The Witcher 3 is undoubtedly one of the best role-playing games of recent years. Now the first board game from the Witcher universe was released. But can such an analogue implementation actually work? MeinMMO author Linda B. is a big Witcher fan and tested the game.
What is The Witcher: The Old World?
You can see for yourself in the official trailer for the board game here:
We are a witcher again, but Geralt is not there
One thing in advance: the game takes place well before the events we know. Geralt, Yennefer, Triss and Co. are therefore not part of the party.
“The Witcher: The Old World” lets us slip into the role of a witcher from one of 5 different witcher schools. I think this premise is pretty cool, since we haven’t seen that much of the other witcher schools yet.
You then travel through the world with this sorcerer, experience adventures, become stronger, kill nasty monsters and hopefully be faster than your competitors.
How does the game work? Roughly summarized, you carry out three actions every round:
At heart, “The Witcher: The Old World” is a deck builder. This means that everyone starts with the same (bad) cards and improves their personal deck over the course of the game by buying new cards and discarding old ones.
The special trick is to manage the few cards in your hand properly. Because each card can be used for movement, combat or to buy new cards. This makes buying new cards tricky because you have to pay attention to everything at the same time.
In general, I find the deck building mechanics here very innovative and successful. For example, many deck builders have the problem that cards cannot be removed frequently enough and the deck literally becomes littered. That is not the case here. At the same time, excessive power play is prevented because the number of cards simultaneously represents your life points in battle. So if you keep your deck small so you can constantly draw super strong cards, you’ll only have a small amount of life.
But what about combat? My biggest concern before the first game was the combat system. Because at its core it’s about fighting monsters. But how do you implement the action-packed combat system of “Witcher 3” as a board game?
Here too, the game surprised me positively with its cool mechanics.
Each card in your deck has a color that represents a specific combat action – for example, dodge, quick attack, or heavy attack. Most cards also have one or more combination options to which cards of the appropriate color can be placed.
When it’s your turn to fight, you now try to create the strongest combination chain possible.
Thematically, it’s really beautifully implemented. This makes it particularly easy for you to deliver a quick blow after an evasive maneuver, and as in Witcher 3, the combination ends after a heavy blow.
From PC to board game
In addition to the combat system, “The Witcher: Die Alter Welt” also contains many small and large things that you know from Witcher 3.
My personal highlight are the “exploration maps”. These cards tell little stories that always fit harmoniously into the world and often contain allusions to well-known quests or stories. In the end you have to choose one of two possible reactions, which of course have different consequences.
The stories can also trigger ongoing side quests that you can hoard in the best role-playing style.
In total there are 72 exploration and 56 quest cards in the base game. Of course, after a few games you will already know the cards. But I think the number is completely sufficient to have many hours of fun with the game. With the “Adventure Set” expansion, this number of cards is more than doubled. The add-on is currently not available in stores yet.
Of course, you also level up your sorcerer in various disciplines, collect potions and “rumors” with valuable information about monsters in order to be best prepared for battle.
The monsters themselves should also be familiar to Witcher fans. From the Nekkernest to the Muhmen from the Buckel Swamp to the Waldschrat, everything is represented.
And as a special bonus, there is even a mini-game in the board game, “Dice Poker”. Of course, the simplified trick variation cannot compete with a Gwent from “The Witcher 3”. But that would probably go beyond the scope here. And it’s definitely a fun change.
Overall, for me, the game does a very good job of taking up the essence of “Witcher 3” and transporting it into a new medium.
What is not there? You make decisions regularly in the game. However, apart from one special ability each, the sorcerers themselves remain largely characterless. For my taste, the characters could have been more different in terms of gameplay, but it doesn’t really bother you while playing.
Who would I recommend the game for?
Personally, I really enjoy the game. But it is not suitable for everyone. If the following points apply to you, I would recommend the game:
1. Board game connoisseur
The game’s mechanics are not overly complex. However, the game might seem a bit overwhelming for board game newbies.
Due to the many different elements of the game, there are also many small rules that must be followed. The enclosed overview cards are incredibly helpful. However, you can quickly get confused or forget something.
Plus, you really accumulate a lot over the course of a game. And where in a video game effects are often applied automatically, in a board game each effect must be considered individually. Keeping an overview is not that easy.
2. Witcher fans
Even though the game contains some cool mechanics, the many allusions to the original are what really make it so charming.
If you can’t do anything with “The Witcher”, then in my opinion you don’t necessarily have to buy this board game, especially considering the price.
However, fans of “The Witcher 3” in particular can rediscover a lot and immerse themselves in the world of sorcerers and monsters again.
3. Patient players
Since a player turn consists of several phases and many sub-actions, this can take some time, especially for players who like to think carefully.
The monster fights also involve longer phases in which primarily one person plays. In two-player games, this hardly matters at all, as the other person takes over the monster’s moves.
However, especially in games with four or five players, I see the danger of too much downtime, i.e. time in which you have to wait until it’s your turn again.
4. Adventurer
Although you compete against each other in the game, the player interaction with each other is rather low. Mainly you snatch monsters from each other. You can also fight directly against each other, but at least in our games this never happened because there were always more important things to do. Of course, that depends very much on the group of players.
Overall, “The Witcher: The Old World” remains an adventure game in which the journey itself is the goal.
You definitely need a “patch”.
One of the biggest criticisms of “The Witcher: The Old World” is the uniformity of the monsters in combat. Although each opponent has a special effect, the “battle cards” are always the same. This means the monsters don’t feel as varied as they should be.
The “Monster Hunt” expansion provides a noticeable improvement. This adds a passive and 4 special attacks to each monster. Additionally, you can now discover specific “weaknesses” to gain advantages in combat.
In addition, the expansion contains, among other things, the bombs known from Witcher 3, “mutagen cards” with which you can further specialize your sorcerers and a new playable character.
Unfortunately, “Monster Hunt” is one of the expansions that is not yet regularly available in stores. But if you enjoyed the basic game before the release, I can only recommend it.
A word about miniatures: Are you fans of “The Witcher” and miniatures? Then I can warmly recommend the deluxe version to you. In addition to the sorcerer figures included in the base game, you get miniatures of all 28 monsters.
All figures come in one piece and do not need to be assembled. The quality is surprisingly good for this reason.
What extensions are there? Since there are several different versions and extensions, here is an overview and roughly the associated prices:
The expansions “Monster Hunt”, “Adventure Set” and “The Wild Hunt” (cooperative campaign) were previously only available as part of the Kickstarter campaign. But they should also appear regularly in stores.
“The Witcher” is now popular in many areas. In addition to the original books, the video games and the board game, Netflix has also been producing a series about the witcher Geralt and his adventures since 2019.
However, many fans are mourning Geralt actor Henry Cavill, who recently left the production. You can find out how director Bola Ogun staged the final scenes with Cavill here on MeinMMO:
“I wanted to say goodbye to him in an epic way” – The Witcher director lets Henry Cavill go