Please note: Castle Panic is absolutely not worth playing without the Wizard’s tower expansion.
Well that’s not entirely true. If you have the core game only, and that’s all you know, it’s still a fun game. Having acquired this expansion, however, I can’t see EVER going back.
New Challenges
The Wizard’s Tower
The Wizard’s tower gives you access to a new deck of magic cards, which you can keep using until this tower is destroyed. GUARD THIS TOWER WITH YOUR LIFE. Without magic use you will have a very tough winning the game.
Imps
The Wizard’s Tower expansion see the addition of IMPS, which are just annoying 1 point creatures which can spawn in the forest under a number of special conditions. Easy to kill, but they are legion and can overpower the game if you let them.
Fire
There are a number of monsters that can now spew fireballs at your castle walls. If your structures are hit with flame three times, down they go.
Luckily some of the new Wizard Cards have spells which can inflict the same flamey damage to your foes. A flaming monster will take a point of damage each time it moves.
New Bosses
There are Six New MEGA bosses, some of which move in interesting ways, or do new interesting things. Luckily only three are used in a single game, because things definitely get interesting once they show up in the forest.
Basilisk: When this boss appears all players discard down to a hand of two, and while the Basilisk is on the board all players skip phase two (which is the all important Discard and Draw) portion of their turns.
Chimera: comes onto the board breathing fire, and then moves 1 space counter clockwise and one space towards the castle.
DRAGON: Also comes onto the board breathing fire. When moving, roll the die and consult a special movement table. [Is there anything cooler than a table to consult?]
Hydra: A hydra will spawn two of the aforementioned Imps for every point of damage you inflict upon it (except for the killing blow) – so try to get this jerk in one attack if possible.
Necromancer: Very annoying. When he first appears, he pulls two monsters from the discard pile, and puts them back into the draw pile. Happily, if the Necromancer hits a wall (or tower) he’s immediately slain (yippee!) — hold on, for every hit point he has left one monster from the discard is pulled and put back into the draw pile.
Warlock: when appears all players are forced to discard a wizard card. Also, adding insult to injury, the warlock is unaffected by magic cards.
New Cards:
There are also a number of new Castle cards to go along with the new Wizard Cards — including, Berserk, Double Strike, Enchanted, Flaming, Knock Back and the awesome Stand Together (which will let you choose another player who might have a usable card – which would otherwise not be helpful on their own turn).
Separation Anxiety:
Note: if for some reason you ever do want to go back to just playing the original game, (although, the only reason I can think for doing this would be maybe to introducing a newbie into the hobby), all the cards and pieces are marked with a little wizard hat symbol for easily extracting the expansion components from the game.
