Craft Your Spell Book with Care

by Curt Covert, Owner, Smirk & Dagger Games

Weall crave magical power, but beware – such energies exact a price and are dangerous to wield. This is the idea at the core of Smirk & Dagger’s new spell-slinging deckbuilder, BEHEXT.

You are all Battlemages with a unique starting set of spells, specialized in one particular type of magic. You may be adept at enhanced damage, forcing discards, countering other magics, healing and the like, but over the course of the game, you will add to your spells strategically. You can lean in harder to your own specialty or branch out and balance your attacks and defenses with other schools of magic. You will never play the same mage twice, even if you start as the same character.

At the outset, I told you this was a deck-building game – but it doesn’t feel like one necessarily. In many deck builders, the act of building the deck and setting up a resource engine is the focus of the game. But here, deck-building is a means to an end. Game play is a highly interactive, free-for-all of magical combat. You aren’t building a resource engine, you are tailoring your attack and defensive strategy on the fly, to shifting opportunities and long-term planning.

Hexes are cast at the start of each round and ricochet from player to player as they deflect the spell and its everincreasing effects to another opponent. When you are targeted, it is your turn to play. And each card you play is both a defense against being hit by the hex, as well as an attack upon someone else.

The concept that magic is dangerous is threaded throughout, as everything has a double-edged nature. Targeting the leader by sending them the hex is exactly what gives them the opportunity to summon more powerful spells from the Conjuring Wheel. Buying spells adds power to your deck, but requires you to sacrifice cards from your hand to pay for it – and those are the cards that are shielding you from being hit by the hex. You have to constantly weigh your actions and the risks and rewards at stake. Happily, newly acquired cards are placed directly into your hand, where you can use them immediately (and not discarded, where you have to wait until you shuffle and redraw, as in so many deck builders). This means your hand potentially includes any of the four cards on the Conjuring Wheel – if you can afford it.

The concept is taken further by how you earn victory points. A winning score is a combination of your Willpower, which goes up and down through card play and being Behext, and through the purchase of cards that have Victory points. But the devious thing is that any card worth Victory points has a negative effect on the owner when played. So, buying them is a risk that you have to find a way to mitigate – but not buying them can kill your final score.

Taken together, designers Jonathan Lavallee, Melodee Smith and Greg Millikin shake up a lot of the expectations about what a deck-building game is – or can be. It is definitely a strategic game, but the high level of player interaction makes it feel classically Smirk & Dagger as you thrill to detonating the hex in someone’s face or foil an opponent’s plans.

As a huge bonus that greatly enhances replay value, the game comes with four different Mastery packs – in-box expansions that add a total of four new Battlemages and 72 new cards to the game. Additionally, each adds a new game mechanic, so the game grows with you.

Variable game length, end game scoring bonus cards, multiple hexes in play at once are added to the full game experience, as your players are ready to take on more. Smirk & Dagger could have saved these for another product, but included it all – which makes this game an incredible value and a ton of curse and counter-cursing fun!

BEHEXT, $45, will be available in April 2023.

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The hit game of passive aggressive cohabitation now has even more scenarios to play! This companion app will add endless hours of home decorating gameplay!

A Core Pack of Turbo Dork Paints from Turbo Dork features 30 bestselling colors. Order TDK3003 for a half-full starter kit, or TDK3006 for a full kit.

Email info@turbodork.com to order directly or GTS, Lightspeed or PHD for distribution.

Onimaru from Penguin and Pandais a fully cooperative and customizable game where players defend a village against otherworldly invaders. E-commerce store goes live in May.

Pre-orders open now at sales@pandp. productions info@capitalpunishmentgame. com

Capital Punishment from Capital Punishment Games is fun for all ages to play and engage in fiery arguments. Convince the judge that your celebrity, trend or pet peeve is the worst.

Homeworld: Fleet Command from Modiphius Entertainment puts wouldbe admirals in charge of Kushan or Taiidan fleets fighting it out in fast-playing galactic battles featuring 101 plastic models of ships. homeworldfleetcommand.com

Space Jam A New Legacy: Serververse Showdown from Upper Deck brings the story of the blockbuster family film to life. From Looney Tunes characters to world-famous basketball players, recruit your dream team. upperdeckstore.com/space-jam-a-newlegacy-serververse-showdown.html

Key to the Kingdom from Restoration Games features whimsical Andrew Bosley art, tongue-in-cheek humor, charming miniatures and unique whirlpool board mechanism – filling family game night with fun and laughter

Email retailers@restorationgames.com