Cards and castles deck building4/29/2023 Simple four-wall castles can come together pretty quickly, but their meagre size means they won’t have a lot of HP to withstand the incoming orc hordes. You see, until those wall gaps are all plugged and filled, your defences are non-existent. This means towns can take on pretty wild shapes during the course of a run, with castle walls jutting out all over the shop as you hastily slap down diagonal walls next to a connector wing there, a single wall there, maybe throwing in a sharpshooter tower in the middle there somewhere, before sealing it all up and watching your castle spring up in all its powerful, misshapen glory. Roads, farms, villages and castle walls must all be laid down one tile at a time on its map of isometric squares, and they’ve all got to be touching a card you’ve put down previously, too. ![]() Pretty standard stuff, then, but what sets ORX apart is the random chaos of its ‘build-by-card-tile’ approach. Like Age Of Darkness, Diplomacy and almost every other RTS citybuilder before it, each level begins with the camera pulled in right up close on your central keep – the beating heart of your town that must be protected at all costs. I’ve lost several evenings to it already, and lemme tall ya, RTS turtlers have never had it so good. It’s not out in full just yet, but its demo got a substantial update this week, adding more levels and a bunch of game-changing cards to the mix that are well worth making a return trip for if you’ve only ever played the original half-hour version from 2020. In the last few months alone, we’ve endured the cursed nights of Age Of Darkness: Final Stand, called down sky lasers on the hordes of Diplomacy Is Not An Option, and now we’ve got ORX, a dark fantasy tower defence game that blows all of them out of their ditch water moats with its compelling mix of deckbuilding and real-time strategy. And so will any other kids who loves building and can manage standard size legos.Medieval city builders that pit you against enormous waves of enemies are clearly having a bit of a moment right now. The packaging says it isn't intended for kids under eight, but both my six and nine year olds love it. I suppose I *could* just store a giant empty plastic container with a book attached, but why? Which leaves me with a book that I need to throw out or cut away from the packaging - not an easy job. And while the plastic case holding the cards *is* reclosable, the nice arch shaped cards that fit so neatly for display don't fit back in nearly as well after you break them up into their composite pieces. The 27 page castle building booklet comes perma-mounted to the display cardboard. ![]() My only complaint (and the reason I knocked off one star) is the packaging. ![]() And when you break down the cards and throw in the knights, the whole mess still easily fits into small bag. For the ultimate travel set, combine this with one of the Safari Knights and Dragon Toobs - they're fairly close to the same size as the knight that comes with the set. We go out and run around and play in the pool and when it's time to calm down, they come back to the hotel and sit on the floor and build castles and towers. However for a family vacation or grandma's house, this is a *great* toy for kids suffering lego withdrawal. Now at home I don't know how often my kids would play with this - they have legos and playmobil and such, and I'm not sure how long I'd be able to deal with the flat little pieces scattered all over the floor. The set also comes with one lonely plastic knight and the towers my kids build really are sturdy enough to support him. As the book says: "There are 58 leaves in this deck, but they break apart into 158 Building Cards." The cards are good quality laminated card stock, they really do snap apart easily at the perforations, and the basic building system - four basic slotted card shapes - work really well.
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