Wandering Towers is a game designed by Michael Kiesling and Wolfgang Kramer, with art by Michael Menzel. It is published and available here in the US by Capstone Games.
This is a game that I am highly familiar with as I work with Capstone Games at conventions and sells tons of copies of Wandering Towers.
In this game, players will take turns playing cards to the middle of the table then moving either their wizards or any of the towers.
The point of the game is to get all of your wizards in the dark tower, Ravenskeep, and fill all of your potion bottles.
Fill your potion bottles by using a tower to cover any wizard (yours or your opponents), which fills exactly one bottle- no matter how many wizards you cover.
Each card has the potential to move wizards, towers, or picking one between the two options, with a value of movement between 1 and 5. Cards can also show dice, which allows you to roll a die and use that value. Play always moves clockwise around the board.
Anytime a wizard reaches Ravenskeep – using the exact number of spaces, but if they go over, they will move past it – the tower will move to the next available Ravenskeep symbol on the board or on the top of a tower. If the tower or board space had wizards, it’ll skip that space.
Keep chasing Ravenskeep around and hiding wizards under towers until one player meets the end condition and the game is over.
The tutorial for this one was created by Scribal, but I had to end up quitting out of the tutorial because I hit a point where despite doing the correct action, the tutorial error-ed out and wouldn’t progress. I did try to restart the tutorial and go through it once more in case it was on my end that I clicked something wrong, but it had problems at the same point. Disappointing, but the game is super simple and straight forward and the rulebook is fine.
This game is a lot of fun, easy to learn, and light enough for family gaming and game nights. The physical game is definitely worth it for the table presence of the towers building up.
I am not as keen on it on Board Game Arena for exactly that reason as well. As you can see in the screenshot, the top down view works, but it doesn’t give the same ease of remembering and visualizing which levels your wizards are hidden under. You can tell me the tower is 7 tall, cool, but unless I’m looking at it, my brain can’t remember it the same.
I’ll keep playing the physical game, but probably won’t return to the BGA version. If you’re thinking about it and the kind of person that will only buy a game if they’ve played it, then Board Game Arena it a great place to do that. Don’t let the visualization of the BGA version deter you if you like the gameplay though.
I rate this one at an 8 out of 10 on Board Game Geek. It’s not my standard big heavy game that I love, but it’s a super great game for kids and family.
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