Let the Panic ensue! Playing Castle Panic! PART 2: With the Wizard's tower expansion

I was actually so happy with how this game turned out that I did decide to go onto the game number 2, but this time trying it with the expansion which comes with a wizard tower which you replace one of the other towers with, this tower so long as it stands will give you another deck of cards specific to this tower that can greatly help you in your quest to slay all the monsters. However, you take out some of the original monsters and add them to all the new monsters that are in this expansion. There are 6 new bosses that are much harder to kill than in the original ones (You still have all 4 of the original bosses within the bag of doom! which you get in the expansion, not sure why you wouldn't have gotten it in the original but it's just a black bag with the face that you see on the back of the pieces.)

You get a wizard's tower in this expansion as well as some new monsters to contend to!
In this scenario you draw monsters from the bag and place them randomly around the board. Any boss
monsters or non-monster tokens get thrown back into the bag. Then you draw 3 of the 6 monsters from a
separate pile and add them without looking at them. 

It is a whole new ball game with the expansion added. I had a lot of fun playing but as you can see below halfway through the game I was in dire trouble! Everything was coming at me so fast and with the Basilisk on the board I couldn't discard! It really sucked! The Hydra wasn't any more fun either ( For each point of damage to the Hydra, 2 Imps appear in the forest in the same arc. Basically you want to try and kill it off immediately and only deal with the Imps which were one hit point each so they weren't so bad to kill. 

But the game went even worse for me after this when I lost my wizard's tower. I was drawing the wrong kind of cards as well. Eventually all these got into my castle but it was the phoenix that got the last tower and I inevitably lost the game. 

I won't go into details of all the new monsters so that will be a surprise to you when you get there! But here are the ones that really killed me in the end. Just so you can see why I had such a hard time killing them. I wasn't able to get to them fast enough.

Gargoyle - immune to knights, swordmen, all boulders (Something that you can draw, roll the dice to see which arc it will roll down, kills everything that it can in it's path but will destroy your wall or tower), Tar (Tar one creature for one round, they do not move forward this round), and Drive Him Back!(You are able to drive one monster back to the forest ring)

Phoenix - Same  immunity as Gargoyle. Catches all Monsters in the same space on fire when destroyed.

All in all I still had a load of fun playing even if I didn't win this game. It was just interesting to see the difference between the 2 games while playing solo. I know that each game can and will be different depending on what you draw and what other bosses you play..

I say today was pretty successful! 

Let the Panic ensue! Playing Castle Panic! PART 1: Original game (no expansion)

Okay so today I went to my local game shop because there was supposed to be a zombie game being played. I decided to wait it out and play a couple rounds of a game I own called Castle Panic. (One without the wizard's tower expansion and the other with the expansion.) Both games were pretty fun and was able to get through both before some people showed up to play a whole different game then the one that I had been waiting on...

Anyhow this is what the boxes for this game look like.

1-6 players.
About an hour to play
Co-operative yet competitive game.
You can either keep the monster tokens you
slay and whoever has the most points is the
Master Slayer or don't.

This expansion is packed with a lot of punch! It's pretty hard to
get through playing it with other people! I found it pretty hard
to play on my own. 

This is a pretty fun game with friends but can be very challenging! I have known for quite a few years that you can play this game solo and so I figured why not try now? I didn't want to walk home in the rain and also wanted to see if people were going to show up. By the way there were a lot of other games going on like Magic: The gathering (Commander & Modern games), Warhammer, and Star Wars X-Wing. When people showed up I got to play Smash Up which is another of my favourite games to play but it isn't a solo game.

So anyhow I will post a few pics of my 2 games I played solo and explain a bit of what happened!

The board is comprised of arcs (the different colours and rings; forest, Archer, Knight and Swordsmen before the inner circle of your castle.

The above picture is of the basic set up of the original game. . As you can see there are monsters moving in from all sides of the board towards your castle in the middle. The goal of this game is to kill all the monsters and have at least one tower in the middle standing. You are faced with 3 goblins, 2 orcs and a 1 troll at the beginning of the game. I generally just roll the dice and whatever it lands on I will place the first monster and pick them at random to go around the board. It seems to help a lot.

This was my opening hand, depending on the amount of players, will determine how many cards each player starts with and how many trades each turn you can have. On a single player though you get to start off with a 6 card hand and are able to discard and replace 2 cards.
There are 4 different kinds of soldiers (As I am going to call them) you can possibly get as well as a wide array of other cards that can help you to try and win the game. There are Swordsmen, Knights, Archers, and Heroes. Each can only hit in their ring, but the Hero can hit in any ring except for the forest. Any three of these will kill a monster outright, best to use them on bigger foes unless you are in a really tight spot and need something too close gone. The Barbarian is a wild card that can hit anywhere even inside the castle.

This pic is about halfway through the game. As you can see I still had a lot of towers left but then I got hit with the draw 4 monsters, draw 3 monsters and one of the 4 bosses: The Goblin King, which you then draw 3 additional monsters. I ended up drawing a plague on archers, as well as The Troll Mage which moves all monsters one space closer to the inner circle. I ended up in a pretty bad position with most of the monsters too close to the walls for comfort.

This was my hand after all that went down. I really should have played the missing card (second from the right)
Lesson learned!

Well at this point I was thinking that I was probably still not doing too bad with all my walls.. but everything was too close for comfort so in the ensuing rounds I ended up losing a lot of walls.

I slayed as many as I could until alll I could do was sit and watch as these 2 as they went around the castle (clockwise) went around the castle. Luckily when they hit walls or towers they go down a hit point, one died hitting the next tower while the other died at the next one.

But I was victorious in the end! both monsters killed themselves on the other 2 towers. It was such a close game that was for sure!

Though I decided to go on! Read part 2 to see what happened when I decided to play with the expansion!

TODAY!!! YEAH!

On a very sad note to begin with I cannot believe that it has been more then a year since I last blogged on here about my solo adventures (and maybe not so solo adventures of gaming.). I'm not really sure if this is hitting the blogosphere and getting out there. Maybe I might seem a little strange playing games solo from time to time but then why would they put 1 player scenarios into a game anyway? Right?...Um.... Right? I guess I don't mind though, for I like to play them either way. I guess in a way this might be reviewing games and showing new games that maybe no one has ever played before or maybe even heard of? Anyhow on to the real good blog stuff!

I got a lot of gaming in today! I am so thrilled to report this! It is usually months between game days. I got to play Heroclix (I found out about a site where people make scenarios and someone made a sharknado scenario that has a multi-plater scenario and a solo scenario with tokens for both which I desperately need to find the cord for my printer so I can print it off/ possibly get a new one as I want 2, one for me and one for my boyfriend so he can have one in his computer room.) today as well as a new game I really enjoy Mice and Mystics (It's a very fun game to play with friends and I just found out I can also play it solo as well which I will one of these days and blog about it! You get to play as mice, well people turned into mice and all the bad guys turned into Rats as well as other things.) with some friends today.

I also got in a solo game which is what this blog is all about. I returned back to Dungeons and Dragons: Castle Ravenloft board game. This time though I chose a completely different character then Kat the Rogue from my first game, which I feel a little bad I didn't go into as much detail about it then I will be in this one. (Well I do believe it will be more detail but you can be the judge of that!)
So this time I played Alissa, the human ranger

Uh... Sorry it is sideways... I suppose you might be tilting your head to see what cards they are? ... I also wanted to show the cards that I played with. (I might say they weren't bad but I might try again with the ones that they recommend to play with next time if I ever play with her again to see if it is any easier or harder.)

The scenario I played was "Escape the Tomb". It is truly only a one player scenario. (I have yet to play the other scenario in the game that is solo play only but will eventually get to it.) You get kidnapped by Count Strahd Von Zarovich. This guy below (Insert arrow pointing down here).

 Basically you have to escape by finding the secret stairway. Which I did get to but you have to be there at the beginning of your hero phase. Which I never got to as I was only at half health of 2 and this happened to me. I got cornered on the stairwell by Count Strahd and these minions and they pretty much had me for supper.

Okay a little bit of explanation about the white arrows (and the black ones too that are not pictured here on the tiles.) When you first begin this scenario you have this dial which is on the page in the adventure book that goes up to 5. You have a sun token that is on it and every time one of these white arrows show up it goes to the next one, getting closer to the sun setting and Count Strahd awakening and coming after you!
The black arrows cause encounters to happen. It can be anything from spike traps to you name it, it might just be in there as I haven't gotten through all the encounters as of yet.
After Strahd awakens you no longer have to worry about the white arrows just the black ones.

And as every gameplay you draw dungeon tiles. One of the best things I find is that the dungeons are never the same. Below is the end map. As you can see I am swarmed and the rest of the dungeon is empty.

However I did take lots of beasts out in the process of dying! Though if only I could have rolled a 20 while attacking a beast to have leveled up, it may have been the difference between life and death quite possibly... only maybe though. I doubt with Count Strahd's stats that I would have survived too long anyhow once he caught up to me.

Still a very fun game. I wonder which of the other 3 characters I might try out next. Though I think before that I might try one of the solo scenarios in the Dungeons and Dragons: Legend of Drizzt board game before I do that. I've really been wanting to play as Drizzt himself! (I really loved reading the series of books! I really need to catch up as I am behind the times as there are quite a few books brought out since the last one that I read in the series. Better try to get on that sometime.)

Well I hope you have a fantastic night/day, whichever it is when you read this!

If you love to game and have never tried any of the solo games, maybe you might want to give it a shot to pass some alone time? Tell me what you think of it when you are done.

I hope to blog a lot more often then I did before. Well actually I would rather play more games if I could but when I do think of blogging I will try and make sure to come back more often.

On an end note (Especially since this blog began with a sad note!) Here is my cat Dimitra looking quite pissy/ but purring like crazy because she is in the lid of my board game! She wanted to play too but had to sit on the sidelines. Ah well!

Well...

Well I guess all my hype has died down now.. I really badly wanted to play Heroclix OR Horrorclix but can't right now because I really don't have anyone to play with at the moment. I know how to play Heroclix, have no idea how to play Horrorclix but am loving what I was able to get so far for the game.. Who can go wrong with some AVP?

I have heard that there might be some rules on how to combine the two games to make them both playable! I really hope that is true! I would love to play both of them at the same time! That would be very interesting indeed... though first I would have to play Horrorclix on it's own first.

Maybe I can find some rules online somewhere for Horrorclix?

Hmm... I am seriously debating cleaning off my kitchen table of all the boxes that are sitting there and trying to play a solo game. I doubt I will get that far tonight. It's not quite 6 yet and I feel uber tired right now. I have to get up early in the AM to go to the mall with a friend to get some winter gear for myself. Maybe I should turn in early tonight?

I have been itching to play a game, any game lately though.. like really badly. Maybe I might pull out one of the Dungeons and Dragons board games instead since there are scenarios in those that are actually for single players.

Decisions, decisions, decisions.


Other obsessions besides D&D are (And not limited to these things, this is just a quick list. I think I might make a post about the stuff that I am obsessed about with some pictures of course!):

• Castlevania (all the games, and I am trying to collect them all, almost want to collect some of the other stuff related to this series.. who knows I just might start.)
• Mario Brothers (Have always been obsessed with this series.. I even have a collection of figurines)
• Assassin's Creed (I have all the heroclix ones that came out recently already, I own all the games but haven't played them all)
• Hero clix (I collect and play!)
• Horrorclix (I only collect until I can find out how to play
• MageKnight (I only have one figure, it's one of the dragons. I only recently came about collecting them)
• Final Fantasy series (haven't played all the games but would love to sometime!)
• collecting decks of cards (well I used to it seems. I have many different sets.) I love playing card games! I could sit and play solitaire for hours if I gave myself a chance to!

I suppose that is about it for now. I could probably think of many other things but right now I am pretty tired so I think I will just relax for the rest of the night and take it easy, maybe watch a show or movie :D

Dull day for this girl!

      This week I haven't really been working too much, and I thought I would get more gaming in this week (I also thought that I would get more crafting and writing done too) but neither of those happened. Suppose I will have to get right on that soon enough. It's already noon and I have yet to do much other then sit on my butt and do absolutely nothing.. hmm.. I wonder why I am not playing a video game? The console is within reach from where I sit. I guess it's because I am really in the mood to do nothing at all today. One of those really super lazy days.. well other then dishes and laundry, but that's no fun at all.

I guess my energy is zapped today and I know I should be going out to pick a few things up but haven't even gotten to that point either. Well I think I am going to have to force myself into getting up and ready for the day finally.

Maybe I should entice myself to playing a game when I get home from all my running around today.. yeah.. yeah that's it! Though if I coerce myself hard enough I could probably play a game sooner rather then later. Well let's see what I do. I will have to be back later to tell you what it is that I have done with my day gaming wise :D

Until next time, you have yourself a great day!

First D&D character I played/ new craze: HeroClix!

          This is the first character I played from the Dungeons and Dragons: Castle Ravenloft board game. I really like playing Rogues for some reason. I always felt they had many abilities I would have loved to aquire.. maybe in another lifetime or something. All that sneaky business, finding and disabling traps, being adept at killing quickly and they just feel oh so dangerous too! 

        I do plan on going through the first scenario of the board game with each character though, this one again just to see how easy it is for each one. I can even try with the characters from the other D&D board game I have (Legend of Drizzt) to see how easily they get through the scenarios as well.. So lot of options, and the board/ monsters I may encounter will never be the exact same.

        Back to KAT, the human Rogue. I definitely had to play this one first as well, because it was interesting that I have a story about a Rogue (/Assassin) that was nicknamed Kat.. guess I will have to omit her nickname and just go by her full first name.. but she is a half elf not human. Another reasoning behind why I chose this character. :D

       On to another topic... HeroClix.. well I played a few days ago! I am very addicted. I have 17 now, ranging from Lord of The Rings, to Marvel (10th anniversary to be exact) and the starting pack for Watchmen. I think I might be clearing the table to try a battle royale style game so I can get familiar with all the different abilities and how to play. (Unless I can convince my boyfriend to play then we will just do a standard game) With this new craze I realize I find myself wondering how many multiple player games I have that I can try and play alone.. I would have to think up game mechanics for them to work.. At least for this one the whole battle royale style kind of seems to intrigue me.

       

        Okay that might sound kind of weird! I guess I don't really care because it's really difficult to get people together to game. I suppose that I will have to see what I can do! 

Woot! :D

Woot! I found 4 decks of playing cards, 2 Spiderman, 1 Pirates of the Caribbean, the last one Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children. Now to decide as supper is cooking (just some pasta), what it is that I would like to play for a card game.. Normal solitaire, Or Clock Solitaire. I have yet to figure out how to do any other solo games with a plain deck of playing cards. I mean I have played spider solitaire and another game using cards on the computer but there is just something about touching the cards and actually physically playing a game with a deck of cards that I have always enjoyed. Sure I can play these games on the computer for many hours but give me a deck of cards and I can play for many more hours then I would play on the same games on the computer.

Anyhow supper is  done so I am going to go and watch a tv show. Maybe later I will try and play solitaire or clock solitaire. Right now I do feel kind of like relaxing and catching up on a show I have been watching lately, a show called "Bones".

Anyhow until next time! Happy questing! :D