An owl that goes through your chimney. A handwritten letter inviting you to join Hogwarts. And here you are on your way to fight battles that will mark the history of wizards.

Will you live up to history

Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle (Harry Potter HB from now on) invites us to relive the schooling of our favorite bespectacled wizard. As in the books (or movies), each of the years of Harry's school career will be littered with trials that will only increase over time. Will you be up to the task of taking on Lord Voldemort?

Very average equipment

Harry Potter HB does not offer exceptional material. As you can see in the detail below, it is not so much the physical quality as the artistic one that is lacking here.

• More than 250 cards in 7 boxes representing the different school years. The maps are thick and pleasant to hold but the illustrations are sorely lacking in interest. It is indeed a photo of the different films. Personally, I hate this practice because I like to have worked visuals that don't give the impression of having a fan-made game in hand.

• 4 individual trays that do the job no more, no less. There you will find a health track as well as notches on the sides to show you where to place your cards. The visual is in the theme without drowning us in details, which is appreciable.

• 8 control tokens that are surely the most beautiful pieces in the game. Made of metal and bearing the logos of the Death Eaters, these tokens add a touch of professionalism to a game that, visually, looks very amateurish.

• Damage and currency markers that will be used to represent the damage inflicted on enemies for the former and the coins you will receive outside of your turn for the latter. There are also 4 cores serving as a life counter for the players.

There are also 4 dice that I won't talk about since they only come into play during the 4th year.

It's not rocket science!

Harry Potter HB is a cooperative deck building. For the 2 in the back who don't know what a deck building is, this is a genre of game where all players start with a similar deck of cards. As the rounds progress, you will buy new cards that will expand your possibilities. I will not insult you by explaining the term "cooperative".

The game rounds are pretty straightforward. The first thing to do is to draw an event card that represents the actions of the villains on this turn. This is often to lose health points or to increase the villains' control of the current location.

Once the event card has resolved, you must check if the effect of the enemy(s) present is activated.

As soon as this is done your turn begins, you can play cards from your hand.

These cards have various effects:

• Heal yourself or one of your allies

• Generate damage points, which you will assign to one or more enemies of your choice

• Produce money, which you will use to acquire new cards.

Once all your cards have been played (or at least the ones you wanted to play), your turn ends and you must discard all the resources and cards you didn't use. Once this is done, you draw 5 cards (if your draw pile is empty, shuffle your discard pile and you're good to go) and then it's up to the next player to play.

Conclusion

Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle is a simple game but very enjoyable to play. The rounds follow one another quickly and the fact that you can beat Harry's enemies is quite nice. I only regret that a greater effort has not been put into the realization of original artwork for the maps.

The difficulty of the game is well balanced, the first two parts, representing the first 2 years, are relatively simple but things get tougher from the 3rd. Indeed, enemies arrive 2 by 2, which means you have to suffer twice as many penalties per turn.

Overall, the game is well balanced and we like to play the games, especially since they last less than an hour.

Find Harry Potter - Battle at Hogwarts in our shop or on our website: https://shop.magicfranco.be/jeux-de-societe/596-harry-potter-bataille-a-poudlard.html