Samurai Red Panda… Ninja Cats… Looming castle with relics worth stealing… This might sound like a crazy animated movie, but in fact this is the latest game from prolific designer Bruno Cathala in collaboration with Eliette and Jérémy Fraile.
What sneaky antics are going on here?
Castle Nightingale is 2 player asymmetric game where players face off, either acting as the sneaky ninja cats aiming to steal relics, or the cunning and vigilant samurai red panda doing everything to stop them. Being asymmetric, both sides have their own unique abilities, unique way of moving around and their own personal win conditions. All of this wrapped in some lovely production.
A relic or a dud?
Quality of components can make or break a game. If something feels cheap to play, it can detract from the joy of the gameplay, but thankfully, this game does not suffer this problem.
Samurai Red Panda… Ninja Cats… Looming castle with relics worth stealing… This might sound like a crazy animated movie, but in fact this is the latest game from prolific designer Bruno Cathala in collaboration with Eliette and Jérémy Fraile.
What sneaky antics are going on here?
Castle Nightingale is 2 player asymmetric game where players face off, either acting as the sneaky ninja cats aiming to steal relics, or the cunning and vigilant samurai red panda doing everything to stop them. Being asymmetric, both sides have their own unique abilities, unique way of moving around and their own personal win conditions. All of this wrapped in some lovely production.
A relic or a dud?
Quality of components can make or break a game. If something feels cheap to play, it can detract from the joy of the gameplay, but thankfully, this game does not suffer this problem.
For those sneaky ninja cats you get three ninja miniatures, all with their own unique design and pose and sense of character. You also get five clear acrylic tokens, with printed paw prints (more on these later). You get a deck of cards, with fantastic art and clear iconography for gameplay. There are some tokens, these are made of decent quality card, and serve as a dual use ability/tool token. Finally, you get your own reference card, which explains everything you need to understand the ninja cats abilities, tools and actions.
In the other corner, the samurai red panda… again complete with a really cool, full of character miniature. Just like the cats, there is a deck of cards, with great artwork and gameplay iconography, some card dual use tokens, and a reference card. The samurai also gets the nightingale tiles which we will explain more about later.
Beyond the two sides, you have a stash of relic tokens, some trapdoor tokens, a turn board, garden tile, and 4 double sided gameplay boards.
Everything is really nicely produced, and you feel like real care was put into the production of this little game.
Let the game of cat and mouse begin… oh wait… the game of red panda and cats!!
The aim of the game is simple…
For the cats – steal five vases that contain relics.
For the panda – capture the three ninjas.
However, achieving this is actually devilishly difficult with plenty of wits and bluffing on both sides, hoping to outsmart, the opposition.
You set up the game by placing the garden tile in the centre and surrounding it with the four boards. This therefore creates some variability in how the game board is set up for each game. You then place the vases in specific spaces indicated by a symbol on the boards. Finally, the samurai places two trapdoor tokens on to the board. The book offers a nice first game set up, but once you are familiar with the process, you can start mixing things up, making for each game to feel unique.
Once the basic set up has been finished, you then enter the player set up, cutely labelled in the book as “the samurai awakens” and “the ninjas prepare to enter”, set up in that order. The book does have moments it wants to lean into the theme.
A game turn has a very strict structure.
Firstly, secret programming for both players – the samurai programs first. The samurai will first pick one card in their hand and place it face down in the turn board. They then choose a nightingale tile face down on the turn board. In future turns, the nightingale tile from the previous turn is moved below the turn board and left face up, meaning the ninjas always know one colour nightingale tile cannot be the one played by the samurai player.
Once the samurai has finished, the ninja will pick one card from their hand and play that face down onto the turn board.
The next phase is the ninja’s phase. The ninja’s turn is broken up into revelation, action then movement.
The revelation is simply revealing their card followed by completing the action on the bottom left of the card before completing movement.
Ninja movement is interesting… depending on the state of the board, effects what you can do. Assuming there are no footprints or ninjas on the board, you place your ninja on an open trapdoor. You then move, using the footprint tokens, as many spaces as the card indicates. You can use open trapdoors as secret passages across the board. Remember the dual use equipment tokens? Well, the second use is to discard one and you can jump a space. This can prove useful trying to avoid the possible nightingale tile. If any token lands on a tile with a vase, you take the vase and put it to one side (you don’t have it just yet!)
Speaking of which… the samurai will be watching, if you step on the tile they chose for the nightingale tile, your movement ends as does your turn. If you get all tokens placed and do not step on the nightingale colour, you remove you miniature but leave the footprints.
If you start your turn with footprints on the board, the ninja gets to chose which footprint is where their miniature will be placed to start movement from.
Once the ninja has finished, the samurai’s phase begins. Again, split into three parts, this time, revelation, movement and finally action. In revelation – if the ninja had not previously triggered the nightingale tile, this is now revealed, followed by the chosen action card.
Samurai movement is VERY different. Instead of moving square by square, the samurai moves by the coloured zones. This means the panda moves very quickly across the board. However, unlike the ninja, the samurai doesn’t benefit from the secret passage trapdoors. Once movement has been completed, the samurai can be placed on any square in the final-coloured zone.
Finally, the samurai takes the action indicated on the card.
If the samurai can land on a ninja cat, as a miniature, they capture them and replace on the board any taken vases. If they land on paw print, they remove the paw print token.
Another way a samurai can capture a ninja is by closing all the trapdoors.
The final part of a turn is where you check for win conditions and then prepare for the next turn. Play continuing until one of the win conditions is met.
Both players will use their equipment tiles and actions on cards to try and help them achieve their goals, creating a fun cat and mouse like tension, with players using whit’s to succeed.
Final thoughts
The way both sides play feel quite thematic. Ninjas sneaking in the shadows, with quick glimpses but then could appear from any space they had traversed on the next turn. Or the samurai, able to use knowledge of the castle to move quickly on patrol, setting traps to capture their hidden foe. Why they chose animals for the characters, only they know, but it adds character to the game, and curbs some of the seriousness with so light heartedness.
There is a constant tension throughout, from the ninja not knowing what-coloured spaces are safe, to samurai having to second guess where the ninja may move from and to next. This means both players stay engaged and invested throughout.
Everything from the components to gameplay feels very considered, resulting in a smooth and fun game, where even though they play differently, there is enough to tie the game in to one cohesive package, for example, some iconography is similar, but has different effects depending on who you are playing as. Importantly, neither side feels like it has the advantage, like you already could predict the outcome just because you are playing a certain side.
One small complaint was a particular rule wasn’t 100% clear. This led us to googling, and thankfully finding and answer online, from one of the design team.
This a game definitely worth checking out, and if you like games like Kelp, there is a chance you will also like this.
About the Author:
We are Peaches and Meeples, busy professionals who love to chill out to fun table top games. We love board games, card games, miniatures games, competitive or co-operative. Put some dice in our hands and we are in our happy place.
We are also proud guinea pig parents to two lovely fluffballs of joy.
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