Summary:



Shadows Over Camelot

pros:
- cool plastic pieces
- fun theme
- cooperative play

cons:
- each player gets to make roughly three meaningful decisions in a 90-minute game: "I'm still on the grail quest, so I guess I have to play a grail card again. Your turn." (decision density: 1 decision per half hour)
- single best strategy for Traitor (decision density: 0 decisions per half hour)
- expensive, and only available through specialty retailers



Candy Land Deluxe

pros:
- cool plastic pieces
- fun theme (eating candy in a fantasy world!)
- low cost (about $20) and readily available at most toy stores
- approachable, with simple rules and short duration of play
- balanced and fair, with no single best strategy

cons:
- no player gets to make any meaningful decisions in a 30 minute game (decision density: 0 decisions per half hour)

Discussion:

Both games are attractive, with colorful boards and cards. Each uses plastic figurines to evoke the ambiance of the fantasy world in which it is set. Candy Land Deluxe has a slight edge here, since its figures are pre-painted. Shadows Over Camelot, by contrast, provides pre-painted figures only as an expensive add-on.

Further, Candy Land Deluxe is by far the cheaper of the two games, and is available at most large toy retailers and department stores. Shadows Over Camelot is comparatively hard to find, particularly if there is no specialty hobby outlet in your area.

One respect in which it's difficult to compare these games is in the number of players that each will allow. Candy Land is a game for 2 to 4 players, while Shadows Over Camelot is for 3 to 7. Shadows is the slightly more versatile game, but Candy Land supports the important 2-player configuration. We'll declare this category a draw between the two titles.

A common criticism of Candy Land is that it never gives players an opportunity to make a decision. For the player who drew the Traitor card, Shadows Over Camelot is only superficially different from Candy Land in this regard. While the Traitor appears to have a wide variety of tactical choices available to her, the best option is always to place a siege engine outside the walls of storied Camelot. For this reason, the promise of meaningful tactical decisions is illusory. Similarly, a player who is loyal to Camelot may only have the opportunity to make a few decisions each game. A decision to embark on the Grail Quest, for example, consists in a commitment to play a grail card every turn until the quest is complete (or has failed). Once this happens, the player's character returns to Camelot, possibly to embark on another quest. In the 90-minute duration of this game, players will typically participate in 3 quests, so each loyal player can expect to make approximately one meaningful and non-obvious decision every half hour. That's certainly better than no decisions, but only slightly. The advantage here goes (narrowly) to Shadows Over Camelot.

Both games are easy and approachable, but Candy Land is clearly the simpler of the two to learn. A game of Candy Land never exceeds 30 minutes in length, so it's much quicker than Shadows Over Camelot and can be played many times in a single evening.

Conclusion:

Candy Land is already a family classic. Shadows Over Camelot may be destined to become one. Still, the venerable Candy Land has some significant advantages over the Arthurian upstart, and for that reason it's the game that deserves the higher rating. Candy Land has a rating of approximately 3/10 on BoardGameGeek, so I am compelled to conclude that Shadows Over Camelot deserves a rating of 2/10.

Candy Land Deluxe: 3 stars (out of 10)
Shadows Over Camelot: 2 stars (out of 10)

Edit:
minor typos and incorrect image