Which Witch? - A card game by Nathaniel James

Which Witch?

You’ve gathered to celebrate the equinox, and as dusk settles, the competition begins. You work at your cauldron, beseeching ancient powers to imbue your magics, to bind mystic familiars to you, and to hex your competitors.

Can you out-wit and out-witch your coven?

Which Witch? is a light strategic card game for 2-6 players aged 14 and up that plays in 15 to 20 minutes. The game features simultaneous action choice and hand management mechanics.

Each turn you simultaneously choose a witch to play face down that, when revealed, will help you brew, swap and steal potions from your coven. But beware! If you clash with another player by revealing the same witch, then neither of you will get to use your powers...

Featuring gorgeous Art Nouveau style illustrations of 13 witches from myths and legends across the globe, Which Witch? will weave its charms about you.

How to Play

If you want to dive straight into the details yourself, a draft version of the rulebook is available on our BoardGameGeek page here.  If you prefer a more visual explanation, Paul recorded a How-To-Play and playthrough demo in under 20 minutes, showing below:

In brief, each player begins the game with an identical hand of Witches.  Each turn consists of the following steps:

• Dusk - in which special abilities activate.
• The Veiling - in which each player chooses a Witch from their hand and plays it face down in front of them.
• The Calling - in which the Witches are called in numerical order, starting with Hecate at number one, proceeding through to Isis at number 13.
• The Witching Hour - in which we check to see if any player has 5 potions of the same colour to win the game!

During the Calling, should two or more players reveal the same Witch, that's a Clash, and the Clashing players do not get to use their Witch's power, unless of course you have a friendly Cat Familiar to sway that Witch to do your bidding...

Pledges and Rewards

Custom one-of-a-kind Cat Familiar:
Strictly limited to the first 5 people to pledge at this level.
For showing an incredible amount of support to the project and pledging £666, you get Nat to draw you a custom, one-of-a-kind Cat Familiar from a reference photo of your cat. Your cat will be an actual, playable card for your copy of the game (Cat will ship separately).  If you do not have a cat, we can talk about drawing your octopus instead.

Retailers: Talk to us.  If you are looking to buy copies of Which Witch? in bulk for your store, make the Retailer pledge here for a nominal £5 fee, and we will be in touch post-campaign to discuss details.

Thanks to the generosity of our Day 1 backers the project was fully funded in 4 hours! We have announced our first stretch goal.  If you are new to Kickstarter here's how Stretch Goals work - if we hit additional funding milestones, we will upgrade everyone's pledge in some way.  Stretch Goals will always impact the base game, meaning whether you are backing us with a Basic Tier pledge, a Deluxe bundle, or one of our amazing custom Cat backers, you all benefit from the addition!

• At £6000 we will add 30 clear Tarot-sized sleeves to the box.  Keep those beautiful Tarot cards protected - FUNDED

• At £7000 we will add shiny golden borders to pick out details on one side of those beautiful tarot cards.  Shininess abounds!

Add-ons

Hot off the press we have these potion bottle designs to spruce up your potion collection.  Printed on acrylic, these bottles really add the wow-factor to your game.

Take your appreciation of the excellent artwork in this game to the next level by purchasing a neoprene playmat with double-stitched edges.  Note that the playmat has no specific gameplay function, it's purely a recontextualisation of Elyssa's beautiful artwork featuring The Morrigan and her crows.

A set of 8 cork-backed coasters showing off a selection of artwork from the Witches and Familiars in this game (8 different artworks - as an example only Pincoya is pictured here)

Why back the Kickstarter and pledge your money now?  Your contribution not only determines whether this game is printed at all, it also has a direct impact on our ability to keep making awesome games for years to come.  We have so many ideas to come after Which Witch?, but we can only realise them if this project is a success and we can continue building forward momentum.

Can I tease you with suggestions of a bidding game about hiding your true intentions with Fae lies and trickery in the mix?  Or a game about hiring explorers to find buried treasure whilst influencing nobility and criminals with gemdust?  Or how about a game of soccer re-imagined around adventurers and sorcery?

By backing Which Witch? here and now on Kickstarter, you aren't just getting a copy of our game. You're sending a message that Curious Lynx Games belongs as part of the UK's gaming landscape and you want to see exactly what we're capable of.

There is no guarantee that Which Witch? will be coming to retail.  As much as we all want to see this game sitting on a shelf in Waterstones (hey Waterstones - call me!) begging to be purchased and played, this is currently your only chance to obtain a copy of the game.  Should we reach retail, the Kickstarter version of the game is likely to be the most blingiest!

First time Kickstarting?

Are you new to Kickstarter?  Here's how it works!

Review the Rewards: Carefully review the reward tiers for this campaign. These are the incentives you'll receive for pledging at different levels. Choose the reward tier that best suits your preferences.

Create an Account: If you haven't already logged in or created a Kickstarter account, you'll be prompted to do so. This is necessary to complete your pledge and receive project updates.  If you're an Apple user please use your real e-mail address and do not use the Hide My E-mail feature at this stage - we use your e-mail address to identify you later!

Select Your Pledge Amount: After choosing a reward tier, you'll need to select the amount you want to pledge - Kickstarter allows you to pledge more than the reward price if you'd like, but most people stick to the advertised level.

Payment: Provide your payment information. Kickstarter uses a secure payment system to process your pledge. Your payment will only be charged if the campaign reaches its funding goal by the end of the campaign period.  If we do not reach our funding goal then the game is not made and you are never charged.

Confirm Your Pledge: Review your pledge details one last time to ensure they are correct. Then, click the "Confirm" or "Pledge" button to officially back the project. Don't forget to check the box indicating you understand Kickstarter's terms.

Spread the Word: Consider sharing the campaign with your friends and on social media to help raise awareness and support for us!

Stay Updated: Once you've backed the project, you'll receive updates from us. These updates will include progress reports, production updates, and estimated delivery timelines for your rewards.

Pledge Manager: At some point we will open the Pledge Manager.  This is your last chance to review or modify your order and provide your shipping address, at which point applicable taxes and shipping costs will be charged.

Enjoy the Game: Finally, your game arrives and you bask in the glory of knowing that your very pledge brought this game into existence. It's time to gather your coven and ask them the question... Which Witch?

Fulfilment Timeline

The design files are essentially ready to go to the manufacturer - we're meeting with Panda at SPIEL Essen during this very campaign to run a file check.

In theory, we could get samples for review and complete pre-production as early as December this year, ready for mass production to begin.

Mass production will take around 3 months, and I'm aware this crosses Chinese New Year, which will add its own delays, so the game could be produced by around March-April.

Then there's the freight shipping to get the pallets from the factory to our fulfilment hubs in the US and UK.  The US shipment should land first, as we're looking at a roughly 45-day freight mission.  The UK's should come shortly after, being a 60-day journey.

At that point, fulfilment begins.  The optimist in me wants to tell you that we will begin fulfilment in May.  Fingers crossed, some spare copies of this print run may make it to be sold at the UK Games Expo.  However, I've backed enough projects on this platform to know that any number of unexpected bumps in the road can surface between now and then - hence we're officially putting the expected delivery date in July 2027.

Rest assured that we will keep you updated on our progress on a monthly basis at a minimum.

Shipping and Taxes

Whether this is your first Kickstarter or, like Paul, you're a superbacker with hundreds of backed projects to your name, we must acknowledge the uncertainty in the world around freight shipping and logistics, including tariffs to the US and newly evolving EU laws.

The shipping ranges attached to each tier you can pledge for are estimates and are as such subject to change when we reach fulfilment.

USA: During the pledge manager, after the campaign, we will be collecting sales tax in any states where that is applicable.  Your games will ship from the US, via GameFlow Solutions.

UK and EU: During the pledge manager, after the campaign, we will be collecting VAT where applicable. Your games will ship from the UK via Spiral Galaxy or an EU representative. No taxes are charged at the time of delivery.

Rest of the World: At launch, we are not supporting shipping outside of the UK, EU and US regions.  However, contact us at kickstarter@curiouslynx.games or comment here - if enough people demand it, we could make it happen!  Alternatively, consider using a forwarding service such as Stackry - we ship your games to a given address in the US, and the forwarding service charges you for forwarding that parcel to you wherever you are.  If you intend to use a forwarding service, please mark your pledge for US shipping.

Meet the Lynxes

Time to meet the team behind Which Witch?!

Nat James is our Creative Director at Curious Lynx Games, and this game is his design. Not only that, he also contributed art for his favourite witches, Circe, Isis, and Freyja, and the Cat Familiars are his cats, Thor and Loki!  Nat fell hard into Magic: The Gathering at age 15 and still enjoys a pre-release. Designing cards and sets was a hobby almost from the start. Undoubtedly his D&D persona would be some kind of Gnome Tinkerer, though currently he plays a Minotaur Ranger-Cleric.

It's Paul's fault he found the world of other board games, and sometime after that he began building prototypes of games to try on exceptionally patient family and friends. Dozens of game ideas on, he’s ready to take things to the next level and is excited to start pushing his creations into the world.

Paul Smith is our Technical Director, and has put many hours into playtesting Which Witch?, working on precise wordings of the Witch and Familiar cards and the rulebook, and learning far too much about the world of logistics, freight, manufacturing and fulfilment.  That is a learning journey that will never end.

Originally entering the board gaming world through the great gateway game Carcassonne back around 2005, Paul attended his first SPIEL Essen and was blown away by the games on offer - and he's really, really excited to be going back there as an exhibitor this month!

A mathematician and programmer at heart, Paul worked in the video game industry for about 14 years, including work on Duels of the Planeswalkers - a Magic: the Gathering adaptation for Steam and consoles.

The Artists

In addition to Nat's own artwork appearing in Which Witch? we have commissioned artwork from 3 other artists, and we might be biased but we think their work is utterly phenomenal.

Please find our artists' other work at:
Kerri Targett - artstation.com/kerritargett
Elyssa Long - printisdead.co.uk
Jaqueline Florencio - artstation.com/jaquelineflorencio