Castle Panic board game Review

This weekend the wife took me to the board game store. Our goal was to pick up a cooperative game. The owner of Mission fun and games took us around the store and showed us a few options. He was very helpful and even took out some store copies of games to show us how they play. We eventually decided on Castle Panic.

In Castle Panic the players team up to defend their castle from invading monsters. The game requires planning and strong teamwork to beat. Needless to say I was really excited about this game and we went over to the sister in law’s place that night to give it a try. We played through the game three times. We won each game however there were a few points when things looked bleak. Luck of the draw and the fact that we work well in a group really saved us.

The rules of Castle Panic can be easily learned through one play through. There are some special monster tokens and the players turn order can be difficult to remember for younger players, but the creators did something genius. In the four corners of the board are little reminders. So when an Orc Warlord token comes up you don’t need to hunt through the rule book to figure out his special actions, just glance to the edge of the board. This keeps the game flowing nicely and simplifies each turn.

The game map is relatively simple. The board is a circle or pie shape separated into six arcs with two arcs per colour, blue, red or green. There is a second separation by ring within the circle. The center ring is the castle ring, which you are defending. The other rings are swordsman, knight, archer and forest. Certain cards can only affect certain rings and/or certain coloured areas of the board. For instance a red soldier card can only injure monsters in the red swordsman section, where a green archer can only affect monsters in the green archer section. As each players turn ends monsters move forward one section and new monsters are added.

All of this leads to card management and planning. Where to reinforce walls, which monster to slay, which card to trade; any play can lead to victory or defeat.

The replayability of the game is high as monster invasion is random. The invasion is determined by random draws each turn and by randomly rolling which arc the monster invades from. Some of the monster tokens have random effects, like moving the monsters forward/clockwise/counter-clockwise, or there are even monster blitzes where you draw an extra three or four tokens. The game can go from being easy to challenging in one turn. Which personally I find adds to the excitement.

There is an option for the players to keep the monster tokens of the monsters they have slain. The result would be at the end a count is made and the player who slew the most monsters is declared the master slayer. This could add another dimension where players self sabotage in an attempt to attain this title. Potentially adding to the challenge of the game.

For the downsides: As with most cooperative games there can be bit of the type A personality attempting to run the game. There were a few times that night where I know we irritated each other with telling other players how to play our turns. Still we were able to work through it and enjoy the game. I’m also not sure if we were just extremely lucky (first play through the four monster attack was the last token) or we are an awesome team but we won all three games we played. I think the challenge level could be upped a little. The rules do provide suggestions on how this can be done but we haven’t attempted this yet.

To sum up I really enjoy the cooperation in the game, the rules are well thought out, the game board is well designed and the replayability is high. I would recommend this game to families or game groups who are either looking for a way to work on cooperation or just a fantastic and fun game.

Check back next week when I review Scotland Yard