Weirdwood Manor Game Review

 The Weirdwood Manor game begins with a narrative that explains the situation. Lady Weirdwood rules a magical mansion that is the link between the mortal realm and the fairy lands. It's her job (along with her overseers, which can be players) to keep the forces of evil at bay. However, something went wrong, and some evil from the Fairy Kingdom broke into the estate and came to wreak havoc.

 Cooking is quite interesting. Everything about the game, from how the manor works, to the interesting abilities of the different characters you can play as, to how the side characters (called companions) act… everything serves this theme perfectly.

 Next, we'll take a look at how the game is set up and played. If you want to skip it, skip to my thoughts below. Otherwise, click on the link and check out how the game works!

PREPARATION

 Setup is relatively easy, although there are a lot of steps involved.

 First, setting up the main tablet:

• Collect the two halves of the estate.
• Place the rooms of the outer ring in your ring in random order.
• Collect and place the Day Corridor and place it inside the outer ring rooms with Day 1 at the top of the board.

• Place the middle ring rooms in your ring in random order.
• Place the corridor of time inside the rooms of the middle ring with the first morning location at the top of the board.

• Place the inner ring rooms in your ring in random order.
• Place six scarab tokens in the innermost room (Throne Hall).
• Place one scarab token in each room of the inner ring.
• Place three scarab tokens in random rooms of the manor (no room can have more than one scarab at this time).

 Shuffle the companion deck and place four companions face up as the current market.

 Shuffle the Overseer Tactics deck and place it near the board.

 Place tokens (scarab, min, knowledge, and power), dice, and dice near the board.

 Then the preparation of the player:

 Each player chooses an overseer and takes the player board associated with the selected overseer. Then they…

• …place the blue cube on the battle cube track.
• …place a red die in the 3-space of their health track.
• …place a pink cube at the start of their Power experience track.
• …place the red cube at the beginning of the combat experience track.
• …place the orange cube at the beginning of the tactical lane.
• …put whatever resources/power tokens the warden starts with into their supply.

 Players take appropriate positions. They are located in the hallway at the top of the board.

 Players take their personal deck of action cards, discard the Shadow Steps card (this card is always in the player's starting hand), shuffle the remaining cards, and deal two additional cards to form their starting hand.

 And finally, there's the fairy monster setup. This is different for each of the three monsters.

GAME PROCESS

 Weirdwood Manor is a cooperative game. A player's turn consists of playing an action card from their hand (required) and taking any additional actions (see below) they wish to take. If a player has an Overseer Tactic card in their hand, they can play it to improve the action card.

 When they play an action card, it will be played into one of the positions at the top of the player board. The selected position must not contain an action card. These positions are related to the time of day: morning, afternoon, evening or night.

 After the game, before anything happens, the time-of-day corridor advances (i.e. rotates counter-clockwise) at least one cell; it must stop so that one of the three time slots that coincided with the time of day where the action card was played is at the highest point. The player decides which of the three to use.

 If the day corridor changes so that the highest space moves from night back to morning, then the day corridor also advances to the next day. This can result in a game over (see below).

 The movement of these two corridors is vital! When they alternate, the rooms in the manor can become isolated. This can result in the players (or the fae monster) being trapped in the room until the corridor turns again. That is why it is important to carefully choose which of the three places to use for this time of day.

STANDARD ACTIONS

 There are several standard actions that can be obtained with the selected action card: these include:

 Move: With this action, the warden can move to any room in the estate, as long as he can trace corridors and rooms that are not blocked. A move cannot pass through a room with an opponent; if a supervisor enters such a room, the turn ends. If they have another turn, they can leave that room and continue to another.

 Portal: This action allows the warden to teleport from their current room to any other room in this way. An unblocked path is not required.

 Attack: This action allows the Warden to initiate combat. If there are scarabs in the room, that's what attacks; if a fae monster is in the room and there are no scarabs, the warden can attack the fae monster. The attacks are described in more detail below.

 Get Resources: These actions give the warden more resources.

 If a warden moves to or fights in a room where there are no opponents (either because they weren't there to begin with or because they were defeated), they can perform the actions provided by the room. Rooms have the ability to provide resources, receive warden tactic cards, recruit companions, create combat dice, and more. Actions granted by rooms (and special abilities, etc.) include:

 Forging Battle Dice: This action allows the warden to gain more dice to use in battle. There are three types of dice that can be forged: red dice that focus on offense, black dice that focus on defense, and blue dice that are a balance of both. The attacks are described in more detail below.

 Recruit Champions: With this action, the warden can recruit a companion. Companies have a resource cost (which increases with each additional partner). Sidekicks give the warden two things: an optional action they can use, and additional spaces they can play action cards on.

OPTIONAL ACTIONS

 As mentioned above, players can also take optional actions in addition to their actions from action cards and rooms. Additional abilities can be used before or after an action card is played. There are three additional actions:

 Character Abilities: Each Warden has three special abilities that must be activated. Each power can be activated once per turn.

 Companion Abilities: Companions have special abilities that usually require them to be exhausted (reversed). An exhausted ability cannot be used again until the companion is upgraded.

EXPERIENCE

 At the bottom of the player board are three experience tracks. Many things (mostly combat) will result in the player gaining experience. Each experience point gained moves any of the experience track markers along its track.

 When the token reaches certain thresholds, the warden will receive things like power tokens, resources, healing, or even swords (extra damage) and shields (damage protection) in all future battles. Winning this game is all about controlling your experience as well as controlling your opponents on the board.

END OF THE MOVE

 When a player has completed all the actions they are going to take, their turn ends. This means:

 Monster Phase: A fairy monster takes an action. This action comes from their special deck of cards and will involve advancing the time-of-day corridor by multiple slots, moving, attacking, or gathering strength. As the game progresses, the power of these actions increases.

 Scarab Phase: Remember when I said that action cards should be placed in the time of day position above the player field? Remember I said that satellites add positions that can be used for additional action cards?

 Well, this is important because if all positions are filled, then a special scarab phase occurs at the end of a player's turn.

 In this phase, more scarabs appear, the ones that were already there are moved, all the action cards you have in play are reset, and your companions are updated. The appearance and movement of scarabs is the dangerous part here: if two or more scarabs occupy the same room (except for the Throne Room), that room becomes invulnerable. Damaged rooms are flipped over and cannot be used until the infestation is removed. To remove the disease, the scarabs must be dealt with, and then the warden in that room must pay the price specific to that room.

 Action Card Phase: When the fae monster completes its action and the scarab phase ends (assuming it did), then the player adjusts their hand to have a number of cards equal to their current health (1 to 6). If they have too many cards, they fold; if they don't have enough cards, they take.

FIGHTS

 Combat is a big part of what will happen in the game. Overseers can initiate combat with an attack; a fairy monster can start combat during the monster phase.

 The fight boils down to the following:

 The Warden tallies up the total number of swords and shields they have as bonuses on cards in play, as well as bonuses on their experience tracks.

 They then add the result of rolling all the combat dice they have.

 After receiving these amounts, opponents roll combat dice.

 Compare the number of swords the warden has with the number of shields the opponent has. Each sword that exceeds the shields deals one damage to the opponent. Each scarab can take one point of damage; each fae monster is unique in how it deals damage.

 Compare the number of swords of the opponent with the number of shields of the overseer. Each sword that exceeds the shields deals one damage to the warden. Damage can be taken as health, combat dice, or power tokens. Any excessive damage is ignored.

 Blue combat dice have a special icon on one side. The effect of this icon is specific to each guardian and fairy monster. As for scarabs, when they jump, they are trying to escape to another room.

 Warden bonuses, as mentioned above, can be gained from his experience and action cards in the game (sword and shield symbols on the cards themselves). In addition, cards in the game located next to each other can also give bonuses.

 This provides an extra level of thinking that goes into where the action card is played. Overseer tactics cards add more bonuses to action cards and also provide wildcards in the upper corners. They match anything on adjacent cards. The two wild symbols can be used for any of the four bonuses pictured above. These bonuses last as long as the cards are in play. When the scarab phase occurs, all warden cards in play are discarded and all of these bonuses expire.

END OF THE GAME

 The end of the game is triggered in one of three ways:

 If the daily corridor exceeds 12 days, it is game over and the players lose.

 Each fairy monster has one or more game-ending triggers. If any of these triggers are met, the game is over and the player loses.

 If the health of the fairy monster is reduced to zero, it is game over and the players win.

CONCLUSIONS

 Weirdwood Manor has a lot going on. In any game you track…

• … the resources, experience, abilities and health of your supervisor.
• …your action cards and what permanent bonuses they currently provide.
• …your companions and what abilities they can provide.
• ...current day and time of day in the manor corridor.
• … where the scarabs and the fairy monster are.
• …the number of rooms that have been destroyed (or even destroyed with a Chaos Ogre).

 It might seem like too much when you play for the first time. But honestly, the icons and symbols are well designed and easy to read after a game or two. Shifting the time of day and daytime corridors can be difficult, but quickly becomes second nature. The paths of accessible spaces to move around are something that will throw you off guard for a while, but your eyes will instantly stop at the open and blocked passages.

 The operation of the manor changes with each random arrangement of rooms. There are a few advanced rooms in the game that can liven things up, just be careful with the rooms you use if you accidentally exclude rooms that allow companions (this is possible, but easy to fix). Add in the number of potential companions, warden tactic cards, etc… and you have a game with a lot of variation. And one that can be a bit of a desk pig.

 The bottom line is that this game works!

 It can be scary. However, in my humble opinion, the game can have two types of difficulty. The first type of bad is complexity for complexity's sake. The second type of good is a difficulty that serves the game and enhances the theme.

 One of the hardest games I've ever played is Starfleet Battles. This battleship game has - literally - over 300 pages of rules. These rules are written in fine print on pages divided into several columns and organized like a technical manual. However, there is not a single word in this rulebook that does not emphasize the theme of the game. Once you've mastered the basics (which won't take long), you're no longer looking for rules to see what you can do, you're figuring out what you want to do and looking for rules to tell you how to do it. The game is extremely difficult, but almost perfect for what it does.

 Complexity is a good thing at Weirdwood Manor. What you do feels like a powerful overseer with your loyal companions protecting an extra dimensional home from magical creatures. Each character feels unique. Each fairy monster feels unique. Every random item and choice you make during setup really affects how you approach the game.

 If only the rulebook was better organized.

 If you read Meeple Mountain regularly, you've probably seen some reviews where the quality of the writing and/or organization of the rulebook is an issue. Weirdwood Manor is another game where this is true. There is some difficulty to the game, but the rule book will give you the impression that it is much more difficult. Too many poorly organized rules, seemingly not enough editors.

 I really like Weirdwood Manor. Although I feel like I could use some clarification on a rule or two, the rules fit the theme nicely. The game doesn't have a solo mode per se; The rules say that to play solo, choose two supervisors and dare! I've played this way a few times and it works really well. This is one of the best co-op games I've played.

 what are you waiting for Go buy yourself a copy of Weirdwood Manor!