After Frostpunk: The Board Game I was wary of another Polish-developed game based on an existing property. Frostpunk is almost impossibly complex and challenging and opening up The Witcher: Old World I immediately feared that I was in for something similar.
Thankfully, The Witcher: Old World only appears to be an overly complex slog and is, in fact, a reasonably simple, fast-paced, action-packed and thrilling experience. 1-5 players can take part and play as competing Witchers, attempting to attain monster trophies the fastest.
Along the way they’ll need to explore, level up, fight, quest and more. In the sessions I’ve played I’ve tackled The Witcher: Old World solo and with one other player. While the box and rules make way for 4-5 players, two seem, in hindsight, like an optimal number for learning the game.
The Witcher: Old World
Opening the box for The Witcher: Old World is daunting. There’s a board and an absolute slab of cards alongside tokens, dice, characters and more. It was pretty overwhelming at first and with just me and one other player, The Witcher: Old World took over an hour to set up. The rulebook is handy and does provide decent guidance but it tends to skim over certain details which can make set-up more of a challenge. Additionally, some mechanics aren’t fully explained and some elements are referred to by more than one name which is not ideal. In the end, my friend and I simply decided to interpret parts of the rulebook in a way that made sense and we both agreed on.
Despite the lengthy set-up and the overwhelming number of pieces and elements, The Witcher: Old World is actually quite simple. Players take turns journeying around The Continent, exploring, tracking monsters and gaining trophies. Each turn begins by moving around the board. Using the cards in hand, you’re able to move to connected cities by discarding a card with a terrain icon matching your intended destination. Once there, you’re able to engage in the location activity. These include a range of options like levelling your attributes, playing dice, trashing cards and so on.
After engaging in the location activity, you can choose to move to yet another location (if you have the cards in hand to do so) or you can opt to fight, explore or meditate. You can only fight if another Witcher or a Monster are at the same location and you can only meditate if you have maxed out one of your stats. Exploration is available at any location but doing so begins the end of your turn.
Combat in The Witcher: Old World is a brilliant card-based strategy game. Players build a deck and hand from their available cards with the deck also serving as their HP. The more you use cards and the more damage you take, the lower your HP gets. You can increase your deck/HP through the use of Potions and special card effects, but eventually, you’re going to need to kill your enemy before they take you out. Cards come in a number of colours that represent different skills and abilities; attack, dodge, magic and the like. Cards with tabbed colours allow for card combos so you can continue to play cards in your combo until you run out of available links.
When fighting Monsters, the Monster is controlled by the other players and can choose one of two attacks each turn. While it’s simple, the Monsters are exceedingly dangerous and can take a Witcher out with ease if they’re not prepared. Fighting a Witcher is a fun diversion where each player tries to make their best combos to take the other player out first. You can’t be killed in The Witcher: Old World and there’s not really much of a penalty for losing against a Monster or a Witcher but, if you lose, you miss out on the Trophy which is the ultimate prize and will move you one step closer to victory. Trophies also bestow special abilities to be used during combat or your turn and can turn the tide in your favour.
Once combat is complete, players can choose to explore either the city or the wilds. Exploration is where all the lore happens and me and my mate had a great time exploring, listening to the short stories and choosing how to act. Depending on your choice you may earn cards, gold or stat boosts or you might acquire a quest.
Quests require players to travel to a specific location and once there they resolve. You might need to track down an NPC or locate a monster. You might need to pay someone off or engage in a lightning-quick, one-round fight. No matter what the quest is, they’re all detailed, interesting and written in an engaging way. Oftentimes, the reward from your quest will be more gold or cards etc, but sometimes you’ll earn something special. In my games, I’ve collected a companion and a range of equipment. Companions and equipment offer bonuses and special abilities during combat and like Trophies can nudge the odds in your favour depending on what they can do.
Once you’ve exhausted your turn, you’ll need to buy a new card from those available on the board. You do so by discarding cards from your hand per their cost. The bought cards are added to your hand and deck and so it’s important to purchase those that synergise with what you’ve already got or what you’re building towards. The longer you play, the larger your deck grows and the stronger your Witcher becomes but so too do the Monsters.
As fresh baby noobs, me and my mate didn’t quite grasp the need for haste as your rush to defeat Monsters before the other players so we took quite a long time and in doing so our Witchers became far too powerful. That being said, it was a great way to learn and means that when I play in future, I’m going to speed around the board, collecting Trophies while the people I’m playing with struggle to understand what’s happening. Poor sportsmanship? All’s fair when you’re a Witcher.
Playing The Witcher: Old World solo is less good. Serving as a glorified tutorial, playing by yourself teaches you the rules but leaves you with a crippled version of the game that’s far less engaging and far less enjoyable. I’d suggest players take a crack at the solo build to learn the rules and grasp the mechanics but you can learn just as well with a small group of players.
While I haven’t played with more than two players, I imagine that the sweet spot is 3, maybe 4. Turns can take quite a while and even though the rules suggest players overlap their turns, I couldn’t imagine the cross-talk would be conducive to a good experience.
Overall though, The Witcher: Old World is an excellent tabletop game that manages to capture the feeling of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and really makes you feel like you’re roaming The Continent, killing monsters for coin. I’m looking forward to many raucous nights with mates, racing to be the most fearsome Witcher in the land.
The Witcher: Old World was supplied for this review.
