Beautiful on the outside, limited on the inside

Do you want to learn spells, collect materia and feed your magical familiar as you are taking part in the Annual Grand Rite? SpellBook promises you exactly this. It’s a family-weight game in which players are competing Wizards. The game features cool acrylic tokens (materia) with different runes that are the centerpoint of the game.

The game flow can be easily described: Rounds consist of a Morning, Midday and Evening Phase.
🌅 Morning is mainly about acquiring materia: taking either one from the display or drawing 2 random tokens from a bag.
🌄 Midday let’s you optionally feed a materia to your familiar. You cannot use it anymore but it provides points at the end of the game.
🌜 Evening is about learning. If you have enough materia you can learn a spell. Interestingly these have multiple levels, but you can only learn one. So you can opt to go for a cheaper weaker effect, or wait for a bigger payoff.

After you have learnt some spells, you can use the actions of them during these phases instead of the basic actions, though some spells might have a one-off or ongoing effect.

For each game you will randomly choose 7 spells (1 spell of each color), and each player plays with those exact cards. Basically this is the game - you play until someone learns their 7th spell or fills up their familiar board with materia, then count up points. It’s mostly about planning in what order to learn your spells and doing so, while being influenced by the types of materia you get.

💬 To us the game fell short. I kept re-reading the rules in hopes that I’ve missed something that makes it click.. But unfortunately no. Ultimately it’s too linear and repetitive. Even though there is some engine building with the cards, not much changes between games and the decision space feels limited. On most turns you are just collecting materia in hopes that you can pay for something. It’s a pity, because the components and art are nice, and being wizards is always a cool theme. Some modules, more things to do and more variability could do wonders for this game.