Step off the path with me, and tread the trails of witches and haints, to learn the secrets of the small, sleepy, backwoods county of Harrow, a place of ancient horror and twisted folklore. Based on Cullen Bunn and Tyler Crook’s award-winning graphic novel series, with Crook’s art throughout the game and flavour text from Bunn, Off the Page have produced a truly fascinating upper-mid weight game that is creepy, challenging and innovative.
Step off the path with me, and tread the trails of witches and haints, to learn the secrets of the small, sleepy, backwoods county of Harrow, a place of ancient horror and twisted folklore. Based on Cullen Bunn and Tyler Crook’s award-winning graphic novel series, with Crook’s art throughout the game and flavour text from Bunn, Off the Page have produced a truly fascinating upper-mid weight game that is creepy, challenging and innovative.
BEWARE THE WITCH OF THE WOODS
Without going into too much backstory, the game revolves around the titular Harrow County in the US, and is steeped in Southern Gothic ambience with rich, sinister autumnal colours throughout. Emmy, the protagonist of the comics (well, initially) is your first Protector character, as you battle the twisted intents of the Family, the dark spirits that seek to corrupt the land. However, Emmy has her own secrets, found as she was in the roots of the tree where the dark witch Hester was buried by the townsfolk. As the game unfolds, new characters become playable, with Hester herself offering a completely different playstyle to Emmy or the Family (and even for more variation, the Fair Folk expansion allows you to play as the Fae in another fashion again).
The manual is straightforward if dense; as players, you are given very clear instructions on how to set-up, with the game playing over a number of narrative scenarios. Whilst this might seem limiting, it is anything but: there are many different leaders for each faction, each with their own particular set of skills: Emmy musters haints across the land, whereas Mordecai, battles his Family through brute strength, whilst the Skinless boy slithers across the countryside with speed, and Kammi [spoiler alert – she’s a baddie] turns the heroes’ abilities against them. Also, the revised digital version of the rulebook does away with the Chapter format after the initial scenario, so you have even more flexibility to chop and change as you see fit.
BEWARE THE FAMILY
Harrow County incorporates a number of interesting mechanics. Essentially, it’s a path maker with elements of area control, but it’s much more than that. You have 3 actions per turn, from a choice of 4 (“contained” within Mason Jars, which again digs into the comics): you can use an
Ability (Advance, Spawn or Strengthen), Attack with your haints (the only ability you can use more than once per turn), use your character’s Legend Ability (as mentioned above), or take a Wild token (which also trigger an ability, but are CUMULATIVE – so the second time you use Wild, you trigger two abilities, and so on). However, how Abilities trigger is different by faction, with the Protectors’ advancing along an ability track, whilst the Family’s essentially being a bag-builder. Advance is movement, Spawn generates Haints, but Strengthen is where it gets interesting. The Battle ground tray is shared and can hold up to 6 cubes per side, which determines the strength of your attacks. However, the combat mechanic is… unusual, to say the least. When you attack your opponent, you scoop up your Strength tokens (adding 1 if outnumbering your opponent) and then you drop them down the inside of the box, which when turned on its side becomes a dice tower of sorts. There is a funnel that attaches to a slot and the whole thing becomes Hester’s tree – and there’s no guarantee that all the cubes will come out. This adds real risk to combat, as even overwhelming strength is no guarantee of victory. This could feel frustrating, but instead is THRILLING – there’s a very real sense of jeopardy in every attack. Every two of your cubes that makes it through the tree-tower allows you to remove an enemy haint (or affect your opponent’s character if they had been involved) – it’s a truly innovative, quirky mechanic that adds great fun to the game.
BEWARE THE BRAMBLE
To begin with, the aim is to rescue townsfolk by laying paths across the board or to destroy the town, by laying a trail of storms across – so, again, path/tile laying. At the centre of the map, on both sides, is the Bramble; occupying this is worth extra points, but anything in there is easier to kill. As the game progresses, you will gain new objectives, card decks for new Protector tactics or upgrading Family members, additional bonus tiles, and so on. The game adds layers of difficulty at each step, all clearly laid out in the excellent rulebook (along with a comprehensive glossary). There is a LOT to take in, no doubt, but this is a highly impressive, and very crunchy game. And if that’s not enough, there’s both a strong, scalable solo mode and a very nasty 3 player variant with Hester herself as a character, infecting and controlling other players’ haints and indeed the dice tree itself! Or indeed, you can add in the Fair Folk, who take double turns but have to negotiate and extract information from other players, making it a fascinating semi-coop.
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