Koven | Solo Playthrough & Review - A Small Magical Card Puzzle Game
Transcript
to be at five points. So, we're moving down the scale here.
It's like a really weird feeling because first we're moving down, but we are hopefully moving up again.
Hey everyone, this is Zach. And today I will bring you my play through and review of Coven. Um this is by This is a solo game that is by Logical Fox. You may remember that name because I've already brought you two of their games on my channel, Park Ranger and Wild West Tycoon, two games that I enjoyed quite a bit. Um and now I will bring you Coven, another It's another tableau building solo game. Before we get started, as usual, grab yourself a cup of tea and let's do this. All right. There we go. So, our strategy today's video is pretty much like as usual. Um I will first quickly set up the game. Then I will go over the most basic rules so you know how it works, and then we will do the play through. I will explain the rest of the rules as we go. And after my play through, I will I will also like give you like a quick review of the game. All right. So, for the setup, it is very simple, actually. So, when you open this um this package here, um you can turn over the cards, and then you see they have like different backs here. Um it's There are cards with a green back. There are cards with a yellow orange back, and then the purple ones. The purple with the purple back, those those are the ones we're going to play with today. This is the base game.
If you enjoy this video today, let me know in the comments if you would like to see another play through. Um if this game gets enough views as well, then I might also show you the expansions. Essentially, this is the base game which which we will playing with today. And here we have the Mythic Trials expansion. This like adds uh new ways to scores and um and mandatory objectives. Um and then this is like with the yellow um yellow back, and then we have the monster twice expansion. This like as like monsters and that have like unique effects and they change how this game is played with the green back. But you will not play with those today. I will just show you the base game for now. For the setup, what you do is you remove the scoring card here. I will just put that here to the left. And then the other cards you just shuffle them up.
Let me just give them a few quick shuffles here. Just a few overhand shuffles, that's fine. Then a cut and then you draw two cards and the rest of the deck you just put aside. All right. So, just like this. And then you have like two cards here in your hand. Let me just put them down here so we know this is our hand. Now for a quick overview over the game rules. We have two cards here. We always place one card on our tableau and then we draw another card. We do that until we have placed all 16 cards in a 4 by 4 grid. So we cannot go over I will tell you this 4 by 4 grid. So we have four rows and four columns. So if I place a card then I draw a another card and then I place that one adjacent to a card that I already have here. So either like horizontally or vertically adjacent, that means top, bottom, left or right.
And and my goal is to have specific number of points. You get points for each row or column consisting of having at least three wizards, which is the male the male cards here. You get one point for each column or row with three witches, that's the female cards here, or with three or more dragons. Also, you get points for matching colors, that means three or more red cards or three or more blue cards and within a row and or column. And now you may think, okay, just try to get as many points as possible, right? Not quite because the thing is that um if you have the if you have 15 points, which is the most that you can have, you are at the best rank. But also, if you have only one point. So, if you have like almost if you almost get nothing right. Um and then like the worst thing is like if you are somewhere in the middle. So, actually having nine points is way worse than having one point, for example. So, we want to be like in one of the extreme ends. We either want to have like a lot of points or not a lot of points at all.
Um we don't want to be like somewhere in the middle. But yeah, let's just see how that works. Um there are a few special cards in here. I will talk about them when they come out. For example, the white one here. This one I can count as either mythic, either um the male or the the female wizards. So, they count as both, but no color. No blue, no red. And with that, let's start the play-through. We have already played our first card, and now we place the next one. So, yeah, we put this one here. Um so, we would have two reds already in a row. Okay, that's fine. So, now we need to like kind of think, do we want to go for um lots like lots of points or not too many points? With this setup here, I think we can start try to go for a lot of points, because if I put this one in this row here as well, then I already have like three red cards. That's already one point.
That's not too bad. Um and if I put another female one in here, I would have like two points for that row already, because I have three of the same mythic, for three witches, but also three red cards. That's not too bad. You know what? Let's just fill up this row, and if I do that, then I already have like um a uh like a blue card set up here for that column, maybe. You know, so that could be a pretty good idea, actually. All right, let's draw another card and see what we have here. Okay. So, this one might be a good idea to place somewhere here, because then we could have red cards and also wizards here. I will keep that until I need it. All right. So, okay, we have another wizard. So, now let's think. It may make sense to put this guy here.
Because we I could set up for like having three wizards in this row, but also have like three blues here in that column. Does that make sense? Yeah, I guess it could make sense. Let's see what we get here. No dragons so far. They're all going to come at the end.
[sighs]
So, now I'm not quite sure. Uh we need another blue card here, but also I want a wizard. So, let me put that wizard maybe mhm here. So, we have three wizards in that row already. So, we have 1 2 3 points already. Okay. There is uh the blue card that I wanted. I will put that blue card. Let me think. Are there any more blue cards? I'm not 100% sure, but I think each wizard, uh which only exists twice. Um but we do have blue dragons as well. So, what I will do, I will put that witch here.
Um and now I think only dragons will come. Oh, no, there's actually one more wizard here. Yeah, that's pretty good actually. Because I need one more witch in that column, but also a wizard in this row. So, let me put But it's also a blue card. No, but let me put this one here. Because then I have three wizards in that column, but also I have two blue cards here in that row. I think that's a good idea. Yeah, it's like three of each, and then the rest are the dragons, I think. So, um red. I don't need any red anymore at the moment, not really. I want to put a blue card here. That means in this column I could work with two more red cards and put a blue one here, maybe. Okay, then let me put Huh. Let me put maybe the red one here.
Okay, and then we have a purple dragon. The purple dragon is one of the special cards because it not only counts as a mythic like as a as a dragon but also as a blue or a red card. Um so I don't want to place that one yet. You know what? Let me place this one right in here, I guess. Ah, but I wanted a blue card here, right? If I place this one here, um I will not have any dragons and stuff. Ah, I'm not really happy with that. No, I don't think I want that. But with that I would have Hmm, no, I I don't want that, I think. Do I? I I will miss out on a few red and blue cards here, but I don't think I want to do that. I think I will place this one here. So now I have uh three wizards here and also like a witch or wizard. I don't think there are any witches or wizards left, I think.
Uh we have two red ones, actually. 1 2 3 1 2 3. There may actually be another witch left. I'm not quite sure. Okay, so now we have all of these dragons and stuff. Let's see what we do with those. So um I would like to have a few dragons in one column. But let me first put this one there. So we have like these three blue ones here. Um and then let me screw all of that down a little bit so we have more room here. And then I will put the red dragon, I think, up here like this. That may be a pretty decent idea. Here is that witch that I wanted. And I will put this one either here or there.
It doesn't really matter, I think. So let me put her here. Yeah, I forgot that there's only one dragon of each. So, I will not be able to put any dragons in any columns here. But, what I can do is let me put that one here. That doesn't really do a whole lot, but okay. And I will put this one here because that also counts as a red card for both. And with that, we are done with our tableau here. All right. So, let's get the scoring sheet. Um let's now um do our scoring here. So, now we just go through all rows and columns, and we count all of the colors and all of the mythics. So, like the different like witches, wizards, and dragons. So, let's have the rows first. This row, we have three red cards, but that's it.
That's one point. You know what? How do we do that? Let me just do uh lines here for the points, I guess. Then here, we have three wizards, but we also have three blues. That means another two points. All right. So, actually like with like rising points, we're now going down. So, we at least need nine Now, we need at least need like 11 points now to do anything worthwhile. Let's see if we can get that. Then the next row, we have three witches, but also three red cards. So, we add five points. So, we're moving down the scale here. It's like a really weird feeling because first, we're moving down, but we are hopefully moving up again. Then in the bottom one, we only have three wizards. That's it. So, six. Okay. So, now we go for the columns. So, in this column, we have three red cards because that one counts as both, and also three wizards. So, that's another two points.
We're now at eight car eight points. Eight points is nothing. Um so, now we need at least one point to score at all. Let's aim for 11 or 12 points at least. That would be okay. So, this column here, we have three red cards. That's another point. In this column, we have three witches. Another point. So, we're up to 10 now. And in column we have three witches and three blue cards, so we are at 12 points. And you see, this is like rank right right in the middle. We're right in the middle at mage here. So you see we have like three three better ranks but also three worse ranks, so we are at rank four of seven so to speak. So not too bad actually. That actually was quite okay.
We optimized it quite well. But you can of course also play like the other way. That you say I don't want to have too many points. I try to aim for less points. But that was like very hard for us in the beginning because we had so many red cards and also so many witches and stuff. I think we started with those here, right? So it was like a very hard to actually not get any points. So that's why I decided to go for that run with like more points. So you either want to go there you want to like like go towards one of the two extremes. Have a lot of points or have no points almost no points at all. Yeah, that is already how you play the solo tableau building game Coven. As I said, there are two expansions in here. One that changes the scoring conditions and like the way you score, but also one that adds like specific changes to how the game plays. And these makes the game a lot more interesting.
But now let me go into my little review of Coven. But what do I think of the game? Well, let me tell you. Coven is another small solo card game by Logical Fox, the same publisher behind Park Ranger and Wild West Tycoon, which I've already shown on the channel before. And once again, this comes in a very compact little book box. The box is slightly thicker than usual because it also includes the expansions, but it's still very portable and very easy to take almost anywhere. The table presence is also very manageable. In essence, you build a 4x4 grid. You have a few cards or decks next to it, and that's pretty much it. So, as with the other Logic & Foxes games, I really like the form factor here. In terms of gameplay, Coven is basically a card placement puzzle where you arrange witches, wizards, and dragons in different colors and patterns in order to score points. If you just look at the base mechanism, there's nothing groundbreaking. You place cards in your grid, you try to work with the cards that come out, and you try to reach a certain score. But, the interesting twist is how the scoring works. This is not simply a game where you want to score as many points as possible. In Coven, scoring very low and scoring very high are both good, but ending somewhere in the middle is the worst result. And I really like that idea. That means you constantly have to look at your hand and your grid and decide, "Am I going for a really high score? Am I trying to keep my score as low as possible?"
In the first few turns, you can still stay flexible usually, but at some point, you usually have to commit. And sometimes, you may even have to pivot if you realize your original plan isn't coming together. I've had those games as well. For me, that scoring idea is the main reason why this game works so well. The rest of the game is solid, perfectly fine, but that twist gives the puzzle its own identity. I honestly can't think of many games that handle scoring quite like this. Theme-wise, I have to admit this is not my favorite setting personally. Witches, and dragons are fine, but I usually connect a bit more with nature themes like in Park Ranger, for example. But, that's obviously very subjective, and I can easily imagine many people enjoying this theme more than I do. Another nice thing is that the game includes expansions. I will only showcase the base game today, but if you have played that several times, you want to spice things up. The expansions add more decisions and make the game a lot more interesting. I can definitely show those in the future video if you would like to see them.
All in all, Coven is a compact and clever little solo card puzzle. The basic card placement is simple and familiar, but the scoring system makes it stand out because both a very low and a very high score can be good. That gives the game an interesting tension, forces you to make some fun decisions during play. So, if you like small solo games with a tiny footprint, quick play time, and a clever scoring twist, Coven is definitely worth a look. You can get this game on TheGameCrafter, but if you're uh based in Europe, you can also get it at Wooden Tree Games. You will find the links to both shops in the description of this video as usual. Well, that concludes my play through and review of Coven. Thank you so much for watching, and as always, a special shout out to my amazing patrons. The biggest thanks go to Sagana for supporting me at the highest tier. I truly appreciate that. You can also support me by watching, liking, and commenting on my videos, subscribing to my channel, supporting me on Patreon, and joining my Discord server to hang out with me and my amazing community. Well, I think you so much for watching. I will see you in the very next video on my Discord server. Take care, everyone. Stay safe, and cheers.