Welcome to the first post in the new "Late to the Game" series – a collection of posts featuring all sorts of games as I try to become a more complete "gamer." I am always on the lookout for a new family board game so when one of my neighbours was selling off a copy of the Harry Potter Diagon Alley Board Game, I snapped it up without ever having heard of it before. The game was launched in 2001 to tie in with the release of the first Harry Potter film and features the distinctive artwork of that Potter era. The whole game is beautifully designed. The board is colourful and fun to look at, the playing pieces are colored Sorting Hats which are nicely chunky and the other pieces all look and feel good quality. Also included in the game is a vast amount of wizarding money (gold Galleons, silver Sickles and bronze Knuts for those unfamiliar with the currency), plastic coins which you collect from Gringotts and which add to the game’s fun factor.
The box states that the game is for three to six players however I played the game quite happily with only two, the third would be the banker who is entirely unnecessary provided you are willing to take your own coins from the Gringotts stash. The aim of the game is to travel around Diagon Alley collecting all the items you need to begin school at Hogwarts; robes, book, wand etc. You begin at The Leaky Cauldron and travel clockwise around the board, stopping into shops to buy your supplies and withdrawing additional money as you pass Gringotts. The first player to collect all their supplies and make it back to The Leaky Cauldron is the winner. There are however, several things hindering you from achieving this goal.
1. In order to buy an item you need to give the shop the exact coins required, for example an owl costs one Sickle and one Knut so you cannot give the shop one Galleon and get change instead. You begin the game with two of each coin type and collect one more of each whenever you pass Gringotts. The “exact coins only” game mechanic forces you to circuit the board multiple times although you can limit the number of times you need to go around by thinking ahead regarding which coins you are using.
2. Excepting wands, there aren’t enough items for everyone. There is always one item fewer than would be required for every player to gather all their supplies, e.g., if three of you are playing there will be three wands in Ollivanders but only two books, two robes, etc. If the shop has sold out before you get there you will have to rely on spell cards to get that item.
3. Spell and havoc cards are drawn by rolling swirls on the dice or by landing on a spell space on the board. Sometimes they can help you (one great card is the “Proceed to Gringotts, withdraw cash then proceed to a shop of your choice” card) but others force you to relinquish items or send you to the other side of the board from where you need to be.
4. You can be banished to Knockturn Alley by picking up that havoc card or by rolling two swirls on the dice, you can also choose to enter it for reason I will explain later. Knockturn Alley runs around the board behind the shops but not behind the Leaky Cauldron and there are significant drawbacks to being there. You cannot withdraw money when you pass Gringotts, you cannot use any cards you hold (except the “Leave Knockturn Alley” card which would be fairly useless if you couldn’t use it there) and you cannot enter shops you pass unless they are closed. To escape you need to either use the spell card, roll doubles or reach the Exit Gate near the Leaky Cauldron.
5. Players can close shops using a spell card, preventing others from entering and buying their items or from withdrawing cash if Gringotts is closed. Shops can only be re-opened by another player using the “Close any Shop” card to close a different shop instead (only one shop or Gringotts can be closed at a time). If a shop is closed, you can choose to enter Knockturn Alley in order to use the shop’s back door and buy your items.
As well as walking around the board, you can also choose to travel by Floo Powder if you have that spell card in your hand. Floo Powder can allow you to travel directly from shop to shop (and also to The Leaky Cauldron) much faster than walking, however as we all know Floo Powder can be unreliable and you might end up in completely the wrong place instead. Floo Powder is used by stating aloud whether you think a die will roll odds or evens before rolling. If you guess correctly you move to the location of your choice, if not you jump anticlockwise around the fireplaces for the number shown on the die. This means it is entirely possible to guess incorrectly and still end up moving directly to the location you wanted to visit.
The game is simple to play but requires a certain level of strategic thinking in order to succeed, as well as a healthy dose of luck. Thinking ahead allows you to spend your money wisely and minimise trips around the board, but if another player plays a spell card on you, all that planning can be for naught. The suggested age is from eight years and that seems about right. The instructions include simplified rules for younger players age six up, these include increasing the number of items available in the shops and removing the spell and havoc cards as well as changing the rules regarding the use of Floo Powder.
My husband and I played the game several times in a night with each game lasting around 20 minutes, although I imagine a game with more players would last far longer. It is a whole lot of fun with the opportunity for some truly vindictive playing thanks to the opportunities to steal items from other players and block them from getting where they need to go. My husband isn’t an especially vindictive player, however I know some people who are and games with them could certainly get very interesting! There were a few problems I discovered in a later game with a visiting friend. Between us we quickly snapped up all the available items in the shops and at one point were evenly split with items. At this point the closing shops feature, as well as withdrawing cash from Gringotts, became somewhat pointless (the former still has some uses but less than the rest of the game). Knockturn Alley is also less of a threat in this situation as you no longer need to enter buildings, although it is still a drawback as there are no spell points on the ground along Knockturn Alley. We ended up playing for a very long time with nothing happening as we constantly drew spell cards to close shops or use Floo Powder instead of ones that allowed us to steal objects from one another. If we did draw one, the other player had often been collecting cards for so many turns they had a "defend yourself from attack" card which negated it. The game in fact got so repetitive that we agreed to a set number of rolls before deciding a winner based on who had the most items (although as it happened this triggered a run of great cards for my opponent which saw her win the game 5 turns later!). However ignoring these small issues, the game will definitely be on our play list for the foreseeable future when we have people over for games nights.
Rating 4/5
The Diagon Alley board game is no longer available to purchase new, however many copies can be found floating around eBay and other second hand markets.
