Wandering Towers Board Game Review: A Comprehensive Guide

In Wandering Towers Board Game, designed by award-winning designers Wolfgang Kramer and Michael Kiesling, the Wizards of Ravenrealm Magic School compete to demonstrate their powers. Every year the graduating classes are asked to assemble in the legendary Ravenskeep Tower, but every one of them procrastinated, distracted by learning new spells and are now unprepared with empty potion bottles.

As part of their final exam, the wizards must gather potions and skills before arriving at Ravenskeep.

The task: Get all the Wizards to the tower and refill all their potions along the way so they are ready for their test. The only problem is, in this world, the very towers move too! This creates a lot of mayhem – trapping wizards, changing the board state, and even moving Ravenskeep.

Let’s explore whether this one is worth picking up?

What is Wandering Towers Board Game?

Wandering Towers is a 2-6 player strategy game with elements of hand management, racing, and memory. It was designed by Michael Kiesling (Azul) and Wolfgang Kramer (El Grande) and published by Capstone Games.

Players are racing to drop their wizards into Ravenskeep tower by playing cards and using powers that either move a wizard or a tower around the circle. You’ll have to get all your wizards perfectly positioned so you can move the exact number of spaces required to drop them in.

As the towers move around the circle, wizards will be covered and uncovered and players will need to keep track of where all their wizards are. But here’s the little secret, trapping wizards allows you to fill potions, so other players are incentivized to trap you so they can fill all their potions.

Set Up Wandering Towers Board Game

To Set up the game you’ll start by assembling a circle of hexes which piece together like a puzzle. There is a road on the tiles that you can use to line it up, but I’ll admit that it wasn’t perfectly intuitive which order the pieces should be connected in the first few times. It is important that they are in the correct configuration because there are icons that impact the game, so consult the guide in the rule book.

You’ll then place out the towers, beginning with Ravenskeep on its designated starting space. Then you’ll place out the other nine towers, starting with a tower with a Raven crest symbol and then alternate between towers with and without the symbol.

Shuffle the cards and deal three to each player. Select two of the magic power disks (there are two that they recommend for your first play – otherwise do this at random). Place the dice in the center of the table where all players can easily each it.

Each player picks a color and takes a number of corresponding wizards and potion bottles based on player count. Something a little odd about the game is that, depending on player count only some colors are available. Since the numbers of wizards and bottles players receive increase as the player count goes down, they only included extra wizards for some of the colors. That’s certainly efficient from a production standpoint and does mean thee are no wasted pieces in the box, but I have to say that it feels a little strange that if I want to be, say, orange, but I have fewer than five players, I can’t be orange.

Beginning with the first player you’ll take turns places out wizards onto the towers. On the board there are icons that tell you how many total wizards to put on each tower. When that limit has been reached you’ll start placing on the next tower. Once all the wizards have been placed out, the game begins and the race is on.

How to Play Wandering Towers Board Game

Your objective is to get all your wizards into Ravenskeep and to refill all your empty potion bottles. To drop your wizards into Ravenskeep you’ll need to play a card or perform a spell that moves your wizard the exact number of spaces to finish their movement on Ravenskeep. You can refill your bottles by moving a tower on top of any wizard (including you own) trapping them and borrowing some of their magical essence.

On your turn you will play two of the three cards from your hand, taking the action depicted on the card and refilling their hand at the end of their turn. The cards either give you Wizard movement or tower movement, or both. Some cards have a specific number of spaces they can move and others have a dice symbol, so instead you’ll roll the dice and move that number of spaces. Some cards allow you to roll multiple times to try and get a desired result.

When moving a tower you take all wizards on top of that tower with you. The only restriction is that you have to move clockwise and you cannot finish your movement on Ravenskeep. Any other space is fair game, including spaces with other towers and (ideally) wizards on them. If the towers are already in a stack, the player can choose to move part of the stack or the complete stack. This is useful for getting your wizards unstuck, but you have to remember where they are because there’s no peaking and if you lift a tower, revealing that information, you have to move it (even if the wizard you expected to find isn’t there).

When moving a wizard, you can only move them clockwise and you can only move them if they are uncovered. You can only move wizards one at a time. You have to complete all of your movement, so even if you pass over Raveskeep, you have to keep going until you’ve completed your movement.

When a player manages to get a wizard into Ravenskeep, that keep is moved forward around the circle to the next unoccupied space with a raven crest on it. This might be a land hex or a tower – even one that hides some wizards underneath, but then keep can never be placed directly on top of a wizard. The players turn ends immediately, even if they would have had additional actions.

Once you have refilled some of your potions, once per turn, you can choose to discard your potions in order to take bonus actions – these can differ from game to game, but they might allow you to move forward 1 or 2 spaces, free a wizard from a tower, and even move backwards. Discarding potions, doesn’t count against your goal of refilling your potions. That wasn’t exactly intuitive to me, but you just need to arrive at Ravenskeep with no empty potion bottles, so discarding full ones is not a problem.

First player to get all their wizards into Ravenskeep AND all of their potion bottles filled is the winner.

Wandering Towers Board Game Review

This is a fun game. No way around it. It’s very easy to get to the table and a breeze to teach. Once you get into it you’ll be trapping wizards and rushing around the circle to make it to the keep.

For a simple game where you are moving a defined number of spaces – whether rolling or playing a card to define that number – there are opportunities for cleverness when chaining your actions and interesting (though often straightforward) decisions. There is a memory element, which I normally don’t love, but it does create some great moments, when you go to reveal your wizard and they aren’t there, or vice versa. Stakes are low, so it works.

The luck element of the dice and the card draw are mitigated very well I think – sometimes giving you multiple chances to roll, as well as three cards to choose from for your actions – it’s not just roll and move. Later in the game there can be turns where you need to specifically move a wizard or a tower and you don’t have the cards to do it, but that is rare.

It feels like a race. A whimsical silly race, where you can slow each other down. That’s what saves this fairly simple game from being too simple or uninteresting. It’s almost entirely tactical, because the board state is constantly changing, so even through the decisions are simple, you’ll have to be constantly recalculating your next move. You can plan for future turns, some, but, depending on the number of players, those plans will likely go out the window.

I think this one is a great game for kids and families, without question, but also a great rowdy filler for any game group. Because gameplay is so fast and you are engaged on other players turns, you might take this out as a filler, and accidentally play several rounds.

Will the charm wear off? Maybe. There’s some different powers in the box that add variety to the gameplay, making the game just a little different every time. But ultimately, this is not a game about complexity and strategy. It’s tactics and silliness and fun.

Artwork and Theme

In a lot of ways, this is fairly simple, abstract strategy game – but it’s difficult to notice that because there are towers and wizards and potions and magic. Nothing against abstract strategy games, but theme is doing a lot of work here to make this an enjoyable experience. You aren’t capturing your opponents pieces, like you might in Chess, players trap wizards in towers so they can refill their potion bottles.

So while some of the broader elements of the theme are a little squishy – like the school and the final exam and how exactly spending a potion won’t be a problem for me when I actually get to Ravenskeep – that doesn’t matter. I feel like a wizard doing wizardy things.

Components: Empty Potion Bottles

The little towers are amazing. When I first saw this box i couldn’t believe how big it was for a quick racing game, but what you get in return for a giant box, is excellent table presence. When you set this up on the table, anyone passing by we’ll be compelled to stop and ask what you’re playing, as they see you moving towers and wizards around in a circle. It demands to be played.

So far, the components are solid. Assembly was easy and the towers are holding up fine. Extra points to the designers for providing an insert that keeps them neatly separate, as I think that will help with longevity.

The wizards and potions are good quality and though I normally don’t love tiny cards, they get the job done here. I just don’t like shuffling tiny cards and that will always be true.

Weird choice that I can only pick certain player colors at certain player counts. I get it, but for the price, I think they could have thrown in a couple extra wizards for me so I could pick whichever color I want, but not a deal breaker by any means.

A Quick Note on Expansions and Trapping Wizards

There are three mini expansions that each add two more magic powers. That’s a nice way to add variety to this game for someone who is playing pretty frequently. I was happy that they didn’t introduce anything too wild to the game as it works so well on it’s own and you already have such great options in the base box. It plays to six, there’s solo and cooperative modes already in the rules – so you really don’t need much from an expansion here.

That said, if you love the game and want a little more variety, you can pick these up from the publisher for (at the time of writing) $5 a piece.

Conclusion

If you have kids, tweens especially, you’ll want to pick this one up. It’s one that will draw them to the table and have them excited to race. It has that perfect amount of ‘take that’ and triumphant moments, but at a really light weight and short playtime.

There are so many moments where this would make sense to pull out. Basically, anytime you might bring out a filler card game, or a little dexterity game, try bringing this out instead to get all the same benefits, but with that big game feel.

This is one of our Best Games for 8 Year Olds. Check out the full article for more recommendations.

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