First Witcher impressions

The Witcher: Old World Kickstarter was one I was eyeing really intently. It looked incredible but in the end we ended up not backing it. However now a bit later the retail version is here! 🥳 Thanks to Asmodee we got the chance to try it - and it’s pretty cool! Let’s take a look! 🕵️

It’s a competitive game where you all play as Witchers - genetically mutated people who specialize in monster hunting. 👹 Your goal is to gather 5 trophies, so it’s a race. You use your cards both to wander around the map and to use in fights. There is also deck-building, as during the game you will add/remove cards. 👍

In the first phase of your turn you can discard cards to move to locations with a matching terrain type, then do the location’s action. You are mostly trying to improve your 4 stats to level up and get stronger, but you can also e.g. gather money, get potions, find trails of monsters or play dice poker.

The second phase of your turn is either for fighting or exploring. (You can also meditate 🧠 if you max out a stat, to get a special skill and a trophy - that happens more rarely.)
🧭Exploring is one of my favorite things in games - in this case drawing an event card and choosing one of 2 options to see what happens. Sometimes you just get rewards, sometimes you get a quest that you can follow up on. I love the flavor these cards give.

⚔️Fighting is either against rival Witchers or Monsters. I think fighting is worth a post of its own, but it’s super fun as you can stitch together combos with your cards if their icons match. 😁

Finally you end your turn by adding a new card to your deck, which is a must. ☝️ In contrast to other deck-builders, here you are happy to increase your deck size, as it also symbolizes your hit points in fights.

I absolutely love the Witcher universe 😍 - the video games are phenomenal, and I played the Gwent card game a lot too, which is why it’s so awesome to see the officially licensed illustrations appear on the cards in this game too! 🥰 The game is easy to learn and play, and hits exactly the right spots for Witcher fans. We will surely share more about it!