If self-isolation has you wishing you had more ways to enjoy your favorite board games minus the company, look no further for a little magic from this week’s Wizarding Wednesday! Our esteemed designer Kami has provided us with new solo play rules for an installation in every Potter fan’s game closet—Harry Potter Hogwarts Battle!
The popular, regularly cooperative deck-building game is normally for 2-4 players, allowing you and your friends to play as Harry Potter™, Hermione Granger ™, Neville Longbottom™, and Ron Weasley ™ to protect the wizarding world from evil foes. Now you can take on the challenge of enhancing abilities all on your own to defeat the villains of the game, with the same story that follows the movies and increases in difficulty as you play through all seven adventures!
Just like learning a new spell, these official Harry Potter Hogwarts Battle Solo Play Rules will have you studied up in no time to be rewarded with even more replay-ability, perfect for enjoying a single-player game night with a personal serving of butterbeer and English toffee.
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Setup
- Start by choosing your Hero! In addition to collecting your Hero’s starting deck, choose one starting Item from each of 2 other Heroes’ decks. Shuffle them into your deck to have a starting deck of 12 cards.
- Place two Control tokens on the first Location. When each subsequent Location is revealed, place one Control token on it. You may not remove these tokens! They are there to limit the number of Location spaces available.
- Remove all of the Imperio! cards from the Dark Arts Deck.
- Shuffle the Villain deck and draw four cards. Choose 1 of the 4 to protect Lord Voldemort™, placing it face down directly above the Lord Voldemort card at the bottom of the deck. Place the other three cards face up in the Villain row. Place the remainder of the Villain deck on top of Lord Voldemort’s protector.
- Find all six Reparo! Cards and place three of them face-up in 1 of the six available Hogwarts card spaces. Return the other three cards to the box.
Note: If you are playing with the Monster Box of Monsters Expansion, also find all six Tergeo! cards. Shuffle the 3 Reparo! and 2 of the Tergeo! cards together and place them in one stack face up on the game board. Return the other Reparo! and Tergeo! cards to the box.
Additional Solo Gameplay Rules
On your turn take the following Steps.
Step 1: Resolve Dark Arts Events and Horcrux or Encounters
Any card that references either the next or previous Hero refers to you. However, you are not your own neighbor—any cards with that effect only hurt you once.
If you are forced to roll a die for a Dark Arts event, roll the die twice and suffer the penalty from each die roll.
Each time you reach the end of the Dark Arts stack and have to reshuffle, add a Control to the Location.
Step 2: Resolve Villain and Creature Effects
If you are forced to roll a die for a Villain or Creature effect, still only roll the die once.
Step 3: Play Hogwarts Cards and Take Hero Actions
Any Hogwarts card that has an effect that specifically says “ALL Heroes” costs 1 Influence less to acquire. Unless:
- it is only part of the discard effect, or
- it is a dice rolling card that does not have the “ALL Heroes” phrase.
Those cards cost the value shown on the card.
Each time you roll a Hogwarts House die, gain double the result. Do not double the effect of the Creature die, only gain twice the reward on any Hogwarts House die.
Step 4: End Your Turn
At the end of your turn, you may save Influence up to the lowest value Hogwarts card available to acquire, minus one. For example: If after acquiring Chocolate Frogs, the lowest value card remaining in the market is Reparo! for 3 Influence, at the end of your turn you may keep up to 2 Influence on your player board for your next turn. If you are stunned at the start of that turn, you must discard the tokens, per the regular stun effect rules.
Winning
You win if you defeat Lord Voldemort before he gains control of all the Locations.
Hopefully you will have reached your goal at the end of this ongoing quarantine safe, healthy, and able to say you have beaten the game you never thought you could play on your own! If you have any questions or comments to share with us, comment below or tag us with @TheOpGames on our Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram with the #HogwartsBattleSoloPlay hashtag to let us know how this brave way of playing would make Dumbledore proud!
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