While wandering through Target before Christmas, I stumbled across Hocus Pocus, designed by Prospero Hall and published by Ravensburger and based on the Disney movie by the same name.
I have to say that I never really got into the movie Hocus Pocus but it's one of my wife's favorites so I knew I had to get this for her for Christmas. She was really excited to see it and we soon broke it to give it a test run.
Holy crap. This is a kids game? What are we doing wrong?!?
As the title for this post implies, we lost against the Sanderson sisters... three time in a row. We did manage to win the fourth game... by slightly cheating but hey, a win is a win right? Maybe?
The mechanics for the game are very simple. You start with a hand of three or four cards (depends on how many players you have...) and you go around the table playing the cards into the "cauldron". The card must either match the ingredient or the color to be played. If you match all the ingredients, all the colors, or have one of each ingredient and one of each color, then you stun one of the sisters and go to the next round.
Simple, right?
The trick is that you play with your hand closed and aren't supposed to discuss your cards unless you have Binx the cat in front of you. Some of the cards have his icon which brings him into play. During your turn you can also ask the other players one piece of information about their hands, but that's it! "Does anyone have newt saliva?" or "Does anyone have green cards?"
While you might not think this limited information would amp up the difficulty too much, it really does! You have to cooperate without actually being able to tell each other what you have which makes things very tricky. On top of that, there is also a chance the sisters will cast a spell on you. Play a card with the spell book symbol and then look out!
On top of all of this, there is the limit on the cards. If you run out of cards and are required to draw, then game over man! While this isn't too bad the first time through, it gets harder with each round because you don't get all of the cards in the discard pile back. Only the cards with the Binx or Spellbook icons are shuffled back into the deck so not only have you lost a number of cards, you've kept all of the spells, some of which force you to draw more cards!
After our third lose, we decided to play with all of our hands open just to see if a win was possible. It is, but man it's not easy!
So is this a good game? In my opinion, yes. Sure it keeps kicking our butts but so does Ghostbusters: Protect the Barrier and we still enjoy getting that one to the table. What makes it so good is game play itself is pretty basic so you can get right into the action. The tricky part is getting all your ducks in a row to actually pull out the win. I think once we get our head around the strategy and card distribution a bit better this game will get easier but I like that this simple game really makes you stop, think, and work together to win. If you are looking for a light but challenging game that won't break the bank, I recommend giving this one a try. Until next time...
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