Designed by: Michael Kiesling,Wolfgang Kramer
At time of writing available only in German as Die wandelnden Turme.
Wandering Towers is a racing game of sorts, where the players are trying to get their wizards from the standard towers (see pictures) around the track and into the raven tower. The problem is, the towers keep moving…
Everyone begins with a number of wizards on the track, occupying the towers. You have four empty potions in front of you, and three movement cards. On your turn, you’ll play two cards, in whatever order you like: they either move a wizard (of your own colour) or a tower, along with any wizards in or on it. Everything moves clockwise. If the towers are stacked, you can move the top one, all of them, or any amount in-between. As the towers move and stack, you may find your wizard trapped inside somewhere! And if you can’t see them, then you can’t move them. Once you’ve played your cards, you draw back up to three from the deck.
The goal is, as mentioned above, to get all your wizards into the black raven tower. But as well as the towers constantly moving around there are a couple of further catches to consider. Firstly, you can’t win the game if any of your potions are still empty. Fortunately you can fill them by moving a tower if, when it stops, it traps any wizards beneath it. Simply flip the potion over to show that it’s full. Secondly, whenever a wizard jumps into the raven tower, it moves as well: around the track to the next empty raven spot. So wizards who were far behind the raven tower may find themselves suddenly in prime position, and a wizard about to hop in is now lagging instead!
Full potions can be spent on a spell: once per turn only, you can cast a spell to move a wizard or a tower, but be careful: most (full) potions is the tie-breaker when the game ends. As soon as one player gets all their wizards into the tower, that triggers the final round.
You can mix in more complex spells for a more tactical game, but the basic game suggests using just the move a wizard/move a tower options.
Quite a bit. Deliberately or otherwise, players will be trapping each other in the towers and letting the air out of each other's metaphorical tyres.
Usually low, although it will creep up with more players.
It's a triplet of goals: fill your potions, trap other players, get your wizards in the tower. Spotting where and when these objectives align is the game's sweet spot.
It's hard to predict what will happen in a single turn, let alone an entire game!
2-6
Players
8+
Years
30-60
Mins
Sam says
A nice mix of racing, cardplay, dice-rolling (some cards allow you to roll a die then apply the result to movement) and memory, as it can be surprisingly hard to remember where your trapped wizards have ended up, with the towers constantly moving. It looks great too. If there's a downside it's that Wandering Towers is extremely reactive, to the point where there is no planning of turns at all because of how much everything changes between turns. That can lead to slight lulls as players puzzle over their options.... but on the other hand, you're only playing two cards from three each turn, so there isn't anything here that should cause the game to grind to a halt.