The Witcher: Ancient World –

Old World is set long before the saga of Geralt of Rivia, in which we have been able to immerse ourselves through the fantastic TV games, books and TV series. Old World reflects a time when monsters were more widespread throughout the world.
In the role of a new Witcher, the goal is to train your skills by slaying monsters, completing missions and going on adventures.

I’ll start with a boring point. The version I played includes the base game, all expansions and miniatures. In total you end up with 1088 different cards and unfortunately it is you as the player who has the incredibly terrible task of sorting everything. Normally I don’t mind such a task, but unfortunately instructions are very scarce, which led to YouTube clips and several posts on forums to help me in my attempt to get everything in order. If you buy each game and expansion separately, you probably won’t have to struggle with this bit, and it’s almost something I can recommend.

If everything is in order, you can boast of a gigantic box on your shelf that fits everything related to the game. But I really wish it had been better organized from the beginning. It’s not too much to ask when you’re talking about such an exclusive and luxurious edition of the game. Because if you look past those problems, everything is of very good quality. The cards are sturdy and well designed. All boards and accessories are appropriately sized and breathe quality. The same goes for the huge amount of miniatures that vary in size, but they are all – whether it is a Witcher, a horse on a small house or a creepy monster – very nice. In the edition I received, they are also “shaded,” meaning they have been given a dark wash that makes them look a little shaded. Very cute!

It’s worth pointing out that if you buy the base game, you don’t get all the miniatures. They are not necessary to play the game, but can be replaced with small markers instead. But you certainly won’t say no to miniatures. Other things included in the edition that Go On Board sent me are a large neoprene mat that doubles as a playing field, coins made of metal and extra dice. Then a bunch of other things like Kickstarter-exclusive minis and expansions. If you want the exact same edition as in the photos, you’ll have to shell out a hefty sum.

Enough about storage, quality and crates in general – what kind of game is this? In short, I would call it a boss battle-game with elements of hand management, dice throwing, deck building and small elements of role-playing games. It’s a pretty savory mix, but I think it all flows together into a nice whole. The cards work in two different ways – both as the only way you can travel across the continent and as the cards you use to fight enemies and other Witchers. It’s a neat solution and means you have to think about which cards to add to your hand to both defeat enemies and get where you want to go.

The map contains a lot of towns and places you will recognize from the video game. Vengerberg, Kaer Morhen, Novigrad and Cidaris to name a few. In each place you can do different things when you visit them. Some contain the location for a game of Witcher poker, others allow you to spend coins to improve your skills and then there are those that allow you to change what the map range will look like when you reach the stage where you buy a new map.

Here are a few things I need to go into a little more detail. I’m not going to hyperfocus and go into all the details, but to make sure you understand – somewhat – how it works, I need to explain a few things in more detail. First, let’s look at leveling. The Witcher you choose to play has four different areas that you will upgrade during the game. Defense, combat, alchemy and then a final one that is different for all selectable characters. As you level these up, you gain positive effects such as earning more armor points, drawing more cards during battles and also using more potions during battles. These go up to level five, and your overall Witcher level is raised after everyone levels up – that is, if you have combat, defense, alchemy and your special skill at level two, your overall level is also raised to two. You cannot “level up” more than one level above the general level.

When playing The Witcher: Old World, you go through three different stages. First, you travel across the continent, then you choose to go to war or choose an event card, and when you’re done with that, you buy a new card. You buy the cards using the cards you already have in your hand. When you have used a card, you put it aside in a pile (discard pile). Each new round you take three new cards along with the cards you already have in your hand. So a larger hand results in more things you can do during your turn. Therefore, you should analyze and spend some time thinking about how many cards you need for the next round and whether it is worth setting aside up to three cards to get that really nice card at the top of the board. The cost of cards depends not only on what they say, but also on the order in which they appear on the board. Those at the top always cost an extra coin, while those at the bottom are discounted and cost a coin less than normal. So you either have to be patient and wait for the cards to travel down (you remove cards, draw new ones and let the old ones slide down a notch each round) or you chop right away and get a quick round the next turn. It’s an interesting trade-off and a mechanism I like.

What about event cards? Well, here we find the role-playing elements and the ability to “go on an adventure. You choose to read a map related to cities or maps that are more wilderness oriented. Usually you are presented with a number of choices where, depending on what you choose to do, you are rewarded or punished. If you are lucky, you can find equipment and weapons. Unfortunately, the chances of you doing so are pretty slim, as this part of the game unfortunately feels a bit obscure. It is well written and interesting, but it whizzes by far too quickly. There are also a lot of maps so the risk is that you won’t encounter those that are extra fun.

Then we need to take a closer look at the battles. The cards you have in your hand have different colors and links. You can make combos with other cards to do more damage, increase your armor points and also draw more cards the next time it’s your turn to fight. The enemies have a number of cards depending on how much health they have and the same goes for you – your cards are the ones you fight with, as well as the number of life points you have. If your opponent takes damage, you lose cards that you can no longer use during the fight. The monsters you face vary in strength depending on their level. They go from level one to three, with the latter naturally having higher health and a greater ability to harm you.

But what’s the point of all this? Fighting, playing poker, leveling up and drinking potions? Well, to win in The Witcher: Old World you have to collect four trophies and whoever gets the fourth one first wins. These are collected through combat and meditation. Meditation is related to the special skill and is the only way to lift it to level five. Once you learn the game, it is both easy and fun, but unfortunately the road to it is not exactly easy.

Unfortunately, I sometimes found it difficult to find answers to questions in the rulebook when you got into trouble. Instead, I had to turn back to the Internet and forums. Overall, the rulebook is good and clearly explains what to do and when to do it. There are also a lot of charts you can leave next to it as support, explaining the main points. But sometimes, as I said, the answers are not there and after all the googling I have had to do, I have found that many people agree.

Then there is the issue of extensions. This review does not discuss the expansions and focuses only on the base game, but it is worth pointing out that the experience, along with the Monster Trail and Wild Hunt expansions, for example, raises the entertainment level at least a few notches. There are elements that almost feel like they should have been included in the base game from the beginning. The battles against the monsters and the thematic stuff both become more fun with the expansions. I haven’t tried the Skellige and Mage expansions yet, but I’m sure it’s the same there.

In summary, I will say that I really like The Witcher: Old World. It looks great, is fun and offers knowledge and exciting enemies, as well as a good opportunity to play Witcher at home in the living room. You recognize yourself from the games and it’s clear that CD Projekt Red was involved in the creation of the game. But then there are flaws that could have been avoided in some cases. The rulebook should have been better, more attention should have been paid to the role-playing elements and what pulls the rating down a bit more for me is the knowledge that The Witcher: Old World will be much better along with at least one expansion. But it’s still a very good game and it works fine with the regular edition without miniatures and all the other nonsense. But if you want to spend a little extra, it gives a little extra icing on the cake.

Rating: 8/10

Information about the game
Recommended age: 14+
Average playing time: 90-150 minutes
Number of players: 1-5
Price: £ 60-140