Board games and LEGO, how can you go wrong? Well, you could, if the game’s bad, but then you’d still have some LEGO to play with to help ease the pain. So, no, there’s really no down side here. Katie wanted to try some of these out, so we started with the least expensive one.
The pieces and game board are made out of LEGO, obviously, and the instructions sare very clear on how to put things together. It’s not particularly complicated. The game board is a set of shelves, which look like stairs to me, with magical components on them. There’s a skull, a goblet, a magic wand, and what we assume is supposed to be fire but looks more like a long red fingernail. To play the game, you move the owl to either a shelf or a row and roll the die (also assembled from LEGO). You may take the item corresponding to that color, if you don’t already have it. If you do have it, you’re out of luck.
For example, look at the picture of the assembled game below. The owl is at the top of the row so going downward, the player can potentially get the goblet (green), skull (blue), flame (red), or wand (yellow). If you look at the die, it came up yellow, so you can take the wand.
The object it to acquire one of each so you can cast your spell. You stick your items on one of the thingies with the brown bases, to keep track of what you have. When you win, you’re supposed to put all of the items into the cauldron for, well, I don’t really know why. So you get to play with the cauldron, I guess.
As there are four colors and six sides to the die, there’s also a white side and a black side. White means you can take whatever you want. Black means you get nothing, unless you’re playing with the optional rules, in which case black means you still lose your turn but can move the bat and block future players from landing on that spot and taking items from that shelf or row. The bat only moves when someone else rolls black.
The game plays in about five minutes. It’s simple, but it can get cutthroat if you use the optional rules. It’s a good sort of game to play when you’re waiting for other people to finish setting up all the pieces for Settlers of Catan or Arkham Horror, or waiting for all your players to arrive. There’s not a great deal of depth or incentive for re-play-ability (is that a word?), but it does a fine job of killing 15 or 20 minutes with 3 or 4 quick games.
I’ve got it, amongst the other LEGO games I own. Not my favorite of them, but it’s nice, fun, and easy.
Posted by Mark | July 7, 2011, 9:34 am