Stats:
No. of players: 1-6
Amount of time to play: 90 minutes
Age requirements: 12+
Set-up time: 5-10 minutes

Engines of War is the third expansion for Castle Panic. It introduces siege weapons to the game and new monsters to defeat.

Engines of War Rules Description:

Castle Panic is a tower defense board game. If you have never played it you can read my overview and review of the game play. This post is going to focus on the new elements added in the Engines of War expansion.

Like the previous expansions Engines of War can be mixed with other expansions or played with just the base game. The setup differs based on the number of players and which expansions you are playing with.

Players gain the help of an engineer and resource cards in this expansion. Resource cards count toward your hand limit and are either wood, rope, brick or mortar. And the engineer can make a catapult, ballista, spring trap, tar pit and more. But he may only work on one project at a time. On your turn you can give him resources that match the ones needed for his current project. Once he has all he needs you may add the finished armament to the board.

The ballista and catapult sit up on a building in the center of our castle ring, the keep. You may fire these powerful weapons once on your turn and they require two cards to fire. But they must be facing the color arc you wish to hit. So once on your turn you may rotate the keep to another color.

You are not the only group to gain additional fire power. The monsters have upgraded their hardware and have access to their own siege weapons too. The battering ram, war wagon and siege tower all give the monsters an advantage to destroy your structures, their movement or sometimes both.

Encampments have been added for the monsters. The barracks keep the monsters coming from one arc and the forward camp gets monsters in on the forest ring.

And as usual there are new monsters, the Breathtaker, Shaman and a few Goblin Saboteurs. If Breathtaker is on the table you cannot trade cards with other players. The Shaman heals one point of damage to all monsters in her color. And when destroyed Goblin Saboteurs force you to discard the top card from each deck in play.

A Quick Review Castle Panic Engines of War Expansion:

Engines of War gives both sides of the fight more firepower. With the addition of the engineer there is more to manage and more to do. But the new rules and elements are easy to add to the base game. The additions increase the challenge, variety and fun.

The components for this game are on par with the other components in the series and look great. The rules are easy to read and follow and the set up section lets you easily integrate other expansions.

The engineer is an interesting way to help players combat the monsters besides with just hit cards. It might take a couple games to get used to managing resource cards along with your normal cards, but the new things are nice for variety and fun.

Again it is nice all the expansions work together and you can add or remove them as you wish. This really adds to Castle Panic’s replay value. But be aware that playing with all of them makes the game more complicated.

If you enjoy Castle Panic and want to add some variety and difficulty to it, you should pick up Engines of War. If you have other expansions, this one plays nicely with the others.

Score and synopsis: (Click here for an explanation of these review categories.)
Strategy 3 out of 6
Luck 4 out of 6
Player Interaction 5 out of 6
Replay Value 5 out of 6
Complexity 3 out of 6
Fun 5 out of 6
Overall 5 out of 6