Eric Bridge
United States
Roanoke
Virginia
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Last night I, my wife and our 7 year old son got to play Castle Panic for the first time! What a neat game! Setup is a breeze and takes 5 minutes tops. You basically have to set the castle walls and towers, locate 3 goblins, 2 orcs and 1 troll from the monster tiles, place them on the board, deal everyone some cards, and you’re ready to go.
One house rule we did change with setup, that could make it more challenging, was I did not feel that we as the “good guys” should decide which starting monsters begin where, so we distributed them facedown randomly. The other thing we DID do though, which I also thought made sense, was to allow us to determine among ourselves who should go first, based on our starting hands and monsters on the board. This seemed to fit the “strategy” element we were going for.
The starting monster tiles gave us little problem. When we drew our first “Giant Boulder” or two, they always missed any monsters and took out a wall, so they were ONLY hurting us 
But fairly early on we were noticing a frightening pattern. My son, who always rolled for new monster location, kept rolling 3 or 4! This is the “green zone”. Blue and Red hardly ever had anything in them, so most of our fighters in those colors didn’t help us too much. And of course this meant we were dangerously low on green cards, AND you can only discard one card per turn, so it didn’t help our hand sizes on the following turns either. My wife and I were the trading masters though, and we were making very strategic, well timed trades. The game does a good job of showing you what is coming, but those monster tiles at the end of the turn can really mess up those plans (more on this later).
In short time the castle walls in the green zone were gone. The monsters that destroyed them were either crushed by the walls or the towers. I think the first two towers we lost were the green ones. We lost another tower around mid-game to a boulder that had no wall to stop it.
I must say that you do truly feel the fear when the monsters get past the outer walls, because your means to stop them have dwindled drastically! I remember one card that slows them for one turn (TAR), one card that will drive ONE monster back to the forest, the almighty Barbarian card that instantly slays ANY monster, and the powerful “Scavenge” card that allows you to retrieve any one card from the discard pile. Unless I am mistaken, these 4 cards are the ONLY cards, out of a deck of 49 cards, which can affect a monster that gets into the Castle and starts destroying your six towers! And you CANNOT rebuild towers!
As far as the monster tiles go, I felt it was a good mix of monsters, bosses and other effects. First of all, the initial set up of 3 goblins, 2 orcs, and 1 troll is misleading (diabolically so), because it made me expect that ratio for the remainder of the game! But in truth it actually seemed like there were MORE (or at least just as many) of the huge 3 health trolls as there are goblins, so you can’t just expect to be easily picking off goblins and orcs for most of the game. I’d be interested to see the actual disbursement of all cards and all monster tiles. Just when you think you’re doing well, you draw a tile or boss that says to instantly draw 3 or 4 more tiles! Yikes!
The most interesting mechanic for me was the “every monster moves clockwise/counterclockwise” tiles. If this movement keeps them in the same “color”, you may not be so bad off, but if they are all of a sudden in a color that you just discarded because there were no monsters there, you will curse yourself! I envisioned an evil Supreme Leader of some kind hiding at the edge of the forest and giving these strategic commands to his troops in response to our own tactics. This is very unpredictable, which a game like this desperately needs when there is so much revealed and foreseeable information.
But I’ve got to tell you about the exciting conclusion of our first game! We had basically given up. My son had actually left the room, partially because he didn’t want to see us “die”. The last 4 monster tiles were lethal, considering what we had left, and where they were. First the healer came out and healed a troll that we had weakened. Then an orc came out. Then lastly the Troll Mage, who instantly moves every monster on the board forward one space. At this point we had 2 walls built and ONE tower left, and all the walls were on the OPPOSITE side (Blue side was rarely ever attacked). Orc Healer was in Red # 2 AND in the castle already moving clockwise toward our last tower (on row 5 or 6 I think), and the other 3 monsters were in GREEN AGAIN! (Rows 3 and 4). We were certainly dead meat.
My wife had one turn where she could not draw any cards because she was holding 5 cards she could not use (Red and Blue). Even after discarding and drawing one card she could not play it. I traded her the mortar or brick she needed to rebuild one wall (in front of the green orc). My son was either out of cards or had only one left, and his turn was next. At the start of my son’s turn the Orc Healer still has 2 health and has moved clockwise one space away from the last tower. The orc knocks down the green wall we just built on my wife’s turn, takes one damage, and will move into the castle on his next turn. We have a full 3 health Troll Mage and another 3 health troll bearing down on us in green with ZERO walls to stop them!
My son draws Green Swordsman, Scavenge, Barbarian, and Drive Them Back all in the same turn! This was astounding! Let’s see if we played this right and did not cheat. We used the green swordsman on the 1 health orc in the swordsman arc, who dies before he can enter the castle. We use Barbarian on the Orc Healer who is inside the castle already and about to lose us the game. He dies. Now we play “Scavenge” to get the just-played Barbarian card back and use it a second time on the Troll Mage. He dies. Finally we play “Drive them back” to send the last monster, the 3 health Troll, back into the forest to give us some breathing room. They were the most awesome cards that he could possibly draw, and all of a sudden a group of players who had abandoned all hope are looking at a possible victory instead!
On my turn I draw a green archer. My wife’s turn she plays a couple of green heros and/or knights to finish off the troll. PLAYERS WIN with 2 walls and one tower left standing!
If you can’t guess my thoughts yet after one game, I really liked it! I was on the edge of my seat from mid-game all the way till the end. I like cooperative games, but I found Shadows over Camelot too easy (and we did not like the traitor part). I do like Pandemic, but my wife does not. Feels too abstract or like a math or chess challenge to her I think. My wife ENJOYED this game! But then again we are fantasy addicts too. I felt the game was rich with theme and I look forward to playing it again.
As for my seven year old, he was interested for the first half hour, but then started losing interest. But this might just mean he’s on the computer too much, because he likes the theme a great deal (and he was definitely the Master Slayer of this game, had we been keeping track). If adults play this with young kids and you’re trying to survive to the end, be aware that you will likely be taking some card play decisions away from the younger players so that you can make “optimal plays”. An 8 year old will not be able to see the “big picture” as well as the adults can, which is understandable. As far as replay value only time will tell, but the random deck (and small enough to recirculate 2 or 3 times per game) and random monster tile draw will make this MUCH more enjoyable than dice rolls for combat, and I expect will keep everything fresh for a long time. Our game lasted one hour.
The rules were very easy to understand, but the obsessive compulsive person in me simply must ask about the frequency of the word “slayed”. I thought the proper wording was “I SLEW the wretched beast. He has been SLAIN (instead of “slayed”).” But this is a very minor quibble and I may very well be wrong myself on this point. Goodness gracious this has been a long read! Sorry to ramble. Thanks for reading.
Considering the type of game and the target audience, I give the game a confident 9 out of 10!
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ebridge wrote: The rules were very easy to understand, but the obsessive compulsive person in me simply must ask about the frequency of the word “slayed”. I thought the proper wording was “I SLEW the wretched beast. He has been SLAIN (instead of “slayed”).” But this is a very minor quibble and I may very well be wrong myself on this point.
I thought the same thing, too, but I do believe SLAYED is an infrequently used substitute for SLAIN and perhaps it was used to set the scene for another time and another place. The game is too well-designed, except for the lack of a separate space in the inner circle for the towers (IMO), for this to have been anything but deliberate (again, IMO).
What does really annoy is the seemingly complete loss of understanding of the difference between LOOSE and LOSE that I see all too frequently (and don't even mention it's and its).
But I also still put TWO spaces between sentences, so what do I know?
Well, I don't want to loose any more sleep, so its time to go.
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Eric Bridge
United States
Roanoke
Virginia
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I certainly hope you are not referring to MY post with your comment about 2 spaces between sentences, as if I did not know this. Sometimes things are not always as they appear. I'll be interested to see how this comment I'm adding right now appears on the boards, because this is being typed directly into BGG. My article, on the other hand, was written in MS Word and then pasted into BGG, and for some reason it looks different as a result. Then again, perhaps EVERYTHING written on BGG eliminates extra spaces?
To be sure about the original post, I clicked "edit" on the session report, and sure enough there ARE two spaces between each sentence. It just doesn't appear that way in the final product. I agree that the sentences are somewhat difficult to make out when it is copied and pasted though. Sorry if this causes a problem for anyone.
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ebridge wrote: I certainly hope you are not referring to MY post with your comment about 2 spaces between sentences, as if I did not know this. Sometimes things are not always as they appear. I'll be interested to see how this comment I'm adding right now appears on the boards, because this is being typed directly into BGG. My article, on the other hand, was written in MS Word and then pasted into BGG, and for some reason it looks different as a result. Then again, perhaps EVERYTHING written on BGG eliminates extra spaces?
To be sure about the original post, I clicked "edit" on the session report, and sure enough there ARE two spaces between each sentence. It just doesn't appear that way in the final product. I agree that the sentences are somewhat difficult to make out when it is copied and pasted though. Sorry if this causes a problem for anyone.
Oh, of course not!  Just a general observation about the more "relaxed" grammar rules that seem to be evident online. I have noticed that in books these days that there usually is only one space between sentences, I imagine to save space, but that feels crowded. I learned to type on a manual typewriter and in those days two spaces was the rule to help one distinguish sentences from each other.
And with word processing programs, who knows what they do to text?
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Justin De Witt
United States
Austin
Texas
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Eric, I'm really glad you're enjoying the game, those sound like excellent sessions! I really wanted to generate that sense of tension that you described so well, and it's great to read about your whole family sharing in the adventure!
Kirk, I'm pleased to report that the debate on our word choice has made our editor quite happy.
Officially, our source for word usage is Merriam Webster www.m-w.com, which is the source used most commonly by educational publishers. According to that source, "slayed" is preferred to "slain" for the past participle form. "Slew" is preferred to "slayed" for the past tense, but we went back and forth on this, and in the end decided it would be distracting to the reader to switch between "slew" and "slayed." Since "slayed" is acceptable for both past participle and past tense and conveys a literary sense of violence, we decided to use that term throughout Castle Panic.
As for the double spaces between sentences, those have been turned into single spaces as a result of electronic publishing. Interesting bit of history here: The original word-processing programs were not smart enough to omit the second space when it broke to another line (and thus, was the first character on a line), so publishers began taking the second space out across the board. This resulted in cost savings that prevented publishers from going back and putting the second space back in even after word-processing programs became smart enough to accommodate them. I however, was also raised with putting double spaces after all my sentences and it drives our editor crazy. 
As a point of trivia, there is one place in Castle Panic where the double space was missed. Can you find it?
- Justin
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Mark Slater
United Kingdom
Newport
Newport, South Wales
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ebridge wrote: Unless I am mistaken, these 4 cards are the ONLY cards, out of a deck of 49 cards, which can affect a monster that gets into the Castle and starts destroying your six towers! And you CANNOT rebuild towers!
Do you think there should be some/more cards that can only affect monsters that have breached the walls?
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Barry Kendall
United States
Lebanon
Pennsylvania
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Re slowing monsters in the castle: SAVE YOUR TAR!
Re "slayed": I'll be darned! I was an English major back in the Dark Ages, and I didn't realize that current usage has relegated "slain" to the same era. One learns something new every day.
Enjoyed your report/review and had to smile: once again, the eerie Power of Kids Playing a Game with Adults reared its head! Kids have the most amazing luck sometimes.
I liked the sound of this game before its release, enjoyed it very much the very first time, and am loving it more with every game. I even have a diehard board and miniatures wargamer pestering: "Can we play that Castle Terror game?"
"Castle Panic," I tell him. "Yeah, Castle Crisis, that's it," he replies. "Whatever, let's just play it."
This game is a blast! A hearty "well done" to all involved!
P.S. one variant not in the rules that heightens the drama once a monster is loose inside the outer walls: roll a D6 each Monster turn. Even, the monster goes clockwise; odd, counterclockwise. This mildly assists the Defenders and adds a bit of whimsy to the game ("Stupid monster! Just because you just pulled a tower down on yourself doesn't mean you have an excuse to lose your sense of direction!").
Fun, fun, fun game.
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Larry Welborn
United States
Anderson
South Carolina
My new 36g aquarium -- Danios, Platies, Corys, and Ottos.
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Liggur wrote: ebridge wrote: Unless I am mistaken, these 4 cards are the ONLY cards, out of a deck of 49 cards, which can affect a monster that gets into the Castle and starts destroying your six towers! And you CANNOT rebuild towers! Do you think there should be some/more cards that can only affect monsters that have breached the walls?
I don't. It is important to save those cards and deciding when/if to use them is an important part of the game.
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Posted Wed Sep 30, 2009 9:53 pm
