Harry Potter TCG cards at first glance

 

I took a careful look at the cards that I have and I have come up with some generalizations of each class of cards that should be helpful in deciding which lessons to use and what game play style fits you.  Keep in mind I haven’t seen all of the cards so if some of the information turns out to be wrong, don’t blame me because I’m just trying to get this information to those who want it as fast as possible.

The Lessons

Charms: Direct damage, discard, some recursion and wands

With Charms you can make your opponent discard cards directly from his or her deck and make them discard cards from their hand, though direct damage cards may only be used once.  Paired with Potions you can get these cards back from your library to do damage again.  Some of the spells give you the option to do damage to creatures instead of the opponent and at least one lets you do damage to both (toe biter) and 4 should be standard in each charms deck.  Wands provide a boost in lessons

 

Potions: Major recursion (healing) some damage and some elimination.

So far I haven’t found too many potions cards so I know the least about this lesson.  From what I can tell the main thing that potions contributes is the ability to take cards from the discard pile and shuffle them into your library.  This can be very important in the late game as it effectively stalls the game, letting your opponents cards run out while you replenish your supply.  The only thing is you can’t use a healing card to get another healing card from your discard pile, that just prevents an infinite card combo but clever players may figure a way around this.  The Professor Snape card lets you shuffle 7 cards from your discard pile into your library once per game and he provides 1 potion lesson, look for this guy to pop up in combos.

 

Care of Magical Creatures: Creatures and creature related spells.

Here’s the deal, in order to win you have to get rid of your opponent’s cards in their library.  Creatures let you do damage over and over again until they are removed by your opponent or the game has been completed.  If you can get the damage going then you are sitting pretty.  Most decks will probably have creatures in them because they are just a good deal.  Some creatures require that you discard a lesson or two when they come into play.  In exchange you get a tougher creature than you could have normally played at your current lesson level.  This will slow you down but I think the risk is worth it if your opponent has to struggle to take out a quick creature while they are loosing cards.  Early game should be creature oriented.  

 

Transfiguration: Card elimination, damage evasion, turn manipulation.

 Major creature removal and ways to slow creatures down are the keys to transfiguration.  This lesson includes ways to get more actions per turn which could be abused, but cards like this have high lesson requirements so they are more late game cards while they would be most useful in the early game.  Still with a large amount of creature removal at its disposal this could be a favorite with the cold efficiency of creatures.  Every deck will probably have charms or transfiguration to deal with creatures because that’s what they are good at.

 

Adventure Cards

Adventure Cards give your opponent a challenge, a drawback, a victory condition and if they fulfill that condition a reward.  They cost 2 actions to play but can seriously slow an opponent down if you can get one out quick enough.

 

Character Cards

This is a character from the story that has a special ability that is useful and possibly abusable.  You start out with one (this is “you” and can’t be destroyed), but you can play more at the cost of 2 actions.  I haven’t seen too many of these but Hermione and Snape both look like solid characters.  Anyone that gives you a free lesson is all right by me.