Tips & Strategies (3)
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Castle: The Detective Card Game - Tips & Strategies

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Tips & Strategies (3)

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7
I play blue
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Intermediate Reviewer
Smash Up: Ninja Faction Fan
cody.raak {Casual Gamer}
Nov 14th, 2013| Tip
7 of 7 gamers found this helpful
“"Castle's Toughest Case"”

The rulebook includes a variant gameplay called “Castle’s Toughest Case,” where instead of the normal 5-suspect Episode — one suspect is guilty and detectives compete to discover the guilty suspect — there are 8 suspects, and you shuffle all 12 “Guilty” and “Not Guilty” poker chips together and randomly assign 8 of them to the suspects. This means there may be 1, 2, or 0 suspects guilty! Detectives cooperate to confront all 8 suspects before the deck of Investigation action cards runs out.

This variant is excellent! It makes for a very enjoyable game, and you can leave the remaining 4 poker chips face down during game play, to expedite the “New Suspect” action cards: instead of having to shuffle all the poker chips all over again, just add them to the new suspect and continue playing. I highly recommend players play a few standard Episodes, but then quickly try out this variant.

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7
I play blue
Book Lover
Intermediate Reviewer
Smash Up: Ninja Faction Fan
cody.raak {Casual Gamer}
Nov 14th, 2013| Tip
7 of 7 gamers found this helpful
“It's not the size of the hands; it's how you hold them.”

As I said in my review of the game, the Investigation action cards are probably the most poorly designed component of the game: beside there being too many to shuffle easily, and their showing wear too quickly, they’re also laid out in such a way that all the important information — the color-coded card name — is along the bottom. When you hold your hand of cards in a standard fan, what you really need to see is covered up by thumbs and other cards.

After a few rounds of playing this game, I finally decided that the most helpful way to hold all the cards (and hands can be quite large) is in “landscape,” holding them horizontally, and overlapping them so only the half-inch color-coded strip of each card shows. This makes your hand much easier to read, much nicer to hold, and much closer to the layout of the Suspect cards you’re trying to match. It kind of ruins the whole “poker table” vibe, but try it out; I think you’ll agree.

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7
I play blue
Book Lover
Intermediate Reviewer
Smash Up: Ninja Faction Fan
cody.raak {Casual Gamer}
Jan 18th, 2014| Rule
5 of 6 gamers found this helpful
“Work the Murder Board: only one Spouse”

Suspects are laid out “randomly”: you flip out 5 (or more) Suspect cards to set up the game. There is a good chance that of the 18 available, you will flip out only a few combinations of Suspects, usually involving more than one spouse (the cheating one, the jealous one, the loyal one).

For some, maybe this won’t bother you, as it doesn’t really affect gameplay. (Or maybe that’s the kind of story you want to tell, which is fine). If, however, you are of the more obsessive-compulsive type, try to limit the combinations of Suspects to only one spouse Suspect. (Any number of mistresses is acceptable, I suppose).

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