I’ve never been one for an epic board game, preferring to play multiple short games rather than wading into 4 hours of Monopoly. However, being a Harry Potter loving household however we’d invested in the Hogwarts battle game and felt duty bound to give it a go.

As a general rule I find things with complicated rules a challenge. In this game you have to read a hell of a lot of cards and therefore supposedly retain a lot of information. Characters have skills that do extra things, villains attack you multiple times – you are turning things over, discarding things, rolling dice, picking up lightening bolts, spending coins and being stunned over and over again. I spent a lot of time playing this game fairly baffled if I’m honest.

There are seven levels to Hogwarts Battle. Each level gets harder to defeat and takes longer than the time before. We had several failed attempts including level 7 in a holiday home in Filey where we gave up after half an hour totally dejected. I mean if you are up against a Basilisk before you’ve even had the chance to buy the Sword of Griffindor what hope have you got?

Every single attempt included the following comments (mostly from me):

You need to slow down because I don’t know what you are doing.

Please can you read out what it says on the cards in order so we all know what’s going on.

I’m about to die again.

Mum you are the only person ever who wants to buy Gilderoy Lockhart.

Oh I should have done (insert action here e.g. picked up a card, increased my health, given you a coin) three turns ago with my special power and forgot.

I hate Crookshanks, I’m allergic to cats.

Have we got any more pop corn/wine/crisps/chocolate?

We tried once more yesterday to defeat level 7. We were armed with snacks and coffee. The best thing happened and we started the game with rubbish villains which meant we might possibly win – and we did. We chucked so much lightening at Voldemort there was no way back for him. I felt weirdly elated – it’s the completer finisher in me. The bad guys are dead and I don’t have to go through this mental agony on a weekly basis anymore.