Matthew BaileySo it kind of feels like I’ve ended up doing a sort of mini-marathon, even though that’s not what I originally set out to do. Either way, today’s game (game 3 now) in our “Reviews Leading Up to the February Half Term and Valentine’s Day Series” is Dragonwood, a card and dice-based set collection game from Gamewright, played with Jack (.8.).
You start the game by shuffling all of the adventurer cards and dealing 5 to each player equally. You then lay out the creature/enhancement deck with five possible cards to capture. On your turn, you either draw a new card from the adventurer deck or try to capture something from the five cards laid out in front of you. To do this, you must pay a number of cards from your hand and attempt a Strike (cards in a row of any colour), a Stomp (cards of the same number), or a Scream (cards of the same colour).
This has a kind of Ticket to Ride feel to it, in the way that you pay trains in Ticket to Ride, to give you a bit of an idea.
Once you have paid a number of cards, you can then use the number of dice for the number of cards and attempt to roll either the strike, stomp, or scream value on the card you’re trying to capture, with any enhancements added to your score.
If you manage to get the value, you get to keep the card, and that adds to your pool, with the Shield value on each card being the number of points it is worth at the end of the game.
If not, you have to discard a card and then obviously decide if you are going to go again on your next turn or take another adventure and attempt to make your hand stronger.
The game continues until you either draw through the adventurer deck twice or manage to capture both of the Dragons cards. Once the game has ended, the player with the highest score wins.
Jack and I enjoyed playing Dragonwood; it is a light and breezy set collection game with a nice bit of push-your-luck elements where you try to pay as few cards as possible, knowing that you are at the mercy of the dice rolls.
The production quality is really nice; the box is well-made, the cards have a nice linen feel to them, and the dice are also of high quality.
Dragonwood is a fairly simple game with a tiny amount more complexity than some of the kids’ games that are often recommended in this group, yet I would expect most competent five or six-year-olds to happily be able to play this. It didn’t blow me away as I have seen some of these mechanics many times over, but it was a fun little game that I fully intend to keep in my collection, and the kids really enjoy playing it.
