...board this has.
Really. This board measures over 38" by 27" and shows all of the key locations in the Hogwarts castle and grounds, plus has a 500 pt scoring track around the outer edge for tracking the points for both the players and for House Gryffindor.



The game has a small plastic wand to mark who goes first.
Players take on the roles of Harry, Ron, Hermione and/or Neville, moving around the map and encountering adventure cards that either increase their three ability scores or test them with challenges from the Harry Potter films. If the player passes an encounter, he/she may get points, increased ability scores, special powers, or more cards. If the player fails the encounter, he/she could lose points or abilities, or be moved to another place in Hogwarts.

As the game starts, the deck of adventure cards that are used to seed the deck or for players to draw from contains encounters from Harry’s first year at Hogwarts. As the players gain points, so does Gryffindor, and once Gryffindor passes 100 pts, cards with encounters from Harry’s second year are shuffled in, after 200 pts encounters from Harry’s third year and so forth. These new encounters are increasingly difficult, requiring higher and higher ability scores to succeed.



This game requires real economy of actions—each round you can only take a total of three actions, which may include moving, playing a card, or drawing cards. The first challenge is to use the cards you have in your hand as efficiently as possible, gaining the abilities you need to pass the challenges you want to play on yourself. The second challenge is to make sure that you are able to encounter the good cards that are seeded onto the board before other players do. And the third challenge is to drop encounters onto the board that help you and hurt other players. There can be a real ‘take-that’ aspect to the latter—you can force the other players into encounters that they can’t pass, playing them directly onto the other characters or on to empty board spaces that trap them. Once the Gryffindor track reaches 500, the character with the most points, including bonuses for the highest ability scores, wins.



The game covers 5 years at Hogwarts and should be pretty easy to play with your young-ins who enjoyed the movies and want to still play around in Harry's World.