The Components

The Book: The most eye-catching element among WWW's components is the box, which is actually a book. It's designed to look entirely like an antique book, with wide curved spine and even a metal clasp on the side. The book is hinged at the middle and opens up to a hollow interior, with a divider sectioning the innards into two parts. It's admittedly overdone, but it nonetheless looks entirely cool.

Dice: These are the heart of the game. There are nine wooden dice, each with three orange symbols and three black symbols, all drawn from a pool of six different symbols. These show skulls, spiders, lightning bolts, and other spooky and magical emblems.

The wood on the dice varies from light to slightly dark, and the orange symbols can be hard to read on the dark dice, but Asmodee thoughtfully provided for this by including stickers if you have any dice that are hard to read. I used them to replace the orange symbols on one of my dice.

Board & Witches: The board is a small, 4-panel board that's really just a scoring track. The witches are small cardboard figures which are mounted in plastic bases, and which you use to mark your location on the track. Each of these figures depicts a unique witch with a background in one of the player colors.

These components--as well as the cards--all feature high-quality artwork, which is pretty much a trademark of Asmodee and doesn't disappoint here.

Cards: Each player gets a set of 9 spells cards, which depict the 9 possible magic symbols. These are half-size cards with colorful backs that depict the player colors. There is also a deck of 27 "black magic" cards, which grant the player various powers, and have the most attractive artwork in the game.

Overall Wicked Witches Way has great quality components with entirely beautiful artwork. However I also have somewhat mixed feelings when a game is this overproduced--which at least the box is--because it drives up the price, though $29.99 is still relatively reasonable.

However with this much quality and beauty I can't justify giving WWW anything but a Style of "5" out of "5".

The Gameplay

The object of Wicked Witches Way is to gain the most points by reaching the finish line first in a broomstick race and/or impressing the crowd on the way with aerial maneuvers.

The Dice Roll: Each round of play begins with a dice roll. The nine dice are thrown into the bottom half of the book. The players carefully study the results and at some point one of the players grabs the divider and flips it shut, blocking the dice from view.

At this point each player secretly uses his spell cards to compose a "spell formula". This is a set of icons that were depicted in one and only one color on the dice. For example, if one or more orange lightning bolts had appeared it could be used as part of an orange formula, but if both an orange and a black lightning bolt appeared, it couldn't be used for either.

After each player has secretly composed his spell they're all then revealed simultaneously and the book is opened back up to show the dice. Every player who laid down a legal spell gets to move forward a number of spaces equal to the number of cards in his formula.

There's no penalty (other than not moving) if you got the spell wrong unless you closed the book, in which case you go back two spaces.

Perfect Spells. If a player laid down an optimal formula, meaning he used all the possible icons of a color, he gets a bonus.

If it was an orange formula he goes forward 2 extra spaces.

If it was a black formula he gets to draw a number of black magic cards equal to the number of cards in his formula and keep one of them.

There's one exception to this: the lead witch(es) is always cursed and can't benefit from perfect spells.

Black Magic: The black magic cards do various things and can be played at various times. They might allow a trailing witch to leap forward, a witch to add an icon to her spell after the dice are revealed, a witch to hex the lead character back three spaces, or something else. They're all beneficial (to the caster).

Some black magic cards are "acrobatics" cards which give bonuses at the end of the game.

Winning the Game: The game ends when a player hits the finish line. That turn is played out. Anyone who gets to the finish gets 23-25 points. Everyone else earns 22 or less points, depending on where they ended up. Each player adds any acrobatics points on to this total, and the player with the highest total wins.

Relationships to Other Games

Wicked Witches Way is generally a unique game. If you look at the components, it seems a little like a roll-and-move game, and if you read the rules it seems a bit like a memory game, but neither of these is really accurate. If anything I'd call Wicked Witches Way a pattern matching game that reminds me more of SET than anything else. But, as I said, it's largely unique.

The Game Design

Overall Wicked Witches Way is a very quick-moving game that's clever and fun to play.

The whole close-the-book mechanism is what makes the game. It really gets your heart racing, trying to figure out a legal spell before anyone else. However there's also some tactics and brinkmanship. You might slam the book closed before the other players can get particularly good spells if you're in the lead (and don't want anyone to get perfect-spell bonuses). If you can make a quick assessment about a few legal icons you might even slam the book shut and guess what the other icons were.

There's also interesting strategy based on the "curse" that attaches itself to the lead witches; as a result you might lurk just behind the leader in hope of getting a bonus to leap into the lead at just the right time.

Finally, the orange/black dichotomy is interesting. One of our players felt that the black bonus is better than the orange, and though I don't necessarily agree with him, if you were specifically going for one of the colors, that would create a whole different set of strategies.

On whole Wicked Witches Way is a very light game, but nonetheless one that's exciting, innovative, and fun. I've given it a "4" out of "5" for Substance.

Conclusion

Overall, Wicked Witches Way is a well worthwhile game, though it'll appeal more to casual gamers and families and not to people who insist on serious games.

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