Hexerei: How It Works

Welcome to the world of Hexerei: the Three Witches of Würzburg!

Written by Francesco Lanza

The Premise

Hexerei is a One vs All tabletop board game of combat and cooperative maneuvering, and draws its players into the turmoil of a blood-spattered Witch hunt. The game is set in a broody, war-torn 17th century Germany in which monsters and diabolical forces are real, and wish to bring about the Apocalypse. These Witches are not poor souls framed by their evil-minded neighbours, but praeternatural monsters. They fight back... or even better, they fight first!

Let's start from the beginning: to play a game of Hexerei you will need about 3 hours (it's a whole-evening game, so to say) and 1-4 players to control the Witch Hunters, plus 1 player to take up the mantle of the evil Coven. The Hunters are tasked with finding and slaying the Three Witches before the opposing player-led Coven completes the Ritual.

The Coven is not a "game master" role, the Witches play to win! The ritual takes 8 turns to complete, and at the beginning of each turn the Coven player drops a new Tile on the Ritual panel. These grant him even more power! If at the end of the eight turn the Hunters have not found and slain all Three Witches, the Coven player wins, and Hell swallows the Holy Roman Empire.

Playing the Game

Hunters will begin the game on a board covered with "question mark" or "Unknown" Encounter Tiles. Simply moving on one of those flips it, and is meant to represent a Hunter exploring it and searching for signs of Witches. This would be slow, but don't worry, Hunters have other resources: they may turn to questioning Heretics from the Tribunal Deck. According to the worth of each prisoner, Hunters can thus reveal Unknown Tiles much more efficiently, and can even "clear" each other's road. Each tile is a useful Encounter, but what Hunters need to find are Arcana Tiles. Moving onto these allows Hunters to draw Leads from the Arcana Deck and ultimately force the Coven player to put Witches on the board. But beware, Witches in play are bad news for the unprepared!

The Coven player must put a Witch on the board when four Clue Tokens are in place. Hunters can be slowed down by shuffling Dark Arcanum Cards in the Arcanum Deck to add false clues, but ultimately Witches will be found. Using Creatures and Maleficia to protect them is the way to turn such a victory into ruin. Go to the Creatures, Abomination, Cultists and Witches sections to learn about the minions under the control of the Coven![

by @Glimpse of Horror

The Coven’s powers are great, but they face hard choices. The Coven controls each turn’s conditions by drawing three cards from the Orbis Deck and choosing the best suited one, and they can also deal gruesome spells from the Maleficia Deck, both during the Coven Turn or in any Combat. The Coven gains power from the Ritual and can summon Creatures. Each of these is based on the darkest German myths and can go toe-to-toe with any Hunter, but at the same time is specialized in a tactical role and could easily be wasted. It is important to balance the power of the Creature summoned with the moment of the game. Big, strong monsters are good in any occasion, but will eventually fall, meaning the Coven could well end up toothless during the crucial final Rounds. The Hunters and the Coven constantly fight for board control: each struggles to mix favorable cards into the decks controlled by the opponent. A streamlined dice combat system favors decisive action, hard choices and risk-taking. Cooperation and resource-pooling are needed between Hunters to secure equipment and plan actions against the Coven. Rash decisions can spell ruin for both sides, since the number of Hunter “lives” are limited, and each Creature can only be summoned once.

The Coven can also win by killing so many Hunters that there aren't anymore to go around with. Each time a Hunter Model is removed from the board, its player will draw a Novice Card and get a fresh start-- but the Deck is numbered, and when is depleted the Coven wins. Thus we have two conditions for a Coven victory: either the game ends with the eighth round, or an Hunter is unable to draw a new Novice Card. The Witch Hunters have only one objective: finding and killing the Three Witches.

Gaming Components

Each game set will contain original art and (unpainted) miniatures for Witches, Creatures and the Hunters. See below for a full gallery of the miniatures.