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Approaching Dawn: The Witching Hour
Enter a brand-new world of witches and demons. In Approaching Dawn: The Witching Hour, players are coven members who are blood bound, meaning that what one witch does affects another member of the coven. Black magic begets corruption, which is given to other members; conversely, White magic can heal your own corruption. But both types of magic are used to bind and banish the demons, imps, fey, possessed animals, and warlocks entering our world.
Each witch starts with spells that they know, but throughout the game can gain corruption to learn new spells and get familiars and artifacts. But how they choose to use these new cards each hour — whether as Black or White magic — will determine the successful completion of the scene (mission).
In this cooperative card game, each scene (mission) determines the goal of the game. If the scenes are played in order, they form a story arc, but you can play any scene in any order.
—description from the publisher
| Ages | 12+ |
|---|---|
| Players | 2 Players, 3 Players, 4 Players, 5 Players, 6 Players |
| Play Time | 120m – 120m |
| Designer | Kenneth C. Shannon, III |
| Mechanics | Cooperative Game |
| Theme | Card Game, Fantasy |
| Publisher | WizKids |
Pozman
It's clearly not that easy to win this game (we lost big time during our first game on easy :s), but still there was no click with this game. The rules are hard to master (but however after you now what every different term means, they are not ambigious) and there is a lot of upkeep/administration during the game as the corruptions and sigals you chose have to go on the board of your left neighbour.
Andy Parsons
A co-op of that familiar kind which throws wave upon wave of adversaries at the players. Mechanically, Approaching Dawn is a bit different. Most notably, players have a hand of spell cards that can be played either as white magic or the more powerful black. Many of the spells also have special effects, which add much needed interest beyond the simple arithmetic of spell power v demon defence factors. The hitch with using black magic is that it generates corruption for the player to your left. If anyone gains too much corruption, it's game over. New spells can be drafted to your deck, but this also adds corruption. As if this wasn't enough, each turn of the game everyone gains corruption equal to the turn number. The more corruption you have, the bigger and badder the demons you attract. In one way this is a good thing as you "pay" for a newly placed demon by discarding corruption. Fail to eliminate or bind the monsters you face on your turn and, that's right, you gain more corruption. As you will have gathered, Approaching Dawn is one of those co-ops that continually escalates the pressure and is absolutely unrelenting. On early acquaintance, my one concern lies with the corruption cost of deckbuilding. It doesn't take very long for players to accrue so much corruption that it ceases to be an option. The artwork is very nice and production quality is good.
abirkett2
This game is both gorgeous and fun. Additionally, there are some unique and fun mechanics. The best part of the game is that most cards can be used as either dark or light magic. When dark magic is played it is beneficial to the player playing it though it has a negative effect on the player to the left of them. Players have to work together to benefit themselves without getting their teammates to gain too many dark cubes. Another interesting thing is that the dark cubes can be used to purchase cards (though when all the cards run out players lose the game as well).