How to Play Defenders of Hogwarts

Defenders of Hogwarts is a one-vs-many deck-building board game from MinaLima, the design studio behind the look of the Harry Potter films, designed by David Waterman. Two to five players share one table: everyone but one player takes a Hogwarts house and prepares the school for battle, while the remaining player commands the Dark Forces trying to infiltrate it. The official rulebook clocks a full game at about 90 minutes, and it is rated 13+.

Here is how a game actually plays out, in the order you’ll meet each decision.

MinaLima also published a six-part animated story explaining the flow of a game — hover (or tap) each panel to play it:

What each side is trying to do

The win conditions are asymmetric, which is why the two sides feel so different from turn one.

• A House Player wins by collecting any 2 of the 6 Defence Shields. Shields are shuffled and placed face-up on the board’s Defence Shield Spaces. To claim one you must arrive on a Defence Shield Space holding exactly three items: a Library Book Card, a Parchment Scroll, and — depending on which of the two shield types occupies that space — either the Dark Detector or a Dumbledore’s Army (D.A.) Coin. Three shields ask for the Dark Detector, three ask for a D.A. Coin.
• The Dark Arts Player wins a different way: secure all 3 Dark Arts Progress Tokens along the Dark Arts Path (the Giant in the White Zone, the Acromantula in the Orange Zone, the Dementor in the Red Zone), draw a Dark Arts Player Location Card, and land the required number of pawns on that specified location simultaneously — 3 pawns if they take the Location Card at the first Red Event Space, 2 at the next, and just 1 if they wait until the last space of the path.

The pieces you’ll meet

Two words trip new players up, so fix them early:

• Pawns are your people on the map: each House Player has 4 House Player Pawns; the Dark Arts Player has up to 7 Dark Arts Pawns depending on player count.
• Hogwarts Tokens are pickups: 7 of them, one per card type (Creatures & Beings, Transfiguration & Spell Casting, Items & Artefacts, Defence Against the Dark Arts, Charms, Potions, Herbology). A House Player can never hold more than 1 at a time.

Setup, briefly

• With five players, four take the houses — Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Slytherin or Ravenclaw — and each receives an identical 7-card starter deck; all four draw 5 cards to hand. No one starts ahead.
• The last player takes the Dark Forces: their own 7-card starter deck (a completely different set), 5 cards to hand.
• Each House Player also draws 3 House Player Location Cards — you’ll need them for Parchment Scrolls.
• Dark Arts Pawns scale with the table: 1 House Player = 4 pawns, 2 = 5, 3 = 6, 4 = 7. Four of them start on the Deployment Spaces in the grounds; the rest wait in a pool off-board.
• Three of each house’s four pawns start in the Great Hall; the fourth starts on the first space of the Hogwarts Loyalty Track.
• The Dark Arts Marker starts on the first space of the Dark Arts Path, with the 3 Progress Tokens on their zone spaces.

How a turn works

The House Player to the left of the Dark Arts Player goes first, and play continues clockwise. Every turn — House or Dark — you take exactly one Main Action:

1. Explore — play 1 card from your hand, resolving its movement and/or effect in the order you choose. Played cards go to your Discard Pile at the end of your turn.
2. Learn (House Players only) — trade cards in to build your deck (see below).
3. Replenish — refill your hand, at a cost (see below).

On top of that Main Action, House Players may take Free Actions: use a Hogwarts Token, and/or gain a Parchment Scroll. Some card effects also let you play a second card — but you must fully resolve the first card before starting the second.

Reading your cards

• Movement values tell you how far a pawn can go, and you don’t have to spend it all. A multi-move card like ‘3 + 3’ lets you move 2 pawns up to 3 spaces each, or 1 pawn up to 6 — and nothing in between, so no splitting it 2-and-4.
• Pawns can’t backtrack in the same turn, and House pawns can’t pass through obstacles unless a card effect lets them.
• There are 4 obstacle types — Locked Doors, Protective Spells, Physical Objects and Water. The Dark Arts Player simply walks through all of them.
• Starter cards are deliberately plain. Everyone begins with the same 7; the Acquire Decks (42 House cards, 20 Dark Arts cards) are where decks get interesting.

Drafting new cards — the Learn Action

This is how you build your deck, mid-game. You must have at least 1 pawn outside a Protected Area to Learn, and then you choose one of three trades:

• Discard 1 card → take 1 of the 2 face-up cards from the Acquire Row.
• Discard 1 card → take the face-down top card of the Acquire Deck.
• Discard 2 cards → take 1 of the 2 face-up Advanced Acquire Row cards, and advance 1 space along the Hogwarts Loyalty Track.

Whatever you take goes on top of your Draw Deck, face-down — you’ll draw it next time you refill, not turns later. It’s a small design choice that makes drafting feel fast.

Replenishing — and why it helps the enemy

The Replenish Action runs in order: discard any number of cards and draw back up to 5; stand up all of your stunned pawns; advance the Dark Arts Marker 1 space along the Dark Arts Path.

Here is the mechanic that decides most games: every House Replenish makes the enemy stronger, unlocking nastier Orange- and Red-zone card effects and dragging the game toward its end. (The Dark Arts Player’s own Replenish does not advance the marker — and they can draw but never discard.) Replenishing is never free — it is a loan you take out against the Dark Forces. Cards drawn from events, Library Book Cards or Bonus Spaces are the only free draws; they don’t move the marker.

Playing the Dark Forces

Your pawns stride through every obstacle on the board — but there are four Protected Area Spaces (blue shield icon) you can never enter or end on.

• Deploying from your pool costs 1 movement point, onto an empty Deployment Space (Dark Mask icon). You can’t deploy where one of your own pawns already stands.
• Your card effects unlock by zone colour. White effects work from the start; Orange and Red effects only resolve once the marker reaches those zones — which is why advancing the marker is your engine.
• Bumping is your pressure valve. End your move on a House pawn and that pawn is sent all the way back to the Great Hall while yours returns to the pool; you take that player’s House Marker and draw 2 from the Dark Arts Acquire Deck, keeping 1 on top of your deck. Collect all four House Markers at once and you must advance the marker 1 space and hand the Markers back.
• Some Dark Arts cards punish directly — for example, the Confundo card forces a House Player to skip their turn.

When pawns meet

If a House pawn ends its move on a Dark Arts Pawn, both are stunned — laid sideways — and the House Player moves the Dark pawn to an adjacent space of their choice. A stunned pawn can’t move by any means until its owner Replenishes, which stands all of their pawns back up. House pawns that get bumped go back to the Great Hall — early on, you’ll do a lot of walking back.

Other rules worth knowing before your first game

• The Library is the only source of Library Book Cards — 2 sit face-up on the Side Board, and you can hold only 1 at a time.
• Parchment Scrolls come from your Location Cards: have a pawn in 2 of the 3 areas those cards name, reveal and discard both, and the scroll is yours.
• The Hogwarts Loyalty Track is 7 spaces and gates everything: reach 5th place or higher while furthest along and you take the Dark Detector; the first player to do so also reveals the Room of Requirement, where House Players pick up D.A. Coins.
• Spending the Dark Detector on a shield costs you — your pawn drops 3 spaces back down the track.
• Secret Passageways (3 of them) and Fly Off Points are shortcuts: passageways cost 1 movement point, flying between Fly Off Points is free — both only with the right card effects.
• Bonus Spaces (Card Draw, Card Acquire, Play Again) only fire when a House pawn ends its move there.

The four mistakes first-time players make

1. Replenishing every turn. It feels efficient and it hands the Dark Arts Player the game, one marker step at a time. Refill when you must, not when you can.
2. Ignoring movement icons when drafting. A deck full of damage and no way through a Locked Door wins nothing.
3. House Players planning in silence. There is one Dark Detector, one Library at a time, and D.A. Coins for everyone who climbs the track — the shields go to whoever coordinated first.
4. Treating the Dark Forces as a normal opponent. They ignore your walls and your Protected Areas are your only safe rooms; play against their marker, not their pawns.

Defenders of Hogwarts at a glance

Players 2–5 · Playtime 90 min (official rulebook) · Age 13+ · Type: one vs many deck building · Publisher: MinaLima · Original game design: David Waterman

👉 Read the official rules in full on our Defenders of Hogwarts rulebook page, or see whether it’s worth buying in our honest review.

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