Castle Combo Card Game Review

Steve Godfrey
Sep 8
6 min read

Castle Combo

WBG Score: 8.5

Player Count: 2-5

You’ll like this if you like: Clever tableau-builders

This is the reviewer’s copy. See our review policy here

In Castle Combo Michel the messenger will be delivering messages between the village and the castle in preparation for the Combo Party. I’ve not heard of these but I’m guessing it's one where two people share a party but have two wildly different themed costumes. Like horror movies mixed with Disney. Goofy dressed as Michael Myers’s anyone? This review has really taken a turn!

How to combo your castle

Set up by placing the two separate card decks on the table with the grey castle cards above the brown village cards and then place three cards next to their respective decks. Then place the messenger next to the revealed village cards, give each player 15 coins and 2 keys and you're ready to go.

At the start of your turn, you have the option to spend one key to either move the messenger to the other row of cards or replace the row of cards that the messenger is in. Whether you do any of these or not you then take your turn. On your turn you must take a card from the row that the messenger is in. Take a card by paying its cost in the top left corner, applying any discounts you may have from any cards you might already have. Then place the card in your grid. Over the course of the game, you’ll be building out a 3x3 grid of cards in front of you. The first card you play will go anywhere in your, at present imaginary grid. Any subsequent cards you play have to go orthogonally adjacent to any other card in your grid.

Each card has a top and bottom row action and when you play that card you immediately play out the effects on the top row. In general, these top rows will give you keys or money for satisfying certain conditions, like taking a number of coins based on a particular shield colour you have in your grid. These cards will also include themselves as well for the bonuses. You also have cards that give you discounts on other card types or some will let you put coins in any cards in your grid that have purses. These purses will score for the number of coins in them at the end.

Once you’ve taken your card and refilled the row you check the card you just played. Some will have a symbol on them which instructs you to move the messenger to the opposite row at the end of that turn. If you can’t take a card on your turn (or you just don’t want any available) you can instead choose to take a card from that row, flip it over, take 6 coins and two keys and place that card in your grid. This will have no immediate bonuses and will not score at the end of the game (unless you have the card(s) that let you score those ones).

The game will end once every player has finished their grid of cards. At which point you’ll score every card in your grid from left to right, top to bottom. There are a lot of scoring conditions so I won’t go into every one but some cards will have you score per certain coloured shield in that row or column, some will have placement scoring while others will score for missing shield types. Keys are worth 1 point each at the end and the player with the highest score wins.

A warning?

I first want to start with a warning about Catch Up Games, because they did this to me last time with Faraway. They’re getting into a habit of lulling gamers into a false sense of security. Yet again they’ve presented us with a small game that has this really cute, fun art work that sounds really fun, but failed to warn us of the absolutely brilliant brain burner that lurks inside. They need to have their dastardly practices exposed and I for one will not stand for it…..but maybe I’ll see what the next game is before I start making a fuss.

Castle Combo will have you thinking about the make-up of your grid right from your first choice of card and it’s wonderful. At the start of your game this imaginary grid of cards feels like it should give you so much freedom, you can put whatever you want anywhere you want and for the most part you can, until you lay down that first card. Because now that card is starting to dictate how you grow your grid. Did you lay down a card that scores all yellow shields in its row? Well, that’s at least two of your future turns mapped. Is it a card that scores by being in a certain position? Well, then all of a sudden that previously fluid grid of cards doesn’t have as much freedom of movement in it. Every card you lay is a new interesting choice as you try and puzzle out the best card and the best position for it. You're not scoring the grid as one entity, you’re scoring each and every card individually and because of that you’re want to score the maximum you can for each card, which is commendable, until you realise that (unless your very lucky) your choices of cards, and other players could well work against what you're trying to achieve.

One of the things I love about this game is that it starts off, as I said, with so much potential to max out those scores, but with each turn you realise that you’ll eventually have to sacrifice some of that potential. At some point, you’ll have to take a card purely because you need more money or keys. While that card will give you that, it won’t necessarily align with your plans, it’s got to take up real estate in your grid that will definitely lessen your score on another card. This is generally ok very early game since you’ve got the potential to make a pivot and make that card mean something. As the game goes on though that room for efficiency dwindles.

Here he comes to save the day.

Never fear though because Michel and his keys are here to save the day. The lovely thing about this game is it gives you just enough mitigation that you feel like you’re doing all you can to help your situation. From the very start of the game it’s easy to feel like you’ve got all the keys and money you’ll ever need and the idea of using keys to move the messenger of wipe cards is a ridiculous notion. Heck, even the idea of having to take one of those dead cards seems ludicrous because you’ll never run out of money or keys… until you do and you realise that the game has given you just enough for you over confidence to kick in and you eventually hoist yourself with your own petard. Therein lies the brilliance of this game. You see you're not just worried about the best scoring cards, you're also worrying about the best scoring cards that will also give you enough money or keys to keep you in enough supply to get the cards you want, when you want them, which is important because you never know if they’re still going to be there on your next turn.

Like a lot of these kinds of open drafting games the tension of the games may dwindle slightly with the player count purely because the game doesn’t make any adjustments for it. Where not so many cards are being taken between turns in a two-player game there’s a solid chance that the card you want could still be there on your next turn. Ramp it up to five players though and it becomes a bit more of a nail biter. It still absolutely works at two but just don’t expect the cards to naturally cycle through. Of course, this is where the keys really come into their own at two players.

This castle calls for aid.

I would have liked a few more player aids. There are a lot of icons in this game and for a lot of them, if you learn one (like the shields for example) then you can guess the rest. But there’s still a few others that you’ll have to look up, especially in your first couple of games at least, so one between five doesn’t cut it. This especially if you’re all new and no one wants to hold the game up because analysis paralysis can certainly happen in this game.

With this, Cubirds and Farway (click on those if you want to see my reviews for those) Catch Up Games have now put out a trilogy of small box card games that I love. I don’t know if it’s their plan to fill up my small games bag of titles that are exclusively from them, but it’s certainly shaping up that way. Castle Combo is another resounding hit from them and is well worth all the hype it’s been receiving.

Right, I’m off to track down Michel. Is he at the castle or the village? He never stands still for one minute, honestly, anyone would think he doesn’t want to deliver this box to Brad Pitt!