The Witches

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A while back I was reading a lot of Pratchett, and started getting into board games, and saw this game, The Witches, which is an adaptation of Pratchett's work into game form. Seemed like a natural thing to do, so I picked up the Collector's Edition. This was before I knew very much about games.

As it turns out, The Witches wasn't very well received despite the designer Martin Wallace's reputation. To be fair, he has insisted the game was designed to be very light.

Regardless of game play, the game is beautifully rendered, with one of the nicest map boards I've ever seen. I didn't have much of a mental picture of Lancre beforehand, but this doesn't really ruin it for me.

I have the game set up for a solo play.

Here's the situation a few moves into a solo game where I'm playing Petulia Gristle:

The Witches Game 1

While I've read a bit more than half of Pratchett's Discworld books, The Witches covers material in books I have yet to read.

Game play

The game play is pretty simple:

  1. Place a problem.
  2. Move and another action.
  3. Refill hand.

And repeat.

The challenge comes with trying to score high enough to not be a Pig Farmer's wife!

It's easy to run out the problem tokens to end the game, just solve all the easy problems. Sadly, this won't result in a high enough score to "win." Winning requires solving the hard problems, generally modeled after the various antagonists, ne'er-do-wells and unsavory types found in the novels. But it's difficult to solve the hard problems with a small hand of cards. Getting a larger hand of cards require solving more problems. So there is the essential tension: the better one gets at solving problems, the higher the risk of running the game out with a less than winning score.

For this play, I scored 23 points, with 2 hard problems.

I won't play this again soon, but I'm glad I played it today, and I like having it in my collection because I'm very sure I'll find a Pratchett fan at some point who will enjoy it.

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What to play next?

Deciding what to play next is always a tough call when faced with a closet full of games, all of which were purchased with intent to play. Here's one I'm dealing with the decision.

  • Something New: this means both something new to me and a game which has been published recently, within the last two or three years.
  • Something Classic: I've acquired a number of games properly considered "classic" which haven't yet been played. The current example would be PanzerGruppe Guderian.
  • Something Again: mastery requires constant practice, which means playing games many, many times to allow nuance to appear.
  • Something Vietnam: as I'm on a Vietnam binge. I don't have all the Vietnam games ever published, but I can say that I have a lot of them, and probably more than most people.
  • Something Obscure: as it's fun to poke around in the dustier corners of game design.
  • Something Different: break away from the same old publishers and try a game from one of the new kids on the block. Or, conversely, dip into legacy with a classic tried and true.
  • Something Light: once in a while it's nice to actually finish a game all the way through in one sitting, in an hour or two.
  • Something Heavy: if possible, it's nice to set up something big and complicated which can be left out for days or weeks or even months, for a leisurely stroll through a very large or long game.

There are surely many more ways to choose, but the above method keeps me busy enough, helps me get both breadth and depth into my play, and provides me with a sense of progress.

The odd man out

When there is an odd man out:

  • Have a solo game ready to play.
  • Keep score or advise on a game in progress.
  • Referee a game in progress.