Surprisingly, well to me anyway, the Castle Panic expansion I did have sent to my home arrived this morning. Which is kind of cool, because I wasn't expecting it until next week.
Let's have a look at the box for The Dark Titan expansion. It's a nice smallish box, which I know is important to some. Sometimes publishers use way too big boxes for their expansions and for the main game also.
Ok let's show you the contents of the box as they come straight out of the box.
So that's whetted your appetite for more I know so let's use my bad photography skills (I really should move the Lego off my printer/scanner so I can use it) to look at the components in more detail.
The basis for this expansion is Agranok The Dark Titan is returning and wants to make you suffer for building your castle on sacred ground. Other than that the main objective of the game hasn't changed. It's still defeat all the monsters while having at least one tower still remaining.
You will need the base game to make use of this expansion, and it can also be used with the other expansion for Castle Panic The Wizard's Tower.
The rule book details how to integrate this expansion in with the base game and/or The Wizard's Tower. Which looks a real simple thing to do, and is basically the removal of various tokens depending on the setup you are playing.
This expansion introduces a new term “banish” which removes a card from the current game.
So that you can tell which of these components make up this expansion from the base game and the Wizard's Tower expansion the tokens and cards have the following symbol on them.
First up here are the Castle cards that the players will use to help defeat the oncoming onslaught.
The only card I think from the above that needs further looking into is the Cavalier card. When the card is played you add the cavalier token (shown below) to the game board in the arc of the players choosing in the swordsman ring.
Once a player has played all their cards, the cavalier is then moved. The cavalier can either be moved and then attack, or attack then move. The cavalier looks like a game changing addition to the game, and much needed considering what is coming to attack the castle in this expansion. The cavalier has two hit points of damage he can deal out to monsters, and has two health points. And like the highlander(weak movie reference) there can only be one cavalier on the game board at any one time.
All five of the Agranok cards have the same back.
There are five Agranok cards, at the start of the game one is chosen at random and placed face down (showing the above face) so that no one knows which version of Agranok has been drawn. That's a surprise for later in the game when Agranok returns. The pips on the cards represent the difficulty level of that particular version of Agranok. One being the easiest and five the hardest.
But Agranok doesn't come alone. He brings with him (well I'm assuming it's a he) some elite highly trained veteran warriors. When normal hit cards are used against elite warriors they are able to avoid the attack! Which as the tokens shows if you roll a one or two, the attack misses. Slippery devils.
The Boom Troll is a nasty little so and so. When killed it explodes and does damage to all monsters in the same space as it. And it is definitely one you don't want exploding in the castle.
Not all the new tokens are negative. There are three new tokens that if they get to the middle give an immediate benefit to the players. This can be extra damage to monsters (Reserve squad), rebuild walls (Stonemason's Cart) or drawing extra cards (Supply Wagon). These support tokens can also attack monsters in the same space. So very handy.
Oh these plague tokens are not nice at all. Red plague appears all players must discard a red card, same for green and blue. While that nasty nasty banish token removes (banishes) the top card of the castle deck from the game entirely. Knowing my luck when playing that would be the cavalier card.
What would the end of days be if there were not heralds to warn of its impending arrival. The first three heralds when drawn are placed in the appropriate herald space on the back of the Agranok card. Each time one is placed that effect is immediately resolved. And if you scroll back to the image they are not good effects. Once the third herald appears Agranok makes his grand appearance in the game and the card is flipped over to reveal just how bad ass Agranok is.
The fourth and five heralds act slightly differently depending on whether Agranok is alive or defeated.
As can be seen Agranok is a tough s.o.b. and is hard to kill. Slay cards only do four points of damage and then are banished from the game! Flipping to his wounded side causes players to discard at random a card from their hand. Plus other bits that make him hard to kill. Then when he is finally defeated the victory does not get to lord it over Agranoks vanquished body, oh no, it disappears in a puff of smoke. When this guy hits the board you are going to be saying a few swear words for sure.
Now don't you go thinking that the Dark Sorceress is a soft touch. When she makes an appearance, players have to discard a card of their choice from their hand, and while in play their max hand size is one less.
Wow this looks like an epic expansion in such a small box. I can't wait to play this with Nath. I haven't covered all the rules or effects each token or card does. But it looks like there is a lot of game play here and it will ramp up the pressure even more. I'm excited about getting this to the table.
I hope you have enjoyed the look at the contents of this expansion.
Posted by me using my iPad and the Blogsy app