Review: Wandering Towers

Introduction & Overview

Year after year, the graduating classes of the Ravenland Magic School compete in their magical arts. Each class strives to be the first to reach the goal of the grand final exam: the legendary Raven Castle. But the path to the Raven Castle is full of traps and challenges. Only the class that uses its magical abilities correctly and masters the art of the wandering towers will graduate from the school as master wizards.

This is how Wandering Towers is presented, a design by Wolfgang Kramer and Michael Kiesling (Tikal, Torres, Coal Baron). First published in 2022 by ABACUSSPIELE in a bilingual English and German edition. Michael Menzel (Rokoko, Titania, Stone Age) is in charge of the illustrations.

It is published in Spanish by PIF Games (the game is completely language-independent except for the rulebook). It allows games of 2 to 6 players, with a recommended minimum age of 8 years and an approximate running time of 30 minutes. The MSRP is €39.95. For this review, a copy of the Spanish edition by PIF Games was used, kindly provided by the publisher as a review copy.

Important: if you already know the game and/or are only interested in my opinion about it, you can go directly to the Opinion section. The Content and Mechanics sections are especially intended for those who do not know the game and prefer to get a general idea of how it works.

Components

Inside a two-piece cardboard box (lid and bottom), measuring 33.2×22.8×7.5 cm (a rectangular box similar to Agricola, though slightly longer), we find the following components:

4 Landscape Track Segments (cardboard)
Raven Castle (cardboard)
9 Towers (cardboard)
8 Spells (cardboard)
90 Movement Cards (45×68 mm)
36 Potion Flasks (6 of each color) (cardboard)
30 Wizards (5 of each color) (wooden)
Starting Player Marker (cardboard)
Die (wooden)
Rulebook

How to Play

Wandering Towers is a light-medium weight game featuring a rondel composed of towers and a set of pawns that must be guided into a castle. On each turn, players will take two actions. Each action consists of playing a card from their hand and moving one of the eligible elements the exact number of spaces clockwise: either a pawn (jumping over towers) or a tower (moving a single tower or a stack of towers, splitting it wherever deemed convenient). If one or more pawns are covered by a tower, the player fills one of their potion flasks, which are required to complete the game (all of them must be filled). Additionally, these potions allow players to cast spells that slightly break the core rules. The winner is the first player to get all their pawns into the castle having filled all their potions.

Key Concepts

Let us start with the Board. It is made up of four segments, each with four octagonal spaces that, when connected together, form a 16-space rondel. Some of these spaces display a blue raven shield symbol used to place the raven castle as it moves. All game elements move clockwise around this rondel of spaces, although some effects allow this rule to be broken.

The Towers and the Castle are placed on these spaces. The towers can move around the board and stack on top of each other. When moving them, entire stacks can be moved or split. The Castle is a special tower: it cannot be moved directly, though it can move if it is resting on top of a tower that is being moved.

Each player will have a set of Wizards in their color to guide into the castle. These wizards move along the board, climbing onto and hopping off the towers. If they are on top of a tower and that tower moves, the wizards travel with it. When a tower lands on wizards and covers them, they become trapped until liberated. Every time a wizard enters the castle, the castle itself moves forward.

To move towers or wizards, players will use Movement Cards. These cards depict an open book, where the left page shows a tower movement and/or the right page shows a wizard movement. The corresponding corners display the exact number of spaces they move clockwise. Certain cards show a die icon, meaning the number of spaces the tower or wizard moves depends on rolling a six-sided die.

Another key element of the game are the Potions. Each player begins the game with one more potion flask than they have wizards. These potions are double-sided: one side is empty and the other is filled with liquid in the player’s color. Filling all potions is a mandatory requirement to win the game.

Potions can additionally be spent to cast Spells. These spells allow players to resolve effects before, during, or after a player action. At the start of the game, players decide how many spells will be available, and players can activate them during player turns, even during an opponent’s turn. Each spell has a cost in filled potions. When spent, these potions are returned to the box (they are still considered filled for game-end scoring conditions).

That is enough to get started.

Setup

Connect the four board segments to assemble the rondel.
Place the raven castle on the space featuring the ruined black base.
Place the remaining towers on the subsequent spaces clockwise from the castle. Alternate towers with and without shields, starting with a shielded tower.
Shuffle the spell tiles and place them face down. Players decide how many spells to use for the game and reveal that exact number of tiles. Return any unused spells to the box.
Shuffle the movement deck and place it nearby alongside the die.
Each player chooses a color and receives wizards (5/4/3 in games with 2/3–4/5–6 players), potions (one more than their wizard count), and draws 3 cards from the deck to form their starting hand.
Randomly choose a starting player and hand them the starting player marker.
Starting with the first player and proceeding clockwise, each player places one wizard on the tower closest to the castle that has not yet reached its wizard capacity (towers 1–3: 3 wizards, towers 4–6: 2 wizards, towers 7–9: 1 wizard).

We are ready to begin!

Game Flow

A game of Wandering Towers takes place over an indeterminate number of rounds. In each round, starting with the first player and proceeding clockwise, every player takes a turn.

On their turn, the active player performs two actions. Each action consists of playing a card and executing one of the movements shown (either a tower or a wizard). If the card shows a die, the player rolls the die to determine the movement value. Resolving the card movement is mandatory whenever possible. Alternatively, the player may forfeit both actions and discard their entire hand.

For each action taken, a spell may be cast. Starting with the active player and proceeding clockwise, all players have the chance to cast a spell (only one player may cast a spell per action). The player who chooses to activate it returns the required number of filled potions to the box and resolves the spell’s effect. The chosen spell can be activated multiple times, paying the required cost in potions for each cast.

After this, the player replenishes their hand by drawing back up to three cards, and the turn passes to the player on the left.

The actions available on movement cards are (if a card shows both options, the player chooses one):

Wizard Movement. The player chooses one of their visible wizards and advances it clockwise the number of spaces indicated by the movement card. To enter the castle, the wizard’s movement must end exactly on the castle’s space. The pawn can climb or descend any number of stacked towers. The limit of six wizards per tower cannot be exceeded; therefore, a player cannot take an action that would violate this limit. If the wizard enters the castle, the castle immediately advances clockwise to the next space with a raven shield that contains no wizards.
Tower Movement. The player chooses a tower or stack of towers (a stack can be split at any height) and moves it clockwise the number of spaces indicated by the card. Towers cannot be moved onto the space occupied by the castle. Moving the raven castle on its own is not allowed, though it can move if it is resting on top of one or more towers and those supporting towers are moved. If the tower or stack lands on a space or tower containing wizards, those wizards are trapped underneath, and the player fills one of their potion flasks (regardless of the number of trapped wizards or who owns them).

Game End

The final round is triggered the moment a player has sent all their pawns into the castle and filled all their potions. The round is played out to completion so that all players get an equal number of turns.

If no other player meets both victory conditions, the player who triggered the end of the game wins. Should one or more other players also fulfill them, the player with the most unused potions wins. If a tie persists, players share the victory.

Variants

Basic Mode. Only the Move a Wizard and Move a Tower spells are used. Only one spell can be activated per turn, and only by the active player.

Solo Mode. The game is set up with 12 wizards. The goal is to get all 12 wizards into the castle. The player simply takes turns playing cards one by one, drawing a card after each play. Potions are not used. The final score is the total number of cards used to achieve the objective (a great performance is using fewer than 20 cards).

Team Mode (for 4 or 6 players). Players compete in pairs. Each player controls their own wizards, but once a player has guided all their wizards into the castle, they may begin helping their teammate. Similarly, once a player fills all their potions, they can start filling their teammate’s flasks. The game ends when a team gets all their wizards into the castle and fills all their potions.

Personal Opinion

The folks at PIF Games are steadily building momentum and gradually expanding their catalog. To achieve this, alongside developing their in-house lineup, they have stepped into licensing titles from other publishers. Accordingly, one of their early bets is the game we are looking at today. A game that, surprisingly enough, flew somewhat under the radar, both in terms of publisher and designers.

After all, Wandering Towers is the work of one of the longest-standing design duos in the board game world, namely Wolfgang Kramer and Michael Kiesling. Designers whose names alone on a box cover usually raise high expectations. Yet in this instance, at least within my radar, it did not manage to create much buzz.

As mentioned earlier, whenever possible I enjoy trying designs from classic authors because they practically guarantee a relatively high baseline quality. Experience is a valuable asset, though naturally, they do not always hit the bullseye. Let us see whether they succeeded with Wandering Towers, not without first thanking the team at PIF Games for the review copy that made this tocho-review possible.

Wandering Towers puts players through a quick race to be the first to get a set of wizards inside a castle. The wizards and the castle are situated on a 16-space rondel that also holds nine towers. The castle, towers, and wizards are all capable of moving clockwise along this rondel track.

Mechanically, the game is fairly straightforward. Each player holds a hand of three cards that allow moving a wizard or a tower a specified number of spaces. Some cards only allow moving a wizard, others only a tower, some offer a choice between a tower or a wizard, and others leave the movement distance open to a roll of the die. Naturally, moving a tower carries along any wizards perched on top of it.

Nothing overly mysterious up to this point. The twist lies in the fact that the race features a second condition for each player beyond getting all their wizards into the castle. Every player has a set of potion flasks that must be filled to trigger the end of the game. These flasks are filled by trapping wizard pawns beneath towers. Whenever a tower is moved and lands on a space or tower holding one or more wizards (regardless of who owns them), the player fills one of their flasks.

These potions also serve a secondary purpose, as a set of available spells is laid out at the beginning of the game to perform extra actions with unique effects, even breaking standard movement rules for wizards and/or towers.

There is one final detail that injects plenty of dynamism into the proceedings. Every time a player successfully moves a wizard into the castle (which, as a reminder, requires an exact count to end the move directly on the castle space, otherwise the wizard overshoots), the castle immediately moves to the next unoccupied space featuring a shield. Since these shields appear both on board spaces and on certain towers, the castle can end up atop a tower and hitch a ride whenever that tower moves.

And there really is not much more to it. A family-weight game that stands as a direct alternative to titles like Survive: Escape from Atlantis! (here is its tocho-review) or The Downfall of Pompeii (here is its tocho-review). Games built around a race dynamic where you try to get a group of pawns to safety as quickly as possible while opponents throw every possible wrench into your plans.

The key difference is that interaction here is not quite as cutthroat as in those titles, since the worst harm you can inflict on an opponent is temporarily locking down some of their pawns by covering them with a tower. Moving those tower segments away is all it takes to free them up and resume using them for actions.

It also shares with Survive that touch of memory, requiring you to remember exactly where your wizards are trapped so you can recover them. The catch is that this frequently turns into a shell game: once trapped wizards are moved along with the towers above them, doubts immediately creep in. Players instinctively try to recall which level their wizard is on, and the moment the stack height changes—either because more towers land on top or because the stack splits and the wizards travel with the moving segment—getting confused is remarkably easy.

From The Downfall of Pompeii, it also borrows hand management to govern your tactical flexibility on any given turn. Fortunately, there is not a massive variety of card types here, making it rare for a player to feel completely locked out, outside of specific situations (such as having all pawns trapped and/or already inside the castle).

So far, the concept sounded quite promising, and trapping pieces is undeniably fun. The game actively encourages leveraging this mechanic right away, since filling potions is mandatory and only achieved by trapping pawns. Yet this exact dynamic introduces the game’s main drawback: its progression feels a bit too on rails.

While this ensures that the shell game antics kick off early—moving towers to trap pawns is essential—having this requirement feel so strictly mandatory is somewhat underwhelming. Whether through poor card draw or opponents successfully keeping their pawns out of reach, situations can arise where a player falls out of contention midway through simply by failing to fill their potions during the opening half of the match.

Naturally, wizards cannot be neglected either; they must keep moving, or you risk having all of them pinned down early on. Conversely, in the matches I played, players who managed to focus primarily on escorting their pawns directly into the castle ended up taking the win.

Because of this, the game shines brightest at higher player counts. With four to six players, it generates that classic table banter where everyone negotiates who to target next, though players always have the convenient excuse of card limitations dictating their available moves.

All in all, the game feels like it is missing a little something to be universally recommendable. Spells seemed intended to fill that void, but ultimately they are modular additions that, while providing a degree of variability, remain situational tools for specific moments. Furthermore, the advanced mode allowing opponents to cast spells out of turn tends to disrupt the flow of play, as the table constantly pauses to ask if anyone wants to react to the active player’s action.

Turning to production, we find fairly standard component quality, featuring cards with good stock, linen finish, and decent snap (sleeving is not strictly necessary, though since cards are held in hand, it wouldn’t hurt). The custom wizard-shaped wooden meeples are relatively charming, and the cardboard punchboards have solid thickness and density, especially considering the 3D towers and castle assemble into sturdy pieces. The rulebook is clearly organized and leaves no ambiguity.

Visually, we have another industry veteran in Michael Menzel handling the illustration work with a clean, functional style, if not particularly dazzling. The box cover is the standout piece, capturing the game’s whimsical tone well, while the actual components inside remain rather plain. I am not fond of the open-book card layout where tower movement occupies one page and wizard movement the other, making most cards look half-finished. Full-bleed card illustrations with distinct art for each option would have been preferable.

And let’s wrap this up. Wandering Towers is a light-medium game centered on a race to be the first to usher all wizards into a roaming castle using moving, stackable towers that can trap pawns underneath. It belongs to that family of accessible titles balancing an individual routing objective with throwing roadblocks in your opponents’ way. Its greatest strength lies in the memory element and the shell game antics created by the towers, where an inattentive player might spend half the game searching for an elusive wizard. Its main shortcoming is a progression that feels a bit too flat, luck-dependent, and constrained by a set pattern of play. Spells attempt to provide that missing spark, but they do not quite pull it off. For all these reasons, I give it a…