(Already familiar with this game but still trying to decide if its for you? Jump to Part 2 where I do a little more analysis and a lot less describing the game)
Part I: The Basics
There is nothing worse than sitting in your tower and running out of potions. How will you ever host Thursday night alchemy workshops for the local theosophists guild? This will be quite an embarrassment. Well praise the great and powerful flying spaghetti monster, the pre-history version of Amazon Prime has opened up business across the land. Witches and druids are running around willy nilly trying to bring all the tower-dwelling lords and ladies the potions they need! Gather up your wits, bring your bluffing face, and try to influence your way to be the most profitable potion delivery tycoon!
The game is played over 7 rounds. While each round has a special event that is revealed at the start of the round, that is by far the least interesting thing to happen in Broom Service. The clever stuff is how in each round players will compete to earn the right to use the skills of the 10 available characters. There are witches that allow you to move your pawn, druids that let you deliver potions, and resource gatherers which replenish your stock of goods. There is also a weather fairy to clear out stormy clouds for extra points at the end of the game. Each round you will select 4 of these characters to use, based on 4 things you really want (or need, sometimes desperately) to do this round.
The starting player leads the round by selecting one of their 4 role cards and experiences the sublime thrill of the key question of Broom Service: will you be brave, or cowardly? Choosing to be brave brings extra rewards, but puts you at risk of losing everything. Choosing cowardly brings an immediate reward that cannot be lost. So why choose brave? You get rewarded greatly if you are the brave witch, druid, or gatherer. Brave witches can deliver potions on top of moving, brave druids and the weather fairy get extra points, and brave resource gatherers get triple (yes, three times!) the goods.
Once the lead player selects brave or cowardly, all other players in turn order must play the same card if they have it and choose brave or cowardly. Only the last player to choose brave will get to execute the brave action: all others who selected brave get nothing at all. 558
So there is lots of incentive to pick cowardly but there is always temptation to be brave. Indeed a round where everyone selects cowardly is not that uncommon - as those who win the right to be brave also get the disadvantage of having to go first in the next turn of card play.
All of this guessing and double guessing about roles is played out on a gorgeous map divided in to four kinds of territories. The distinguishing characteristic of the witch and druid cards is which regions you are allowed to work in. Each region has different scoring opportunities - towers that need kinds of potions, offer different amounts of points, and some towers can only be used once (remember cowardly druids get to deliver before brave ones, creating an interesting "steal the tower from the brave druid" dynamic). So there is a spatial/geographic element to where you move your pawns that influences all of the battling out over who is using what role, and who is being brave. Watching what resources other people have and where they are moving can be key to guessing what roles they are going to select and if they will be fighting to be brave.
The game has two sides to the board. The basic side is a lot simpler and more forgiving, with only a few places where the storm clouds can get in your way (storm clouds do block movement, although most are placed over lakes where you can't move anyway). The advanced side offers both additional complexity in terms of layout, as well as the ability to use extra modules to add even more choices and competition to the game.
Setting aside the advance options, it's simplicity allows Broom Service to be a great family friendly game, and a perfectly introductory game for new players. The rules are very well laid out and make it easy to learn the game - like all great family games, the complexity is in the interactions between players and not in the rules text. The board is attractive and will draw in players. Using the basic side of the map minimizing the spatial/geographic element putting the focus where it needs to be: on the cards and competing for roles. The heart of the competition is guessing what people will need to do, want to do, and learning to manipulate the turn order as best you can. Broom Service is both a great deal of fun, and brings a unique kind of game experience to the table. I really look forward to sharing this game with others.
Part II : Considerations and Analysis
There are a few points that the typical review of Broom Service seems to overlook. 579