Board Game Review! Village Crone from Fireside Games

Greetings Fellow Board Gamers!

 

Our featured game for the weeks of October 11 and October 18 is a game from Fireside Games, Village Crone.

Village Crone on Board Game Geek – here.

* Note – This is not a ‘How to Play’ or tutorial type article. This is a review of the game components and brief review of game play.

You and your fellow players are medieval witches who have stumbled upon Wickersby, a village without a crone in this worker placement, resource management game with spellcasting!

Wickersby is built from 6 modular boards, with different locations holding the ingredients flour, fire, silver, and soil. Send your familiars out to harvest these ingredients and use them to cast spells in order to complete Witch’s Scheme cards. Each of the cards is worth 1, 2, or 3 points, which also indicates how difficult the scheme is to complete. Make villagers fall in love, turn them into frogs, or teleport them to different locations as you work to complete your Witch’s Schemes. Every scheme you complete brings you closer to the 13 points needed to win and be declared The Village Crone!

This is a resource gathering and worker placement type of game, with a little bit of sabotage sprinkled on top!

Rules

The rule book is a easy to follow and it doesn’t take long to find a rule if you need to reference the rule book during play.

Components and Game Play

You can find a review video on my YouTube channel that shows all of the components with a brief description and also a review of the game play.

You can follow this link directly to my video – HERE.

Summary

This game is just really cool with how it’s set up and how it plays. You could easily re-skin this game for other IP’s, just like Castle Panic was (hint-hint, Fireside! We need a Star Trek version!). I love the separate board pieces and how you can rearrange the board for loads of different game set ups. I like the mechanics of the game, and I like how the turn order works. The turn order keeps players engaged in what the other players are doing, and the game seems to flow smoothly because of it.

We had lots of fun with this game, not just trying to complete schemes, but also trying mess each other over. I saw that there wasn’t a very good rating for this game on Board Game Geek, and I don’t think it deserves such a low rating. There are games that I’ve played that are terrible and have a very high rating on BGG. I get that everyone is different and has games they prefer over others, but I think Village Crone got the short end of the broomstick. Guess it goes to show, you can’t always trust BGG ratings! You should always demo a game several times before making your own judgement on it. I was definitely surprised as how much fun this game was!

What the Players Said

Wednesday – The game has a good balance between strategy and fun. I like the replay-ability you get with being able to rearrange the board tiles. It’s also easy enough for newer board game players, but still fun and engaging for experienced board game players.

Brian – I think it’s a good game and I really like it. It has intricate details, but it’s not confusing. It’s overall a fun game, and it’s really fun to mess with other players too.

Olivia – I like the game story, like how we’re all witches and we’re messing with a town and the other witches around the town. It’s a really easy game to learn and fun to play!

Buy or Bye?

Buy!

This game just moved high up on my priority list. It’s fun with any number of players and can be played as a solo game. If I spend $50 or more on a game, that’s something I want an option for – solo play.

Have strategies or tips for this game? Leave them in a comment!
Have cool accessories or custom pieces? Show them off!
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Board out and game on!