Designed by Robin Hegedus, Septima is a game from Mindclash where you are the leader of a coven of white witches competing to become the successor to the Septima (High Witch). Tho' players are doing good - using magic to heal sick townsfolk - they need to avoid attracting the suspicion of the townsfolk and avoid being caught by witchfinder hunters...
There's a solitaire option too but with 2-4 players, Septima is a game where the players are competing but they are also incentivised to cooperate with each other because when two or more players choose to take the same action on a turn they benefit from a stronger version of that action. The actions available to you are determined by your hand of nine cards, so you select the action you want to take in a manner reminiscent of Concordia (PD-Verlag). You will variously be moving your meeple between locations on the board, collecting ingredients, brewing potions, learning spells, healing townspeople, recruiting followers etc. Because there are advantages in players choosing the same actions, you'll want to discuss and maybe negotiate before choosing the card to play but cards are revealed simultaneously...
Mindclash is known for the complexity of its games. Because it's card-driven, gameplay is on the face of it more straightforward than in some of Mindclash's previous titles. This accessibility means you can be up and running relatively quickly. The beauty of this game's design, however, is the intricate way in which all the many moving parts fit together and interact with each other, so tho' the individual actions may seem relatively simple, there are choices to be made within each action and, crucially, things become more complex as the various actions impact on each other and with your witches' asymmetric abilities. Ultimately, this is a euro game where you're building a points-scoring engine but it'll be an engine with a lot of interconnected parts.
Septima incorporates a push-your-luck element too because the witch hunters will always be in pursuit and their movement is determined by your witch's suspicion level combined with the roll of a custom six-sided die (modifiers ranging from -2 to +2). You'll obviously try to minimise the suspicion you generate and use your movement action to try to keep a distance between your meeple and the witch hunters but there may well still be occasions during the game when you take a gamble on staying within range of an unlucky roll. Being caught by a hunter can have a significant impact on your score as it, and an unlucky bag draw for a subsequent trial, can result in the loss of an acolyte ('exiled' rather than burnt at the stake) and loss of a key point-scoring objective. In our plays at Board's Eye View there were some gripes from players who fell foul of this luck factor but the consensus view was that it was down to players to manage the risk by managing their suspicion level.
When we referred earlier to the 'beauty' of Septima we were praising the elegance of the design but credit must also go to Barbara Bernát and Villo Farkas for the beauty of this game's artwork. The engaging look of the game adds hugely to the immersion of its theme. The playing time on the box obviously envisages speedier turns than we've been able to replicate in our plays at Board's Eye View; tho' it suggests 50-100 minutes on the box, our plays have so far all run to more than 2 hours. That's not a complaint, however: we've enjoyed every play.