| Harry Potter Clue Game - Circa October, 2008 |
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GAME PLAY OVERVIEW:
1 of the six Hogwarts Heros (Harry, Ron, Hermoine, Luna, Neville, Ginny) is removed from the deck as the one fallen prey to the dark magic and is missing somewhere in Hogwarts. Players play the remaining characters. Each player starts with a certain number of house points based on the total number players in the game. Separate the suspect (the villians, not the players)/item/location cards and put one of each in the solution envelope. Deal cards with equal number. Any extra cards are placed in Dumbledore's office. The player whose birthday is next goes first. On your turn, roll the two regular dice and one Hogwarts die. If the hogwart's die shows a star, take a help card. If the hogwart's die shows a house crest, turn the board's wheel in that corner of the board one notch clockwise. Note, doors into rooms may open or close and secret passages may change when a wheel is turned. If the wheel shows the Dark Mark or if the Howgarts die shows the dark mark - take a card from the dark mark deck and read it aloud. Each dark mark card describes an event likely to have been caused by Dark Forces and each card shows: What is happening. Who is affected. How many house points could be lost. How you can protect yourself against the event. (Example: Characters in Corridors - Someone has poisoned your butterbeer - you do not feel well. - Lose 10 HP - Help Cards: Bezoar, Madam Pomfrey) If you have a Help Card that protects you, show it to the other players and then place it back in front of you. You are safe. If you don't, you must pay the penalty by putting that many house points into the house points pile. When you have used a Help card or paid your house point penalty, continue to the "move" step. Note, if you lose all of your house points, you must drop out of the game. If all players run out of house points, the game is over and the Dark Forces have won and the missing student meets an unfortunate end. The move/suggest portion is just like regular clue except that you can use an Alohomora Help Card to pass through closed doors. If you land on a star space on the board, you can take a help card. The help card will be an Ally, an Item or a Spell. You can visit Dumbledore's office to look at any of the face down cards or make an accusation. |
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For a Harry Potter Fan, this game is like striking gold! The sheer volume of tidbits and references throughout make playing the game very exciting and enjoyable. The typical Clue fan, however, might be a little less enthusiastic.
The artwork of the game is fantastic. The board, looks very reminiscent of the Marauder's Map which is ingenius if slightly rudimentary. Though the door locations had to change for the new game play aspects, the room sizes/shapes should have remained consistent with the Classic Clue. At least the Trophy Room and the Library appear in other editions. The cards are well themed but a little inconsistent. The suspect cards show the villians on the front page of the Daily Prophet which is clever. The item spell cards appear to be from pages in a book - as indicated by the page numbers at the bottom which was a little confusing at first. The room cards are nothing special. They appear to be typical room cards that weren't given extra theming. And on that note, the Ally Help Cards are nice in that they have pictures of what the card represents, but the Help Item and Spell cards don't. It seems they really should have been and it seems that the designers either cheaped out or rushed to production without them. The same could be said for the Dark Deck cards. On a side note, this may be the first suspect card to feature a duo (Crabbe & Goyle) The instruction booklet seems a half-hearted attempt at theming with it's cover featuring a Daily Prophet. This could be a throw-back to the Daily Echo (etc.) on various Clue/do games. One potential error is the line on the newspaper, "A fellow student has seemingly vanished from the famous school of Witchcraft and Wizardry." The Daily Prophet is not a school newspaper and wouldn't refer to the missing student as a "fellow" student. In terms of playability, the starting spaces and doors have all been moved around and some characters only need to roll a 1 to get into a room while others need a 2 or 3. The lack of consistency give some players an unfair advantage. The constantly shifting board, however, is fantastic. And the fact that everyone is dealt the same number of cards (the extras going into a free-for-all pile in Dumbledore's office) is a nice change. As is the need to go to Dumbledore's office to make an accusation. This way, when the game is coming to an end, the players who went first, won't be unfairly advantaged. The Help Cards, likewise, can be really helpful... or not so much. Madam Pomfrey is a clearly helpful card as she assists in a number of cases. Dobby... only one. So much for the special powers of the house elves. The playing pieces are a travesty. Using the clear tokens taken from the 2008 Reinvention game is completely unoriginal and doesn't fit with the feel of this game at all. Likewise, the cardboard discs that stand in for the Item/Spell/Suspect pieces are horrible and cheap. There really should have been pewter peices (or similar) like the other special editions. Despite the minor irritations and inconsistencies, this game, without a doubt, casts a wonderful spell upon the player. Especially the Harry Potter fan player... |
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