Castle Panic Big Box Review

boardgamequest.com:

We review the Castle Panic Big Box from Fireside Games. This version of Castle Panic includes not only the base game, but also every expansion and promo released so far.

Sometimes when assignments come across Board Game Quest Overlord Tony Mastrangeli’s desk, he benevolently hands them out to the staff. “I know you really like games with tracks so I set this aside for you,” a yellow Post-it will read when a box appears neatly placed on my desk. Or sometimes a new children’s game will appear in my cubby in the breakroom with two smiley face stickers for my kids. It’s moments like this when I’m glad to be a part of the BGQ team.

And then there are the times when the other, crueler Tony emerges. Like the other day when a box was placed on the floor near the entrance to my cubicle—a trip hazard to be sure. The note on top of it was scrawled in a chaotic, Hyde-not-Jekyll cursive: “You’re the most panicky person I know so get this review done.”

Harsh, and truer than I’d like to admit, this is how the assignment to review the Castle Panic Big Box came to be under my purview. The game is designed by Justin De Witt and plays 1-6 players in around 45 minutes.

Castle Panic is a cooperative tower defense game in which players will use card actions to attack advancing enemies who spawn on a circular grid around their castle. The castle is protected by walls and towers and (in the basic version of the game) players lose if all of the towers are destroyed before they win.

The players’ turns are fairly simple, consisting of drawing and playing cards (and potentially swapping cards with their teammates). Any number of cards can be played and the actions are all straightforward (most are in the vein of “hit an enemy in this colored