How to Play Defenders of Hogwarts: Your First Game, Step by Step

You have opened the box, the rulebook is on the table, and nobody wants to read it aloud for forty minutes. This walkthrough shows how to play Defenders of Hogwarts from setup to the final turn, so your first game of Defenders of Hogwarts gets moving quickly. It follows the official rulebook; for the exact wording of any rule, check the full rules summary. The advice sections are our own reading of how the rules play out, not official strategy.

Step 1: The first ten minutes

1. Pick the Dark Arts Player. Give it to whoever has read the rules — the rulebook recommends this. That player plays alone against everyone else and will also help explain things.
2. Everyone else picks a house and takes that house's board, four pawns, starter deck and marker.
3. Lay out the boards following the setup list on the rules page: shields and Hogwarts Tokens on the Main Board, three of your pawns in the Great Hall, your fourth on the first space of the Hogwarts Loyalty Track.
4. Learn the three things you are collecting. A shield costs a Library Book Card, a Parchment Scroll, and the Dark Detector or a D.A. Coin. Two shields win. Say this out loud before anyone plays a card.
5. Draw five cards and three Location Cards. The Location Cards are your first goal.

Step 2: Your first turn

On your turn you take one main action. A sensible first turn looks like this:

1. Look at your three Location Cards. Pick the two areas closest to the Great Hall. That is where your pawns are heading.
2. Explore: play a card with movement and walk a pawn toward one of those areas. If the card has two movement values, you can move two pawns, one value each.
3. Check free actions. You will not have a Hogwarts Token or a scroll yet on turn one, but get into the habit of checking.
4. Resolve any bonus space your pawn landed on, discard the card you played, and pass left.

Step 3: The first few rounds

Your early turns are a balance between three things:

• Spreading pawns so that two of them stand in two of your Location Card areas — that earns your first Parchment Scroll as a free action.
• Reaching the Library for a Library Book Card. You can hold only one at a time, so take it when you can use it.
• Climbing the Hogwarts Loyalty Track with the two-card Learn action. It is the only route to the Dark Detector and the Room of Requirement, where the D.A. Coins are.

Use Learn to add stronger cards when your hand has nothing useful. Acquired cards go on top of your Draw Deck, so they arrive quickly.

Step 4: Watch the clock

The Dark Arts Path is the game's clock, and House Players move it themselves: every Replenish advances the Dark Arts Marker one space. Once the marker reaches orange and red, the Dark Arts Player's cards get stronger. When the marker hits the last space, nobody can Replenish again — you play out the cards in your hand and that is the end.

In practice, that means each Replenish should be worth it. Once the Dark Arts Player holds all three Progress Tokens, watch their Location Card: they need three pawns there at the first red Event Space, then two, then one. Stunning Dark Arts Pawns near that location slows them down.

Step 5: Five mistakes new tables make

1. Replenishing on autopilot. It feels free; it is not. Each one pushes the Dark Arts Marker forward.
2. Leaving pawns where they can be bumped. A bumped pawn goes back to the Great Hall and hands the Dark Arts Player your House Marker.
3. Ignoring the Loyalty Track. Without the Dark Detector or a D.A. Coin you cannot finish a shield, and both come from climbing the track.
4. Backtracking. You cannot move a pawn back the way it came in the same turn — plan the route before you play the card.
5. Forgetting the Dark Arts limits. The Dark Arts Player cannot discard, and orange and red card effects stay locked until the marker reaches those zones.