Castle Panic is a fun little game, but is too simple and perhaps too easy to sit alongside more heavyweight games. Thankfully this little expansion kicks the panic up a few notches by introducing a host of new and varied monsters and magic! You get new monsters, a cute drawstring 'monster bag' and the titular tower and associated 'Wizard deck'. Component quality is just as good as the base game with minor differences in the new card stock, but not enough to matter once the new and old decks have been shuffled together.
The first thing that struck me as a little odd is that the new monsters replace the old ones, meaning that you weed out a lot of the original monster tokens and set them aside; That being said, the number of monsters does have to remain static for the game to run to a similar length. You also replace one of the castle towers with the wizard's tower and as long as it remains in play, you are able to draw powerful cards from the 'Wizard Deck' which can summon iron rain, earthquakes and firestorms or even rebuild whole towers.
You'll need them.
The new monsters include six 'mega boss' monsters, three of which are drawn at random and added to the bag. This mixes things up a lot and adds much needed variety to each game. These monsters will, amongst other things, set your castle on fire! Three fire tokens and a wall or tower will burn to the ground, so best get your flameproof pants. You'll also face flying monsters, climbing trolls and goblin cavalry, not to mention creatures with more hit points than before.
The Wizard's Tower is a great little expansion which adds more decisions, more variety and much more difficulty to the basic game, transforming it from an interesting lightweight family game to a full-fledged co-op survival (or not
) experience. While mechanically it is still quite random due to the card-driven nature of play, it is always fun and doesn't have massive swings in game length or difficulty. This expansion is a must if you've outgrown the base game, or if you like the idea of the game, but want an advanced, heavier version to play.
