Selling the Castle Panic Line

by Anne-Marie De Witt, Co-owner, Fireside Games

Castle Panic has been a well-loved staple of the board game industry since 2009, and we’re thrilled at the reception the second edition is getting. As customers look for the game and the expansions in your stores, they may have questions about the line we can answer here.

The most common question you may get is “How is the second edition of Castle Panic different than the first edition?”

The game play is the same tense cooperative experience friends and families have been enjoying. The updates are to the art and graphic design, which make the game more inclusive and support color-blind players through enhanced iconography and color.

The likely follow-up question is play the second edition expansions with the first edition base game?” the monsters and cards in the base game, you’ll want to sleeve the cards so that you can’t see the differences in the backs of the cards if you don’t want any clues about what that card could be. You’ll also want to use the bag that comes in The Wizard’s Tower expansion to mix and draw the monster tokens.

The answer is yes. Here’s what you need to know about playing each expansion with the first edition base game.

Crowns and Quests: expansion and all of the components are stand alone. Because they don’t intermix in any way with the components of the base game, you can play this expansion without any adjustments.

The Dark Titan: Just like The Wizard’s Tower, this expansion includes new monsters and castle cards. You’ll want to sleeve the cards and use the bag from The Wizard’s Tower or mix the tokens in the bottom of the box and hold it over your head to draw the monster tokens without seeing the backs.

Engines of War: This expansion doesn’t have any new castle cards, so you don’t need sleeves. But it does have new monster tokens, so you’ll want to use one of the methods above so that you don’t see the backs of the tokens.

The next likely question is “What card sleeve size do I need?”

Any brand with a size that’s generally 57 mm x 89 mm will work. The brands we know fit are Orange Mayday Games (57.5 mm x 89 mm) and the Standard American Gamegenic (57 mm x 89 mm).

The best support we offer to sell the games, though, is available in the Marketing Kits for each game on the retailer page of our website. That page can be found at https://firesidegames.com/ retailers/. The kits include sizzle reels and static TV ads, Facebook ads with and without text, printable shelf-talkers, web banners, images of the boxes and game components, and sell sheets.

Theyear was 2010. Kent Displays, a small technology company in Kent, Ohio had just released its first direct-toconsumer product: the Boogie Board LCD Writing Tablet, a distraction-free, battery-powered reusable notepad that featured a liquid crystal writing surface, the likes of which the world had never seen.

On Feb. 9, 2010 an article published by Popular Science catapulted Boogie Board from the depths of the relatively unknown to a national audience of early adopters (don’t call them geeks!) that quickly became intrigued by our newfangled electronic notepad that had the potential to replace paper memo pads and sticky notes.

Since those early days, the gaming community has emerged as an enthusiastic and supportive user group of our products. When featured on numerous YouTube gaming channels, we quickly learned that all types of gamers were using our products to track life totals; write down in-game notes and strategies; and keep score while reducing their paper waste.