Via Magica

1st August 2021

Sunday night gaming on Board Game Arena has come to a conclusion.

The last game of the evening was Via Magica.
Via Magica - the magic way, what is the magic way? Turns out it's a game of errr.... bingo? Not just bingo, but bingo very loosely inspired by Harry Potter.

Players take the role of a student of magic looking to earn their Certificate of Sorcery, this is done by collecting macguffins to open magical portals; the titular Via Magica.

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Caveat: We have only ever played Via Magica online.

What's in a game?

• Portal cards: A deck of 80 cards that represent magic portals.
  Each card has a row of 3-6 open spots which each displays an animus symbol and represents the cost to activate it in animus tokens/crystals Each card also displays a reward that the player will earn once activated, this can be straight-up points, situational points calculated at the end or a bonus such as extra crystals and so on.
• Crystals: These are used in conjunction with portal cards.
• Animus tokens: There are 23 of them that make up the 7 different types of token. The astute among you will be thinking that these numbers do not breakdown evenly - and you'd be correct, all the differently coloured animus' have a different rarity as shown below.​
  Air: X6, grey/white.
  Water: X5, blue
  Earth: X4, brown.
  Life: X3, green.
  Fire: X2, red.
  Shadow: X1, black.
  Wildcard: X2, any colour.​​
• Bag: Used with Animus tokens.
• Bonus tiles: Each of these tiles has a condition, that if met, can give a player bonus points if they claim the tile. Bonus tiles can only be claimed directly after a portal has been activated. They come in 2 types
  Colour of portals: These conditions revolve around activating a particular number of portals of a particular colour(s).
  Number of portals: Players can earn bonus points for the total number of cards they activate.
  However, only one tile can ever be claimed from this category and only at the time the criteria is met! This means that players are racing to claim these tokens, the bonus for activating 4 portals cannot be claimed when opening a 5th!

Since this game has only been played digitally, it's not possible to comment on the quality of the game components.
The artwork on cards in Via Magica is universally good; cheerfully brash and colourfully cartoonish characters dominate the cards. The animus tokens are also bright and colourful.
The game's iconography is easy to read.

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How's it play?
Setup

• Shuffle the deck of portal cards and deal 5 cards face-up in to a central row.
• Then deal 6 to each player, face-down. The remain cards become the portal deck.
  Each player keeps 3 and discards the others. The only restriction is that a player can never have any duplicate cards, doubles must be discarded and new cards dealt in their place.
  Each players places their 3 cards face-up in a row in front of them.
• Give each player 7 crystals.
• Put all 23 animus tokens into the bag and give it a good shake.

That's that, now we're ready to play.
On to play
In Via Magica, all players act simultaneously after the active player who assumes the role of Catcher, which is a fancy name for a bingo caller, draws a token.

• The active player blindly draws a token from the bag, announces to all the other players which of the 7 animus types was drawn and places it in the central (not back in the bag.).
• All players now look at their 3 cards.
  • If a player has an open animus spot on any of their cards that matches the animus token that was just drawn, then that player puts 1 of their 7 crystals on to one of those matching spaces. If a player has no spare crystals, then they may take a crystal they have previously placed and move it over.
  • If a player has no open spaces that match the drawn animus, then they do not place a crystal this time.
• If a player has covered all the spots on their card with crystals, then they have activated the portal and should shout WINGARDI-, er no, they shout BING-, er no they shout INCANTATUM!
  They then return all the crystals from the completed card to their supply and put the card in their completed area.
  If the card has a relevant effect, it is triggered now.
  Next they take a card from the 5 available and add it to their row of 3 and a new card is drawn from the deck to bring the central row back up to 5 cards.
  If multiple players completed cards at the same time, then the player who shouted Incantatum first goes first, followed by other completing players to their left and onwards.
  After a portal is activated, a player will automatically earn a Colour of Portal bonus token they are eligible for and may choose to take a Number of Portals token is they want it.
• If a wildcard token was drawn by the active player, they return all tokens back to the bag, gives it a shake and passes it on to the player to their left. That player is now the active player and the Catcher.
  If no wildcard token was drawn, the active player blindly draws another token and play proceeds on.

Endgame
Play proceeds until a player has activated a 7th portal card.
Players now calculate at all the victory points their portal cards confer, end of game bonuses they earn and points acquired from bonus tiles.
All scores are tallied, highest score wins.

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Overall
There's no denying it, Via Magica is bingo, the manual says as much. The portal cards are bingo cards and the animus tokens are bingo balls, the twist though, is that whilst there are only 7 'numbers', the odds of them coming up are heavily skewed and is what adds a scintilla of much needed depth to the game. Portal cards with more than 1 or 2 rare openings will generally be much harder to complete, it also means that players should complete the 'rarer' spaces first if they get wildcards.

Additionally, there is a little bit of strategy when using some of the lower cost cards; once a player starts a card, they'll generally want to finish it, as a consequence, quite often there's no decision to be made and players will concentrate on the card they started if they can. However, since players initially have 7 crystals, they'll always have at least 1 surplus crystal (Provided they are only 'going' for 1 card a a time that is.), 'loading' a lower cost card with surplus crystals can prove when a draw goes against the player, allowing them to switch a crystal round to a secondary card which may prove beneficial.
Initial and later card drafts will prove important, the basic dichotomy is choosing between point scoring cards and special ability cards, as well as quick-to-complete lower cost cards and higher value more costly ones.
​During play, we found that picking the highest cost cards seemed to be the most successful approach.
Ultimately though, this is a game of luck and luck will be the biggest factor.

Obviously Via Magica has little to engage players of heavier games and personally I found it an unabsorbing experience.
It's unlikely that I'm the target audience though, the simplicity and bingo theme of Via Magica clearly makes it a crossover game that is accessible enough to appeal to non-gamers and which they will find easy to learn.