Castles, monsters, and fighting, all in a cooperative game! Castle Panic is sure to be a winner, and with three rule variations and multiple expansions, you can readily increase the difficulty or modify it to suit your needs. Castle Panic can even be played solo or with up to six players!
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We always play with the cooperative rules, as our whole family needs more cooperation in our lives. The standard rules call for keeping the tokens of the monsters you’ve slain, and whoever ends with the most points is the Master Slayer.
The overlord rules designate one player as in charge of the monsters, and they’re playing against everyone else. After every regular player’s turn, they deploy monsters. We haven’t tried these rules, but I could see things getting out of hand. For my family, we’ll stick with the cooperative rules.
Castle Panic Pieces
Tokens, castle pieces, and walls are all sturdy cardboard. There are small pieces so be careful of that if you have little ones. If your children are very young, there is a My First Castle Panic that I have not played but have heard great things about. I think mine were probably 6 and 7 when we got Castle Panic, and they did fine with it.
The number of cards in a player’s hand is determined by how many players there are. But the most is 6, and since it’s cooperative, you’re leaving them out on the table anyway, so no cardholders will be required. Set up the castle towers and walls. One monster (three goblins, two orcs, and one troll) will be placed in each arc of the Archer ring.
How to Play
On your turn, draw up to the number of cards for your hand. You can discard one card and draw a new card, but don’t have to. You also have the option of trading one card. Next, it’s time to play cards. Cards allow you to attack monsters, rebuild walls, and some other specialized actions.
Most of the cards are swordsmen, knights, and archers. Most will have a color designated; the red archer can only attack monsters that are in one of the two red archer arcs. There are a few hero cards that allow you to attack any level of a color (swordsman, knight, and archer), and a few any-color cards of a specific level.
Monster tokens will have points specified on their corners. Goblins are only 1 point, orcs have a corner with a 2 and a corner with a 1, and trolls have up to three points. They start with their highest number pointing toward the castle. Each attack with the appropriate card reduces their points by 1. A goblin will be slain after only one attack, but a troll will take three attacks.
After you play all the cards you can, move each monster one arch closer to your castle. (Monsters in the forest move into the archer arc, those in the knight arch move into the swordsman, etc.).
If you’re not able to slay a monster before it reaches your castle walls, it takes one damage destroying your wall. If the monster isn’t destroyed in destroying your wall, they stay put in the swordsman ring until it’s time for them to move their next turn.
Monsters in the Tower Ring
If there is no castle wall and it’s time for a monster to move forward from the swordsman ring, they move into the castle ring. The monster takes one point of damage destroying the tower. If they’re still not destroyed, the monster will move clockwise to the next space in the castle ring, destroying that tower and taking one point of damage.
There are only three cards that can impact a monster that made it into the castle ring:
- a barbarian
- tar (used to keep a monster from moving)
- drive him back (moves a monster all the way back to the forest).
Once a tower is destroyed, it’s out of the game and cannot be rebuilt. Once all six towers are destroyed, the players lose the game.
While there is still a fair amount of luck in Castle Panic, in that you don’t know what monsters you will draw, where you will place them (a die roll determines that), or what cards you will draw, there is enough strategy to keep it interesting for my family. We love cooperative strategy games, and this is one of our favorites! If you need more Castle Panic, there are expansions, too!