Hurry, hurry, quick, quick! The little wizard's apprentices rush through the deep, dark woods, searching for the ingredients for their toadstool soup – but the best flowers, toadstools and spider legs lie nestled in the enchanted forest. Who will be the first to find the ingredients she needs?

In Im großen Zauberwald, players have to pull different items from between the trees of the enchanted forest without getting stuck. Each player starts the game with three recipe cards, each of which show seven ingredients you must collect; players lay out these cards in a row in front of them. The game board consists of a copse of 17 trees, and the wooden cubes representing the ingredients are scattered within the circle formed by these trees.

On a player's turn, she chooses one of the spell cards she holds. This card indicates both how far the player rotates the trees on the game board – ideally moving desired ingredients close to hand – and how many ingredients the player can collect that turn. As soon as she's finished turning the board, she says "Go!" and all players start using their wooden rakes to pull ingredients into their "basket" in the corner of the game board. When the active player has collected the proper number of ingredients, she tells everyone to stop collecting.

Players then check their baskets to make sure they collected the right things. First, if the active player has collected the wrong number of ingredients, she must return an ingredient for each number she's off. Second, if a player's ingredients all match ingredients that are desired on her leftmost recipe, she places those ingredients on that card; any remaining ingredients are placed on her next recipe card. If a player grabbed any unneeded ingredients, she returns them along with one ingredient from a recipe card per error.

The first player to complete her three recipe cards wins! If all players have used their spell cards without someone winning, then whoever has completed the most recipes wins, with the number of ingredients collected serving as a tiebreaker.