Broom Service Review

Witches’ Brew was a 2008 Alea/Ravensburger/Rio Grande Games card game that sort of came and went without much notice. But it has developed something of a cult following over the years and aftermarket copies have routinely sold in the range of “outrageous” and “astronomical”. I’ve never seen or played a copy of the game myself. Seven years on, designer Andreas Pelikan (with Alexander Pfister) has taken the core mechanic of that game and fitted it into a pick-up-and-deliver board game called Broom Service. The result? A well-deserved 2015 Spiel Des Jahres win in the “Kennerspiel” category for more complex, hobby-oriented games.

It’s a well-deserved award because Broom Service is an absolute delight. It is a fun to play, easy to play design with a charmingly witchy setting that I love- fans of Harry Potter, Kiki’s Delivery Service or The Worst Witch will be pleased with the atmosphere. But what is most compelling from my perspective is that the game pulls of this unusual high wire act of representing a very old school kind of Eurogames design reminiscent of the kinds of titles that made an impact in the 1990s while also evidencing an unusual degree of depth an challenge.

Mechanically, the entire concept rides on a brilliant action selection mechanic that has been brought forward from Witches’ Brew. Each player has an identical set of action cards and during each of the seven rounds, all players select four. The first player picks one of their cards- effectively they have the initiative and lead the round- and they announce if they are going to be a Brave Witch or a Cowardly Witch. If you choose to be cowardly, you get to take the designated action immediately. If you choose to be brave, then you can take an enhanced version of that action with additional benefits.

That is, if you can make it through a gauntlet of every other player playing the same action card you led with, provided it is in their four card hand, and announcing whether he or she will be the brave witch. Of course, they can choose to be cowardly as well and take the lesser action. But if they take the chance on being brave, they also completely pre-empt your action and you do nothing on the turn. So it’s a risk to go brave because any player that has also selected that action may prevent you from doing anything.

This mechanic, to put it in academic terms, rules. It’s a clever and fun way to introduce some pretty nasty competition but more significantly it makes that brave or cowardly decision carry a huge weight. The stakes are high- not only because you might lose a turn in a game in which there are only 28, but also because there is an element of turn programming where your next two or three actions could be completely thrown off, causing you to have adjust what you are doing on the fly, in mid-round. Needless to say, this can cause the game to trigger analysis paralysis in those susceptible to it, and this element is really where the game transitions from a lighter family game to a more medium-weight offering.

Now, what do those action cards do? The goal of the game is for each player to earn points by moving two witch pawns over a lovely little map, delivering potions to castles and towers that demand specific colors of concoctions. There are Witch cards to move one of your pawns to each terrain type on the board, with the Brave action allowing you to make an immediate delivery. The Druids, also matched to terrain types, deliver potions in an area where you already have a figure. There are three gatherer cards, which is how you execute the “pick up” in order to complete the “and deliver” portion of the design. Brave gatherers get more stuff, obviously. There is also Drizzelda, a weather witch, who will let you spend Wand tokens that you might have acquired through gathering to blow away storm clouds and heavy weather- tokens which can give you a bonus at the end of the game or provide some in-game effects. There are also some terrain-specific bonus tiles that can be collected on the advanced side of the two-sided map. Definitely play with them and all “advanced” game features. They add quite a lot to the game without really complicating matters.

The cardplay mechanic is genius, but the design-level decision to give players two witches to cruise around the board with is as well. This creates a lot of strategic opportunities to coordinate actions (if you can pull them off) and some of the round-altering event cards give bonuses for situations such as ending your turn with your team in one space. I think it was also somewhat necessary given the absolute result of losing an action and having to re-jigger your strategy during the turn because having a second figure keeps you from being completely screwed out of viable actions. Well, sometimes!

It all takes about an hour, even with five players, as long as everyone keeps it moving and doesn’t dwell. This is, unfortunately, one of those designs where if you have Jimmy from Accounting over, he’s going to hem and haw over doing something that gives three points or something that gives four with a slight disadvantage. For five minutes. Personally, I think the game just ain’t that heavy but be warned that not all Broom Service players are going to be as reckless as I am.

I can’t stress enough that playing Broom Service is fun. It’s a quality that sometimes gets overlooked or ignored in games criticism. The truth of it is that this game pleases both my desire for smart, sophisticated design as well as my hunger for good times shared with friends and family. The setting and illustrations go a long way to creating a sense of lighthearted whimsy (the good kind) but when you find yourself shafted out of a couple of turns, this game turns out to be like that sweet little fairy that bites Jennifer Connelly in Labyrinth.