Enchanters – Overlords – An Enchanting Board Game

Today, I’d like to chat about a board game I recently played. Thanks to my current situation, I now have access to a wall of board games that I’ve never even heard of, let alone never played before. I’ve mentioned games in the last, and today’s game is no different. And it’s definitely fun.

Enchanters – Overlords, is a game about making enchanted items in order to get as many points as possible. You buy cards to make an enchanted item then use that item to kill monsters. Dead monsters give you points, and you want those to win.

Simple to play

So the game is pretty simple. You first pick two decks or factions (from cultists to unicorns to demons) and shuffle the decks’ cards together to make one big deck of weird items. Then the main game starts. You have two items, an object (e.g. a Longsword), and a possessive description (e.g. “of Regeneration”). Players start with a “Fist” and an “Of Enchanting” which doesn’t do much. You can spend crystals as a currency and buy new cards from the shop, and you can get crystals by resting in the inn. There are also monsters that you can battle, many of whom will probably leave you injured.

When it comes to enchanting, you can buy better items. As an example, you can buy items from the shop, to make your Fist of Enchanting into a Dagger of Leeches. Both the item and the description have their own bonuses – the Dagger gives you 2 attack and the “of Leeches” heals you when you slay a monster. Any card you buy, you lay it on top of your other cards. However, the second card from the top can also give you stats. For example, I buy some armour to turn my enchanted item into a Leather Armour of Leeches, and the armour covers up the dagger. However, the dagger may have bonus stats, which are displayed on the bottom of the card. So alongside the defense that the armour gives you, you also gain an attack from the dagger you covered with the armour. You need defense and attacks to fight the monsters, and any you beat, you put into a pile to one side. Rarely, defeating a monster can also give you extra attack or defense.

Being injured isn’t that life-threatening though. Every injury you take, all it does is take away from your final score. So you can happily slay monsters as long as you have a way of losing the injuries at the end of the game. The end of the game is reached by running out of cards to buy.

The game is different though for 2 players and 3+ players. In a game with just two players, we only use half the cards in each of the four decks we choose. Makes the game a bit shorter because you don’t chew through items as quickly as you do in a 3+ game.

Once you’ve exhausted all your cards, it’s time to add up the scores. I didn’t play great and only got a score of 26, while my boyfriend, who is an accountant, grabbed a calculator and worked out that he got a score of 60. Even after subtracting the big pile of wounds he had gathered. Seriously, death just isn’t a thing in this game.

It’s alright!

Either way, the game is pretty fun. While I may have made a mess trying to explain it, the cards are nice, the game is pretty unique and they’ve definitely put work into it. I think my only complaint is that there were too many repeat monsters, which meant that potentially cool enchanted combos became very hard to get. For most of the game, we were swamped with monsters and unable to really draw any new items or enchantments. When the cool enchantments did happen though, they were very good. Or, at least, they racked up a lot of points.

Still I’d recommend Enchanters – Overlords. I think it’s a neat game.