I love Susanna Clarke’s collection of whimsical footnotes with attached novel and for a longer conversation on the subject I’ll direct you to episode 71 of this very podcast. But today I want to talk about Osprey Games’ 2019 adaptation of what may very well be my favorite book.
Players take on the role of magicians vying to be the greatest spell-slinger of the age through the traditional method of accruing thaumaturgic power – attending parties and acquainting themselves with notable persons. The game plays out over 12 rounds that take on peculiar characteristics by drawing from a deck of Marseilles cards. On a player’s turn, they will accrue books, bolster their magic, travel across London or Europe, attend soirees and/or meet notables, and then if able, carry out Feats of Magic. To win, players must both have a greater Magicianship than their rivals and the Gentleman with Thistledown Hair.
The first decision players must make every turn is which of their six actions they want to use or if they want to refresh those actions. Picking an action makes it unavailable on a future turn until they have been refreshed. These actions include acquiring books, teleporting around the map, or giving the magician more options for doing magic. This last one is incredibly important and requires planning.
The most potent way to increase Magicianship and thus win is to complete Feats of Magic. Each of those feats has a slot for a specific kind of magic (hills, rains, stones, birds, wind, and trees.) To place magic tokens on those slots, players discard Invitation and Introduction cards that have those matching symbols (foregoing social obligations to prioritize their magic.) However, they can only place tokens that match the ones present on this round’s Marseilles card unless they chose to use their action to study the specific magic. Books can also grant some flexibility and allow players to transmute one kind of token for another or increase the tokens they can place. If all the elements line up and a Feat can be accomplished then it adds to their Magicianship and grants them a spell which can do any number of fun things.
As well as improving their magical prowess, players can also increase their Prestige by hobnobbing with figures of note either from history or from the pages of Ms. Clarke’s novel. While Invitations can be spent to either claim Feats of Magic or Introduction cards, Introduction cards are spent to gain Prestige. Prestige determines turn order, breaks ties, and also unlocks bonuses on the player board like faster movement, extra Magicianship, drawing cards, and the like. As mentioned before both cards can also be discarded to eschew society and do magic.
I was surprised when I saw that Osprey was making this game. I associate them more with war games and painstakingly detailed military history books. Nevertheless I was excited to see how they tackled the book and found the end result very frustrating. There are a lot of things I love – the look and design, the way players navigate society and study. Ultimately however the whole thing falls flat for me.
A big problem is the threat of the Gentleman with Thistledown Hair. In theory I like the idea of there being a collective threat everyone has to deal with and forcing them to set aside their own issues to take on but that’s not what happens here. Players don’t work together but just try to scramble on their own to build up their score and hope against hope that it’s high enough to both beat out their colleagues and this abstract figure. I would have found it more interesting if players had to choose between their own ambition and the good of the table like Archipelago or Kill Doctor Lucky. It would have also been interesting if the GTH more directly messed with the game like throwing out obstacles or complications instead of just looming abstractly. At the end of the game, if he’s won, players just compare their own scores and take that as the moral victory even as they know they didn’t really win.
The other problem is the number of roadblocks and choke points this game throws up. To fulfill Feats you have to hope the Marseilles card *and* your hand of cards *and* your action wheel options all line up and when they don’t you’re just stuck feeling like you’ve wasted one of a frustratingly few turns. The choices feel less like getting to choose from a bunch of fun things and just picking something in hopes you don’t slam into the various barriers.
Finally, for a game about dueling magicians there is precious little interaction beyond a bit of racing for available Feats and Books. There could have been an interesting tension if players could cooperate or directly mess with each other, particularly in trying to deal with the GTH but aside from a few spells that can poke your rivals here and there, there’s nothing. Not even being on the same space allows for trading or stealing secrets. You’re essentially just doing parallel play which is ok but feels like a lost opportunity.
I’m going to keep poking at this game and hope I find something more fulfilling than I so far have but until then, I’m more likely to reach for the book than the game when I want to experience this world.
