I don't know how the game will go after year 3, but at that point each of the 4 characters (Harry, Ron, Hermione, Neville) get a unique ability which differentiates them, plus they already have a deck with some unique cards.
Theme:
This is really strong. The pictures on the cards from each year are from the movies / movie actors. As each new year comes, you get new stuff: Villains, items, updated art for characters, a new ability, etc. The mechanics fit reasonably well with the characters. Neville becomes a good healer, and Hermione becomes good at using and buying lots of spells. There are lots of allies from the movies so you can buy Dumbledore to help your cause etc.
Replay value:
I'm not sure this would get a lot of replay unless you play with someone who hasn't seen the game yet, but maybe by years 5-7 the game will get more complex. A lot of the enjoyment comes from seeing all the cards based on book and movie elements.
Fun:
For a Harry Potter fan, It is fun to play the characters and use the various spells and items. In particular, it feels really satisfying when luck finally turns your way and you can pull of an overpowered combination or destroy an enemy with 4+ lightning bolts. One turn I used polyjuice potion to duplicate Molly Weasley, giving all 4 players 4 life and 2 coins.
I really liked how non-punishing the early years are. We played "moderate" difficulty with an extra skull to start the game and won all 3 years with some reasonably tense moments (like a villain who self-heals when the villains gain control, an annoying combination). This is in stark contrast to Warhammer Quest where I've never beaten the first quest out of 3+ attempts, and we burned out of even trying. Unlike some dungeon-crawling games, instead of dying you get "stunned" for losing your health. Each stunned player loses half their hand rounded down, a skull gets added to the location, and they regain their health at the end of their turn. You still play your turn with the reduced hand size. It's a punishment, but not near as annoying as missing your turn or waiting for a revive attempt.
In addition, many enemy effects that would cause you to lose health can be mitigated by discarding certain types of cards. Harry Potter has a defensive invisibility cloak that can trigger from his hand. Some cards even benefit you when you discard them (because you were stunned, or because of an enemy, etc.), changing their effects when used in this manner.
