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Whirling Witchcraft box art
2021 Ranked #2,105

Whirling Witchcraft

Engine-building game where witches brew potions and pass excess ingredients to rivals until their cauldrons overflow. Powerful recipes can become a liability, so every production chain must be tuned to overwhelm others before it backfires.

Family Games Fantasy Simultaneous Action Selection Variable Player Powers Contests: Fastaval Design Competition

Players

2-5

Play time

15-30 min

Age

14+

Complexity

1.83/5

Rating

7.20

Harder to teach Highly interactive Deep strategy

Overview

At a glance

Is this game right for my group?

ABG editorial scores on a 1–5 scale.

Teachability 2.6/5

Harder to teach

Replay value 3.9/5

High replayability

Interaction 3.7/5

Highly interactive

Player scaling 4.0/5

Scales well

Strategic depth 4.5/5

Deep strategy

See all 5 specifications

How it plays

How does it play?

Being a witch is all about wielding powerful magical ingredients — but a witch can wield only so much power before everything blows up in their face.

Core mechanisms

Key systems that shape the decisions players make.

Read the full game description

Being a witch is all about wielding powerful magical ingredients — but a witch can wield only so much power before everything blows up in their face. Choose your recipes wisely to clear your workbench and stick others with too much raw material because the first player to overflow their nemesis' cauldron with enough ingredients wins! In Whirling Witchcraft, you start with a hand of four recipe cards, as well as a number of ingredients on your workbench; ingredients come in five types, and you have a limited number of spaces for each type on your workbench. Everyone plays simultaneously during each round. You all choose and reveal a recipe from your hand at the same time, then you can use as many recipes in play in front of you as you wish to convert and transform ingredients. Maybe you'll turn a mushroom into the harder-to-find mandrake, then you can turn two mandrakes (using an older one and the one you just created) to make three mushrooms. You can use each recipe at most once a round, and when you're finished, place all of the final ingredients into a cauldron, then pass it to your neighbor on the right. They must then fit all of these ingredients on their workbench — and if they can't, they must return the "extra" ingredients to you for placement in your "Witch's Circle". If you now have at least five ingredients in your Witch's Circle, the game ends and you win; otherwise you all pass your recipe cards in hand to the player on your left, refill your hand to four cards, then start a new round. The game includes personality cards you can use to give each player a unique power, in addition to a different set of starting ingredients. Some recipes can be played in either of two directions to help you customize how you transform ingredients, and recipes might also have arcana symbols that give you bonus powers when you collect enough of them. Can you put together the right cookbook to land your neighbor in hot water?

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Editions

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Edition Year Language Publisher / Region
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Player resources

Rulebooks, player aids, FAQs, and solo resources.

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Game and edition data

All specifications (5)

Play and group

Players
2–5
Best with
2–5
Play time
15–30 min
Age
14+
Complexity
1.8/5
Credits and catalog connections

Credits

Designers

1
Erik Andersson Sundén

Artists

2
Luis Francisco Weberson Santiago

Publishers

1
Alderac Entertainment Group

Linked items

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