OUR REVIEW

DELIVERY BY BROOM STICK

Broom

potions in Motion

You have always wanted to delve into the world of magic and to brew potions or ride high up in the air on a broomstick? Then you are exactly right with Broom Service, because here you can do exactly that, brew potions and deliver them within the realm to princesses, dragons and magicians.

Broom Service is the sequel game to the popular game of „Wie verhext“ by Andreas Pelikan. Contrary to “Wie verhext”, you play on a board on which you deliver your potions for a profit using your witches and Druids, and the first player is not forced to be brave.

You take up the roles of gatherers, witches, druids or fairies. Your goal is to brew potions and deliver them all over the magic realm for a profit with your Broom Service. But take care, sometimes clouds block your passage and you must remove them with magical means before you can deliver your potions.

In each round you have ten role cards to choose from and you choose four of them for the current round. Those role cards always provide one brave and one cowardly action. The brave action is very rewarding, but you run the risk of being left empty-handed. When choosing a cowardly action you are never left empty-handed, but they are less rewarding.

Whoever has most victory points at the end of seven rounds, wins the game.

Andreas Pelikan opens the box and shows us the nicely designed game board that features five different landscape types - there are forests, prairies, hills, mountains and also water. On those landscapes you find round and square towers in different colors and cloud spots, which are empty at the start. He also summoned a lot of other components from the box - there are figurines, playing pieces, event cards and role cards in four different colors as well as various clouds and colorful hexagonal tiles.

The designer recommends - for your first game of Broom Service - to choose the basic game with the red flags on the castles on the board, that is, the front side of the board. All players choose their favorite color - blue for me, and we all take the corresponding role cards and playing figurines which are placed on the large castles. After I chose blue, there is red for Clara, yellow for Anita, black for Günther, and as Andreas is also playing, he very restrainedly chooses last and takes the last remaining color on offer, green.

Now Andreas hands out one potion of each color and one magic wand to each player. The markers for victory points are placed on the little witch on the track for victory points. The event cards are laid out ready for use - should there be fewer than five players, there are between one and three enchanted roles in each round, which can be played, but do cost three victory points, as explained by Andreas.

Now we have seven rounds to try and to brew as many potions as possible and to deliver them for a profit to the population of the realm. At the start of each round a new event card is revealed. Such an event card can provide victory points for you at the end of the round, but take care, bad planning by you can leave you with penalty points.

But before we can start Andreas has to explain the roles in detail:

The realm of Broom Service is populated by ten different characters who bear really funny names and can do two different actions each. You can choose for of those characters for each round. To brew potions you need ingredients - for this purpose you can choose one of three different gathering characters, which give you different potions and/or magic wands.

The herb gatherer Krautvornix gives you - when played bravely - two green potions and one magic wand, but only one green potion when played cowardly.

Wurzelsepp the root gatherer brings two magic wands and one potion of orange color, when you play him bravely. Should you opt to play him cowardly you can choose between a wand and an orange-colored potion.

The last gatherer of the trio is Fruchtzwergi the gatherer of fruits. He gives you two purple potions and also one potion of your choice for brave play. For playing him cowardly he gives you one purple potion.

To move around on the game board and maybe deliver potions at the same time you must choose one of the witches.

Witches Heidi (With of the Prairies), Hyazinthe (Witch of the Hills), Walpurga (Witch of the Forests) and Bernadette (Witch of the Mountains) let you fly into an adjacent region of the same color. If you play them bravely, you may also deliver a potion.

Druids offer another opportunity to get rid of your potions and to collect a few victory points. There are two different types of druids, which may deliver potions to regions for which they are experts. Should they be brave druids, you even score three extra points. For hills and mountains you play Gipsdir, the Druid of the Peaks and can, should your figurine be in place, deliver a corresponding potion. Talismanni, the Druid of the Valleys, is used when your locations is on the prairies or in a forest.

And, finally, there is Donna Wetta the Fairy of the Weather. With her help you can magic away the troublesome clouds. To to do you discard as many magic wands as the small white star indicates. Now you have a clear path to travel across the land. The collected lightning bolts from clouds will earn you important additional points at the end of the game. In case you manage to play the Weather Fairy bravely, you will earn three additional victory points.

Which leaves us now with one question only: To whom and how do you deliver your potions?

Only witches and druids are allowed to deliver potions. Should you choose a witch for the job, you can only deliver a potion when you played bravely. If this is the case you travel to the respective area - but, take care! This area must be adjacent and free of cloud and you can never move across water. When you have arrived in the new area you take a look around and find yourself a tower that, on the one hand, corresponds to a color in your personal stock, and on the other hand, is located in the new area or on a neighboring border. If you have a suitable potion, you can now deliver it to a suitable tower and take your reward.

Druids must already be in a suitable region to be able to deliver. The Mountain Druid delivers on hills and mountains, the Valley Druid delvers to towers in woods and in the prairies. If you did play a druid bravely, you rake in three extra points.

Rewards for delivering a potions are always victory points, and could sometimes also be magic wands. Those wands you simply pick up and play continues. There are two different kinds of towers, round towers and square towers. Square towers have a high demand of potions and you can do deliveries there at any time, you simply put your delivered potion back into general stock. The round towers can only take one delivery, but usually give you higher rewards. Potions delivered to those towers are put on the towers and indicate that no more deliveries are possible there.

After seven rounds the game ends. Now you add to your score special points for lightning bolts and remaining resources. If you managed to collect most points, you win. In case of a tie you win with most resources.

Armed with those information we can begin; all players choose their roles and after they made their choice, Andreas reads out the first event; „Gefällige Gebiete - Protected Places“.

Günter is starting player, chooses the Herb Gatherer and reads out the top text on the card: „ I am the brave Herb Gatherer and want to create two green potions and a magic wand”. As he is an experienced „Wie verhext“ player, he of course playes bravely and hopes for the big profit. Now all other players in turn must choose the Herb Gatherer if they have it in hand and decide on brave or cowardly. Günter is still hoping, because Anita and Clara don’t have the Herb Gatherer in hand and simple say „pass“. Then it is Kati’s turn and she decides on cowardly - she is afraid of the last player - and reads out the bottom text on the card: “ I am a cowardly Herb Gatherer and brew a green potion instantly”; she takes a green potion and and her turn passes. This decision was absolutely right, because Andreas also has the Herb Gatherer, decides on brave and takes two green potions and a magic wand. But flying high can result in a fall - Andreas is now the starting player for the next round and has to decide if he takes the risk or is content with less. As he also is an experienced player, he of course chooses the cowardly Hill Witch and moves immediately into an adjacent hill area. In the last but one position Clara is happy after an appraising look at Kati and chooses brave, as she believes to be a good judge of persons and thinks she is the last one in the round aiming for the hills. But she is wrong - Kati is the bravest Witch of the Hills and may deliver a potion after her arrival in the hills. In this way all cards are played, until all players have played all their cards. Finally, the victory points according to the event card Gefällige Gebiete- Protected Places are assigned and a new round can begin.

Each player chooses four roles from his deck of ten roles and Kati reads the new event card: „Wie in alten Zeiten … As in the days of old“. In those good old days each player was a brave one, so now each player who plays a card for the first time has to play it bravely, and this goes for Kati, too, of course - she needs wands and plays the brave Herb Gatherer and is lucky - none of the other players did select Krautvornix and so she wins the big price. But must lead again bravely and is out of luck for the round: She plays the brave Weather Fairy. Andreas plays her cowardly, as three players are behind him. He removes a cloud with three lightning bolts, and pays six magic wands into general stock. Anita is the last player of the round and plays the brave Weather Fairy, calls out “Donna Wetta” and and acquires a lightning bold for two wands and is rewarded with two extra points for being brave, which she instantly marks on the victory points track. The round is complete and Anita is the starting player for the seventh and last round.

Most unwanted or unlucky events events happen in the last round, because we always must follow suit if we have the in hand that was lead and if someone plays the Druid before you have acquired a suitable potion you are left empty-handed. But in this last round we are lucky, because each player who decides on playing his role cowardly, can - thanks to the “Schwarzmarkt - Black Market” choose three victory points instead of the cowardly action. Anita plays the Witch of the Forest at the start, Kati is already loudly complaining about this choice, as there is a prairie between her and her wood; well, bad luck, the risk was too high, the sequence for her big plan is destroyed. But luckily, she can opt to take three victory points for playing cowardly and thus is not left completely empty-handed.

Günter plays the brave Mountain Druid for his last card and hopes for a profitable outcome, but Andreas is also standing on a mountain and delivers a purple potion there with his Druid and finishes the game with three extra points.

At the end of the game you add up your lightning bolts: Andreas owns five of them and scores 19 victory points, Kati receives only 15 points for her four bolts. Anita, Günter and Clara collected three lightning bolts each and score 9 victory points for them. So Andreas wins with 80 points, closely chased by Kati with 78. Günter and Clara share 3^rd position with 73 points and five resources each, and the last place goes to Anita with 68 points.

If you are already experienced witches and druids in Broom Service, the game offers some variants for the basic game, which I will mention briefly now:

Storm Clouds:

Those clouds can be used on both sides of the board and offer additional options for more victory points and actions to all players. They are shuffled together with the normal clouds and randomly placed.

Mountain Tiles and Amulets:

Those items are an option for the board side used in the basic game and must be used when playing on the back side of the board. Both tiles are randomly placed on the corresponding mountain spaces. If you enter a space with such a tile you instantly implement the corresponding action or take an amulet of the color. Those amulets award additional points at the end of the game.

Forest Tiles:

Forest Tiles must be used when you play on the back side of the board. You place them on the spaces provided for them in forest regions. The forest tiles offer additional once-only advantages which you can use at any time of your choice during the game.

Hill Tiles:

Finally, there are Hill Tiles, too. Those are, in analogy to the forest tiles, always placed on the hill regions when you play on the back side of the board. There are two different types of hill tiles. On the one hand, there are five stone circles - if you enter one of those, the “turbo” in your broom ignites and you fly to the corresponding stone circle in your destination area. Upon arrival there you may deliver a potion immediately, should you have played a brave witch. On the other hand, there is a tower of orange color, which does not ignite your turbo, but offers seven victory points instead.

Broom Service is the sequel game to the well-liked card game „Wie Verhext“ by Andreas Pelikan. The addition of the game board is very well executed and introduces a new element to the game which notably enhances the game experience. The additional variant options introduce levels suitable for each type of player. Beginners can improve their play and experts can also enjoy the basis game, because the fun in playing is great in each of the versions.

However, the game is not suitable if you are a timid player with weak nerves, because you need to cope with interference from other players with your plans. As we have entered a new era for the game mechanism, in Broom Service even the starting player can choose to play cowardly and thus face only small risks. But exactly this choice between brave and cowardly is what introduces the challenge and thrill to the game. All in all, a round, complete and felicitous game from our Austrian dream team of designers, Andreas Pelikan and Alexander Pfister.

Kati Knoll

Players: 2-5

Age: 10+

Time: 75+

Designer: Andreas Pelikan, Alexander Pfister

Artist: Vincent Dutrait

Price: ca. 30 Euro

Publisher: alea/Ravensburger 2015

Web: www.ravensburger.de

Genre: Role selection, collecting

Users: With friends

Version: de

Rules: de en fr

In-game text: yes

Comments:

Board game version of Wie verhext

Basic mechanisms remain, somewhat simplified

Attractive design

A game for all kinds of players

Compares to:

Wie Verhext

Other editions:

English/French edition

My rating: 6

Kati Knoll:

A cute excursion into a land full of magic that has something to offer to the casual player as well as to the experienced frequent player.

Chance (pink): 1

Tactic (turquoise): 2

Strategy (blue): 0

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 0

Communication (red): 0

Interaction (brown): 3

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0