Way to Hogwarts - Updated 21st of February 2019

Harry Potter Miniatures Adventure Game

15th of December 2018: Acquired This from Firestorm Games UK as Knight Models don’t ship to Finland. In this post I will review the game and miniatures and publish pictures of minis I’ve painted. This post will continue to evolve as we go forward. And what do I mean with “we”? This game will be a Christmas present to our family - my three daughter are all Harry Potter fans. And shhhhhh... don’t tell them about this!

Good or Bad?

There's been quite a bit of social media rage about this game, quality of components and specially how bad Knight Models is handling their deliveries and customer service. Advised by this I ordered the game from elsewhere (and I guess KM doesn't even ship to Finland). First I pre-ordered it from our local games store Fantasiapelit, but as December was about to to start and there was no guarantee, that they would get it before Xmas I moved to Firestorm Games in UK, whom was now saying they have it in stock. I was very pleased about the speed of their service, a week after I had the game in my hands. I also ordered additional blisters for Hogwarts teachers and Hagrid and Fang.

Based on what I've read so far from the rules book and seen (youtube videos and actual minis) and played, my current review of this product is as follows:

Pros

• Miniatures are totally awesome - you can easily recognise the actors / characters from them
• The feel of the product is very much Harry Potter
• Rules seem good - OK, I'm yet to play a game (edit: rules are good! Some 5 games under my belt now)

Cons

• Price of the basic game and separate miniature sets is very high
• Quality of some of the components (excluding miniatures) in the basic game boxed set is not as good as it should be (especially with this price tag)
• Product availability seems to be challenging
• Rule book should be more logical and have an index
• Rules writing is not clear enough; after a few games I have several questions, that I can’t find an answer for in the rules

As a summary: I love painting these miniatures, hope to get my girls excited about the game and even painting minis and I think I will like the game very much. Compared to this, I don't care if it costs a bit too much. I guess I'm a Harry Potter fan too! See links to other reviews below.

Painting Miniatures

First to get painted was Professor Snape or Kalkaros as he is called in the Finnish translation:

Lockhart and Umbridge

Lockhart mostly painted by my 10 year old daughter! Umbridge is called 

Pimento in the Finnish translation.

Professor McGarmiva (McGonagal) was painted together with my 8 year old daughter.

Death Eaters from the starter set, two wands already snapped :-(

She´ll get some more highlights when I get back home.

Wormtail 

First games

So Santa brought the game on Christmas eve and soon we were trying it out. Here are a few pictures of the games

In the latter game we added overlays and used to actual 3D terrain

to make it look better

Santa also brought a pretty cool "Griffindor Tower" set 

from Nanometal figures, kids are playing with it, but

it might work as a display set fot the miniatures

Few more games

Based on the first couple of "demo games" I would say:

• Game design is pretty excellent - this game has many variables, like how you build your "gang", scenario you play, quest cards you get, adventure cards revealed..., that make every game different and allow for plenty of tactical choices to be made
• With kids from 8 to 12 year old...
• Youngest ones were most excited
• Game is maybe not fast enough with all the rules
• One should strip the game off  from some of the rules to make it more simple  
• I like it a lot, but it won't probably be a huge hit amongst my kids, hence...
• I need to play this with wargaming friends from our club

Further analysis after some five games

Now I’m starting to get a grip on the rules... some lessons learned

• Hogwarts professors are very powerful; for example McGonagall and Snape have a free cast spell action per turn and can hence cast 2 spells per round
• As all spells have a cool down period, one should have plenty of spells to have something to cast each round (especially professors)
• One should have spells that cool down fast, otherwise you will find your models unable to cast anything
• Besides combat spells, one should take defensive spells too, Hogwarts faction even gets a healing spell
• Besides the scenario objectives, one can collect a good amount of victory points with Quest cards
• Many quests are treasures, one must pass a challenge test to obtain. Ability to move faster helps in getting to them. Same applies to quests related to reaching the enemy deployment zone

Stay tuned for more pictures as minis get painted and eventually (after Christmas) also game reports!

Reviews and "How to" -videos

• How to play
• Review
• How to Play with GAv Thorpe - part 1.
• How to play with G T part 2.
• Support group in Facebook