Pimping Out Our Castle Panic Game - Part 1

Castle Panic was a game the husband and I first sat down with at Origins 2010, and even though it didn't entail us jumping up and running around the table, waving our arms and screaming every time someone said the word "castle", it still was a pretty fun game. Essentially you have a small castle keep surrounded by ominous monster-filled woods. You draw tiles to determine how fast these aggressive beasties advance on your keep, and play different cards, like archers, to fend them off. If the boogers reach your outer wall, then they knock it down and have the path cleared to start razing your towers. If they take down all six of your towers you--and all of the other players--lose. I won't launch into a full review here, but sufficed to say it's a pretty well-balanced and lively game in spite of the fact that I normally loathe cooperatives--I'd rather smash the husband to smithereens rather than celebrate a victory with him (it makes my pillow-spiking victory laps so much more delightful and meaningful).

The only flaw with the game? Somewhat low production value. The castle and tower pieces are cardboard cutouts that are placed in little plastic stands. And we can do better than that, CAN'T WE?

So here's what the husband and I came up with to "pimp out" our slightly used, recently acquired copy of Castle Panic. First, we decided that the walls and towers clearly needed to be 3D. A quick trip to Joann's proved fruitless in finding any little wooden or stone creations that fit the bill. And wouldn't it be too easy if I went to the local hobby store and bought pre-made little walls? I think so too. So instead, I picked up some Crayola Model Magic--this super soft, pliable modeling clay that feels like it's been whipped like Cool Whip. Crayola notes on the packaging that it's "7x easier to use than modeling clay!". I wonder how they quantify that....

Anyway, back at the game cave (read: our living room), construction began.

The walls were the easiest, since I was able to just use a little bit of brown Model Magic to make a few cubed rectangles and implemented a tooth pick as an advanced poking device to create the stone/brick facade. The towers on the other hand....were a bit harder. Six towers need to fit in a tiny space in the center of the board. So do I make a series of round towers? Nah, that looks goofy--who builds a keep like that? The husband suggested making one round castle and dividing it into 6 pie-wedge pieces as parts of the castle. But since that quickly proved to be a logistical nightmare and resulted in the husband being pelted by balls of Model Magic, we moved on to the next plan: semi-circular walls that all join together to roughly form a ring of walls. Here's an image of the battlements being created. They're made out of a thin layer of Model Magic which is tacked on to the top of the tower.

 Here's another image to see how it all started to come together once one of the pieces were molded. All that's left now is to add a top-notch paint job to both of these.The husband will break out his acrylic paint set and tiny brushes we use for D&D mini painting and give them a nice gray, weathered look. Maybe a little moss. Maybe a little blood.

Aside from painting, we still need to construct the two wall reinforcement pieces, for which we have purchased some dollhouse picket fence materials. More to come on this, and the finished paint job in Part 2. Overall, I'm very excited to see how these prototypes came together compared to the cardboard originals (shown below). I think it'll make the game a lot more exciting and even a bit more realistic.

The husband and I have even considered creating a few extra sets and putting them up for sale, but I think we'll have to see if there's any real interest in something like this. I know for us, this is just the perfect upgrade to any already awesome game. In fact, the only thing that might make in better is if we actually institute that rule about screaming and running around the table in a panic every time someone says "castle".