Designed by: Tsai Huei-Chiang
A game of building up wooden castles and knocking them down again might sound like kids stuff, but there’s some interesting strategy here, to bolster the exuberant fun.
Players have a wooden base, and a number of different building blocks, from which they have to construct a castle, following simple rules -Each block must be placed the right way up. During or after construction the players King and General, simple wooden figures, have to be added. The King must be on a block in the castle, but may lie down. The General must stand somewhere on the base.
Once everyone has built their castle, the bases are moved to the middle of the table, to surround a circular wooden plate. Then the hammer comes out! Taking turns, players get to drop the substantial wooden hammer on their opponents’ castles, scoring points for blocks and figures knocked off. After everyone has had two turns, the castles are scored for remaining blocks and figures. The higher you build your castle, the more points you’ll get – but the greater the likelihood of having it knocked to the ground. After a round, more blocks are added and castles are rebuilt. After three rounds, the highest scorer wins.
Castle Crush! is wonderfully tactile – the pieces are beautifully designed and the whole thing feels like something that might have been around since the ’50s – rather than being designed in Taiwan in 2013. Deciding how best to protect your King and General, whether to build a stout impregnable keep or a risky but potentially high-scoring lofty tower is fun, and persuading your opponents that they really need to bash someone else adds great table-talk.
NB: The original rules of Castle Crush! are rather convoluted, and an alternative flow-of-play/scoring sequence has been created by the designer, playable with the base game as well as the expansion.
Castle Crush! is a delight. Do I feel like a kid playing it? Yes. Do I mind? No!
It's all about physically destroying each others castles, so will appeal greatly to those of a destructive bent. There's also great satisfaction in building a castle that can withstand the knocks, though.
No thumb-twiddling whatsoever, as you're all building and finessing your castles at the same time.
The scoring in the original rules is hugely over-complicated; look for the revised base game flow-of-play/scoring in the expansion rules, if your copy has the first edition ruleset.
It's a more-ish game - you always feel like your next architectural foray will be unbreachable - and at 20 minutes, you could happily play many games back to back.
1-4
Players
8+
Years
15-30
Mins
Sam says
Sweet and simple game that I'd say lacks the inherent tension of dexterity games such as Bausack or Riff Raff, but makes up for it with it's simplicity and silliness. A hit!