Harrow County: A Game of Gothic Conflict Unboxing and Components Overview

When you first get everything out of the box for Harrow County you might be a bit concerned about how much is going on in the game. There are dozens of little tiles, jars, fire tokens, and so much more. Thankfully, it actually gets taught to you over a series of “chapters” until it all comes together in the final chapter with all the rules knowledge you need for a 2 or 3 player game. The pieces in the game are really great, and while I would have loved an insert to store it all, there isn’t much else to complain about.

All the cardboard pieces in the game are nice and thick, and since you won’t be handling them all that much – we aren’t playing a bag builder, after all – the thickness is probably more than what is required. The thing about thick cardboard pieces is that the thicker they are, the more they are alike to wood pieces. For a lot of people, having wooden pieces isn’t a necessity in a game, especially if the cardboard pieces almost give you that feeling anyways. That’s how I would describe all the cardboard included in this game.

Player boards are nicely detailed and have places for everything you could possibly need. Spaces are marked for where other tiles get placed, and iconography is very clear. This extends over to the jar board as well, where your action jars, and that of your opponent, are clearly visible and ready to be used. The two dials included with that board are a bit to get together, but work phenomenally well. I’ve played games where cardboard dials are trash – that is not the case here.

Be careful when punching out this game! There are cardboard storm tiles that need to be kept, and if you don’t look at the components page, it’s possible you might accidentally toss them out!

The game also has a few wooden pieces that show the town folks that need to be saved by the protector, and buildings that need to be destroyed by the family. They are just run-of-the-mill wooden tokens, but I like that they are the only wood pieces in the game. This highlights their importance.

As I said off the top, the game’s rulebook is phenomenal. It has a ton of different images and examples for players to use. But it also introduces concepts of the game over a number of different chapters. This is NOT a legacy game by any means, nor is it a campaign game. But with so many moving parts, it’s a nice way to slowly introduce new concepts into each game. It does mean there is a requirement to play this quickly and often, but I am hoping that investment is worth what I get out of it.

Finally, the game has a unique feature…perhaps something some would call a gimmick. During the game you will be dropping cubes out of a tower, and depending on which cubes make their way out, some things will happen. Insead of including a tower in the box, the design team made part of the box the tower. It’s a bit gimmicky for sure, and since you need to have the entire box on the table, it does take up more space. But at the same time, I also find it novel and interesting, so I’m interested to see how it looks and works.

Overall, I’m pretty impressed with Harrow County. Not having an insert in 2024 is a big miss for me. Most companies are including at least some kind of insert, but what I at least hope here is that this is like a Devir game. Frustrating to pack up and put away, but so good you don’t mind it!