More and more Harry Potter merchandise is available these days. Despite some misgivings about helping Warner Bros I could hardly say no when my dad brought me home the new Quidditch card game the other day. Since I am sure many of you will be keen to buy it, I thought I`d post a little review of the game.
As you will probably have worked out already, this game simulates a Quidditch match between those renowned rivals, Gryffindor House and Slytherin House. Upon opening the attractive and compact box, you will find three packs of playing cards, one for each house and one set of `pitch cards`. There is also a copy of the rules, which are fairly straighforward. It only takes a few games to fully understand how to play. The cards themselves are well designed, with some nice artwork. Now onto the game itself.
At the start of the game the Pitch cards are placed face down between the two players and each player draws the top five cards from their `house` deck, which forms the starting hand. The Slytherin player (who always starts first), draws a card from the Pitch deck and places it face up on the table. There are four types of Pitch cards, Bludgers, Quaffles, Goals and of course, the legendary Golden Snitch. The players play for these balls by using player cards from their own decks, each of which have a numerical value. The player showing the higher value card wins the ball. As in the `real` thing, there are four types of player, Keepers, Beaters, Chasers and Seekers. The Seeker is the only player, of course, who can attempt to catch the Golden Snitch. In addition to player cards, each house deck contains spells, jinxes, fouls and referee cards, which can also be played during each round. For example, a foul card can remove the opponent`s Keeper, which will result in a free goal, unless the other player has a Referee card, that is! Spells and jinxes can be used to reduce the value of opposition cards, remove cards from your opponents hand or to improve your own hand, by retrieving good cards that have already been played. At the end of each round, the cards played are discarded and the players draw new cards from their house deck, making a hand of five again. A new round can then begin. Each Goal and Quaffle card captured scores ten points, while each bludger captured allows you to remove a card from your opponent`s hand. The Golden Snitch is worth 150 points and its capture ends the game immediately.
Now, the verdict! I really enjoyed the game, but I have two criticisms, one major and one minor. The minor criticism is that it would have nice if real characters from the books had been used. Playing a `Draco Malfoy` card would have been much more fun than a `Slytherin Seeker` card. There are dozens of pupils from each house named in the books, so it would have easy to add this feature. The higher value players could have been the ones who represent the Houses at Quidditch, (Oliver Wood, Marcus Flint and so on), while the lesser value cards could have been represented by other members of each house. This doesn`t detract too much from the enjoyment of the game, however, it would have been a nice enhancement.
The major problem with the game is that the value of the Golden Snitch is far too high. At 150 points, it is virtually impossible for the player who loses the Snitch to win. He could have 14 more Quaffles than the other player and still lose. This makes the rest of the game meaningless, as both players will keep strong cards while they wait for the Snitch to come into play, not seriously trying to capture the other cards. However, I found that by adjusting the value of the Golden Snitch to 40 points, the game is made much more playable. A good run of cards can easily put you 50 or 60 points ahead, and the snitch can stay in play for a long time, which makes for a more exciting game. With a lower value for the Snitch, the players are also encouraged to use their better cards immediately to try to build a lead, or indeed to catch up with their opponent.
To sum up, I think the game is good value at £7 (around $10) and would recommend it to all Harry Potter fans.
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