Whether you wander the village or enter the castle, the cast of 78 character cards holds the coins, keys, goals, and victory points that players compete for in this clever "combotastic" card placement challenge! There are only nine player turns each in Castle Combo, perfectly balancing luck and strategy in the card choices everyone makes as they build 3x3 grids that grant both immediate benefits and end-game points. Once everyone’s nine-card tableau is built, each card is scored. Accumulated castle keys are also worth one point each. The player with the most points total wins!
A detailed look into Castle Combo: Components are simple, consisting
of 39 castle cards, 39 village cards, 52 gold coins, 44 key tokens, one
messenger token, a score pad, and 1 double-sided game aid, which summarizes the
icons used in the game. There are two types of cards, which are grey Castle
Cards and brown Village Cards. At the top of all cards, it shows the cost in
coins to play the card, as well as one or two shields of six different colors,
which can be used to score placement points or gain rewards. Each player starts
with 15 coins and 2 keys. Additional keys can be obtained during the game and
are worth one point each at the end of the game. Other uses for keys are
explained later in this description.
The cards are divided into two draw piles, with a display of
three castle cards and three village cards to the right of each deck, with the
castle row at the top. The messenger token starts at the right of the row of
village cards. Its role in the game is to move between village and castle card
displays during the game to designate which type of card is active for the next
player’s draw choice.
For example, when a player takes one of the cards from a
display and plays it onto their grid, if that card displays a down-facing arrow
in the other card type’s color, the messenger moves to that row. If the next
player wants to move the messenger to choose a card from the other row, they
may use one key as payment to do so. A player may also use a key to discard all
cards in the row where the messenger is and replace them with 3 new cards from
that row’s deck.
Choosing each card and its placement on their grid carefully
provides players with the opportunity to balance strategy with luck as new cards
come out that may bring new scoring advantages.
Because there are both immediate rewards and game-end goals and their
costs vary, careful planning can help balance things out over the course of the
game. Obviously, some end-game goal cards are more advantageous than others to
play early in the game, such as those with discounts on future card purchases,
coin purses to stash extra coins for game-end points (as coins remaining in
player’s supplies are not worth points), or scoring based on colors of adjacent
card shields.
After the last player completes their 3x3 grid, each card is
scored separately on the score pad using the game-end point criteria on each
card, and the player with the most points wins!
After my many plays of Castle Combo with friends and family, this game has secured a spot on my favorites list and has also become popular with board game hobbyist groups! I love that it plays in 25 minutes too! ~Marsha