Neo Grimorium
Designer: Max Holliday
Artist: Rob Lundy
Publisher: Ginger Ale Games
Year Published: 2023
No. of Players: 1–5
Ages: 14+
Playing Time: 45–60 minutes
Main mechanic / Theme: Card crafting, hand management, worker placement / Build your spell book
There are many paths to becoming a great mage.
Find more info on BoardGameGeek.com / Kickstarter
Overview
Neo Grimorium is a card crafting game. Using four elements, you have several routes of earning victory points and making more resources available. Interwoven with each of path is the need to empower your spells. Making them stronger is an important part of having more of the elements available to create stronger spells and influence others to help you learn the glyphs to add to the pages of your spell book.
Players add layers to their spells until the last available binding of a book takes place. Points are then tallied to see who created the strongest reservoir of magical power.
I played a prototype of Neo Grimorium for review purposes.
Setup
Each player begins with a set of six spells, some magic runes, and a familiar. There are three levels of denizens randomly drawn and setup for the players to influence. And a deck of plastic overlay cards is made available to purchase using player resources. Countdown tokens are placed where they are seen to mark the passage of time and when they run out they signal the game to end.
Because the spells players start with are all the same it seems like the game would be repetitive, however the selection of denizens and the changing availability of the overlay cards gives Neo Grimorium replayability. We had diverse paths to scoring with the games coming out to narrow margins of victory.
Gameplay and Mechanics
On a player's turn they choose which of their available spells they want to play or take an action allowed by their familiar. The spell choices allow for the purchase of the glyphs that can be added to a spell you have in play, influence a denizen, adorn your spell book, make new adornments available, change which glyphs are available to purchase, and bind your book with the latest enhancements.
Your familiar can allow you to save an enhancing glyph for play later or take the action of a spell that is in play for a second time.
The only direct competition between players was in the availability of glyphs in a general marketplace and the ability to influence denizens. Denizens have a limited number of times they can be influenced depending on their position when placed at the beginning of the game.
Although the actions seem to be very different, they are all focused on the same basic goal—make more resources available for use to take stronger actions. The glyphs, denizens, and adornments provide more of the resources for future use. More resources of air, water, fire, and gold are needed to allow you to perform the actions of transcribing glyphs to your spells, influencing denizens, and adding adornments.
Once a denizen is influenced, or an adornment added, those resources are available for you to use in combination with the spells, and their available resources, you have in play. When adding glyphs to a spell it must be in play and not in your hand. This builds strategy as you need to make sure the resources needed are available and the right spells are laid out on the table.
Runes can be used to buy resources (they also count help your final score). Runes are earned when you use your Cast spell or bind your book to return played spells back into your hand. Binding your book doesn’t have to wait until after all of your cards are played. Even though you pay for each spell not played, you earn for each played spell. You may find an advantage of binding your book earlier.
Every time any player binds their book a countdown counter is removed from play. When the counters run out the game ends when every player has had an equal number of turns. Scoring is then tallied. They are earned by accumulating runes, adornments made available and used, denizens, and glyphs added to spells.
Every game I played was close in scoring, and each high score was achieved by a different combination of actions.
Artwork and Illustration
Rob Lundy is the artist for Neo Grimorium, and his style creates a fun interaction with the theme. His character styling adds to the fantasy and fantastic elements of the game.
Inclusivity and Accessibility
Neo Grimorium requires players to be able to manipulate the cards and add layers to it by inserting the plastic cards into the card sleeve of the spell card. There are also four elements denoted by the colors yellow, white, blue, and red. People who have trouble taking these actions or identifying the colors may need assistance.
Final Thoughts
Neo Grimorium was fun to play. The concept of how to play took me a little longer. After getting into the actual play, I realized it was because I was making the mechanics of the game more complex than they are. After settling into a couple of times around the table it was no longer an issue. For the other players at the table this was the same. They found the game easy to learn with basic rules that allows for an expansion in the strategy they chose to pursue.
The game starts off with a limited number of choices to pick from due to limited resources. As your spells get stronger and more resources become available to options of actions increases, which opens up more resources and opportunities.
I recommend Neo Grimorium to those who like games where everyone plays to the end without direct player versus player combat. Also, to players who enjoy strategy planning based on availability of resources.
About the Author
Daniel Yocom does geeky things at night because his day job wouldn't let him. This dates back to the 1960s through games, books, movies, and stranger things better shared in small groups. He's written hundreds of articles about these topics for his own blog, other websites, and magazines after extensive research along with short stories. His research includes attending conventions, sharing on panels and presentations, and road-tripping with his wife. Join him at guildmastergaming.com.