Stats:
No. of players: 1-8
Amount of time to play: 120 min
Age requirements: 13+
Set-up time: 5-10 min (closer to 15-20 min for the solo game)

The Melee expansion for Chaostle adds new characters, magic and summons cards and solitaire play.

Chaostle Melee Expansion Rules Description:

Melee is the first expansion for Chaostle. If you have never tried Chaostle you can read my overview and review of it here. The rest of this post will assume you have a basic knowledge of the base game and focus on the new elements introduced in the Melee expansion.

There are eight new characters and they are all level two or three. They operate the same as the originals. The new player boards have the character’s special ability descriptions on the back.

You can have a maximum hand of six magic and summons cards total. You start with a hand of four cards three magic and one summons. You keep one card and pass the rest to your left. This continues until each player has drafted four cards. You can gain additional magic cards by getting a character to a new starting position. New summons cards are earned by winning a battle. Some cards may be held an others must be played immediately. Magic cards aid you and your characters while summons cards harm or slow down your opponents’ characters.

Each player also has a new tracking card. With it you can track the number of siege weapons to attack the castle, treasury to purchase items from the merchant, battles won and new start positions earned give you extra points toward winning the game and bonus movement and health. Depending in the color you play you start with different resources. Conquer points are earned by getting characters to sanctuary, having money, winning battles and upgrading your starting positions. The player with the most conquer points win the game.

I mentioned a merchant above and he lets you buy siege weapons, more cards, character upgrades, bonus movement and health, put a character in play or hire mercenaries. Once per turn you may buy a single item from him or sell him a card or upgrade peg.

Fighting the castle is also slightly different. Now you add your siege weapon damage to your attack and the castle fights back.

Two new modes of play are also included, fateless and solitaire. You now have the option to play without using fate. Rolling a five will no longer trigger happiness or doom. There are blessing cards that you can add into the magic deck to aid your characters. They may be played when you want and give you abilities and events from the happiness chart.

The solitaire game changes things a lot. You don’t use the board just the plastic pieces. And you control the Good characters and can potentially battle everyone else. You take most of your actions as usual but must control the enemy characters as well. Many of them start out of play, but as you gather the artifacts you need to battle the castle more come into play. Some rolls allow or force you to draw a flag from a cup. Depending on its color different events that can help you or introduce even more enemies occur.

Quick Review of Chaostle Melee Expansion:

Chaostle Melee adds a lot of new elements to the base game. They are fairly modular so you can add the ones you like and ignore the others. There are some new rules to learn and details to remember but the learning curve is not steep.

The components for this game are similar to those in the base game. The biggest improvement is the special abilities of the new characters are on the back of their character boards. This helps a lot and keeps you from constantly having to pass the rulebook around or printing copies of these out. The art is still hit and miss. Some of it is really nice and some is just ok.

I like that the new elements are modular. You can try them little by little and then just use the ones you like. This is also helpful to set a playing time as adding all the new elements may increase playing time a bit.

The new characters are cool and still pretty unique. The powers are thematic and it is nice to have more unique character options.

The merchant is a cool addition as he lets you gain movement and health. Also the siege weapon comes in handy once you get to the castle. And the new VP scoring to win gives the whole game a bit more depth.

I was hoping for more from the solitaire mode. It is fine but the set up takes a while and it is super hard (even playing the normal difficulty). Initially I thought this would be the icing on the cake for this expansion. But between the set up time, difficulty and just ok mechanics, it fell short for me.

If your group enjoys Chaostle and want to add some cool new elements and characters to the game, pick the Melee expansion up. I would no pick it up just for the solitaire game, but if it intrigues you and you can give it a try first.

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