Broom Service

By: Kim and Devin

October 5, 2022

There are four types of regions (hill, prairie, etc.), and there are witch cards that correspond to each region. If the leader chooses to play a witch card “brave” then they can move their pawn to an adjacent region of the matching type and deliver a potion to a tower there, scoring the corresponding number of points and potentially a wand resource. The catch to the game is that, if the leader chooses to play a card bravely, then in turn order, each other player has to reveal that role card if they chose it this round. Then, they choose if they want to play it brave or cowardly. Only the last player who chooses the brave option actually gets to perform the action, leaving early “brave” players with no action to take for the card they played! If the leader instead chooses to play the card as cowardly, they perform a less powerful version of the action (e.g., move a witch pawn but don’t make a delivery), but they get to perform the action right away, before any other players reveal if they have the same role card.

The Weather Fairy role card, if played bravely, nets you +3 points and chases away a storm cloud by spending the required number of wands and scoring the corresponding points on the storm cloud tile. You will take the storm cloud and keep it in front of you as the number of lightning bolts on them will provide bonus end-of-game scoring. There are 3 types of role cards that allow you to gather resources (either the 3 different potions or wands), and 2 types of role cards that allow you to make deliveries without moving your witch pawns.

While playing a card “brave” as the last player in turn order seems the obvious choice, you then need to think about what happens at the start of the next turn. After everyone has revealed whether or not they had the leader’s role card, the last player to play a “brave” card becomes the leader and must choose the next leading card! This can lead to a variable turn order, and some situations where you may want to take a cowardly action just to ensure you don’t become the leader before a big play you have planned.

At the end of the game, you complete scoring by adding up the number of lightning bolts you have collected in front of you and scoring points according to a guide. You also get 4 points for each set of 4 resources you have and another 2 points for each set of 3 resources. There is also an alternate game mode that allows you to collect your amulets from around the game board for the corresponding number of points. The player with the most points at the end of the game wins!

Broom Service also comes with several modular add-ons that you can add piecemeal or all once to tailor the gameplay to your preference. The reverse side of the board even features a totally different map with unique features. There’s a lot of content in this box! 

Thoughts

🔴Kim🔴

I played this 4 times with 2 players and I really enjoyed it. The average length was about 35 minutes, which makes it a perfect weeknight game for the two of us. I can see this playing a lot differently at a player count of 5 though. At 5 there would likely be a lot more “cowardly” plays than there was when it was just the 2 of us. I would highly recommend this game for anyone who wants to have a lighter, faster game while still being strategic for the gamers and non-gamers alike.

🟣Devin🟣

I also played this 4 times with 2 players! I thought it was a fun, fast, tense game that kept you on your toes. Every time we would start a round, we’d be eyeing each other’s resources and map position carefully. Sometimes, we would try to pick role cards that we hoped would differ from our opponent’s cards so we could enact our delivery schemes without interference. Other times, we would see a linchpin role card that our opponent needed to take in order to score big points, so we might purposely take it to steal the action out from under them. Still other times, we would do all of this planning, only for our opponent to do something totally unpredictable, ruining our plans to ruin their plans.

The game is loads of fun, and all the modular add-ons and reversible board faces means that we still have a lot of content to explore, and it can still be fresh every time we revisit it. The simplicity and intuitiveness of the rules makes Broom Service something easy to teach to a larger group, while the decision-making and action planning in each round provides the depth to keep it interesting over multiple plays.

Not to mention the art featured on the cards and board, which is vibrant, expressive, and very fitting to the light-hearted fantasy theme of the game itself. This is some of my favorite art I’ve seen in a board game so far!