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Four Dragons is a clever (and complex) trick-taking card game by Frank Branham & Sandi West.
Players: 4*
Playing Time: 30-60 minutes
Difficulty: 4 (of 10)
* A variant is included which allows for three-player play, but the game is really intended for four-player partnership play.
The Components
Four Dragons comes with:
- 50 cards
- 6 wooden disks
- 1 rulebook
Cards: The cards are all regular card size, printed on sturdy, glossy cardstock with rounded corners. They look like they'll hold up to wear.
Each card features absolutely gorgeous Oriental artwork by Jacob Walter. Each card also includes a card number, printed within a box of a specific color (gray, blue, red, or yellow). Finally, many of the cards also have a single word or icon explaining what the card does.
There were a few very minor usability problems with the cards: the "1" is a little too stylized, and the blue "7" is a bit hard to make out due to contrast issues, but overall the cards are clean and easy to use. The problems I mention will also go away pretty quickly because the artwork for each card rank is entirely unique.
Besides the 46 playing cards there are also 4 quick reference cards, two in English and two in German. Each lists all the cards, their special powers, and their general distribution. These reference cards were highly useful, and I wish there had been four in English. I'm not quite sure why the manufacturers didn't just double-side these cards, so they would have had four in English and four in German, rather than using the standard card backs on each.
Wooden Disks: These are square, yellow wooden bits with a hole in the middle. They're clearly intended to imply Oriental coins and are a nice addition to the set. Ironically, the rules never actually state what they're used for (though, after some thinking, I realized they must be intended as the six "coins" that the partnerships use if they play the coin variant of Four Dragons).
Rulebook: A 16-page black & white rulebok, printed first in English, then in German. Overall, the rules were easy to understand and good for reference.
Box & Tray: The box is a fair amount oversized for the cards, though not grossly so; it's pretty typical for a card game. There's a tray inside that's width is about a card height, and that does a decent job of keeping the cards from going all over.
Overall, Four Dragons is a very nicely produced card game. I wish the cards were coated and linen-textured, but as is the manufacture is very nice. Based largely on the sturdiness of the cards and the beauty of the artwork I've given it a full "5" out of "5" for Style.
The Game Play
The goal of Four Dragons is to take pairs of scoring cards--Earths and Rains--over three hands of play.
Setup: Four Dragons is a partnership game, and thus the players must choose partners before the first hand begins.
To start off the game, all the Rain and Earth cards are separated from the deck. Three Rains and four Earths (the scoring cards) will be placed in the deck for each of the three hands. After the deck (with the appropriate number of scoring cards) is shuffled, each player is dealt eight cards to start off a hand.
The Cards: Each hand is played with a deck of just 32 cards. These cards are ranked 0-8 or 10, with either 3 or 4 cards at each rank. Many of the cards are black, but all of the Earths are red; in addition most of the higher ranks have one card each in red, yellow, and blue. This is all to say that the deck definitely isn't uniform.
In addition, many of the cards have special powers, but more on these shortly.
Playing a Hand: Each hand starts off with the player who was dealt the "6" playing it. Each player then plays one card in turn (in other words, it's a standard trick-taking game), with one exception: only one each of the red, blue, and yellow cards may be played in a trick. If the color has already been played, it's blocked for the trick.
If you can't play any cards legally, you must discard a card instead.
A trick is won by the person who played the highest card; if several of the same high card were played, the first card is the winner. It's suggested that all taken cards are arranged face-up so it's easy to see what's out of play.
Winning Scoring Cards. The score cards (2: Rain and 4: Earth) are the only cards that actually matter, because they determine the winners. If those cards aren't available in trick you actually usually don't want to win that trick, as it's often advantageous to be the last player in a trick, and that'll be your opponents if you win.
There's also a disadvantage to winning score cards: the player to your right take a random card from your hand, then gives you back a card of his choice (including the card he just took).
Special Card Powers: As noted, many of the cards have special powers:
0s (Choose, Flood, or Ask). There are actually three types of special 0s. The Choose cards may be either blue, yellow, or black, as declared by the person who played it. The Flood card prohibits any Rain cards from being played on the trick. In addition, whomever wins the trick loses a card to the player to their right, just as if they'd won a scoring card. The Ask card lets you ask any one player one game-related question that has an answer of "yes", "no", or an answer from "0" to "10". All these cards are black.
1s (Swap). The 1 card lets you give a card to your partner, who looks at it, then gives you a card back (possibly including the card you gave him). All black.
2s (Rain). As already noted, these are scoring cards. All black.
3s (No 10s). A 3 allows you to remove a 10 played by an opponent at the end of the trick. All 4 colors.
4 (Earth). A scoring card. All red.
5, 7, 8. No special powers. All 3 limiting colors.
6. The start card. Black.
10. No special powers. All black.
At first the list of card powers looks a little intimidating, but it's actually quite easy to play, as it's only the cards from 0-4 that are particularly notable (plus the fact that you have to think about playing 10s due to the 3s.
Winning the Game: After three hands of play, each partnership counts up all of their score cards. Only pairs (a rain plus an earth) score. The partnership with the most sets wins.
Game Variants: A "coins" variants (which uses those wooden disks) lets each partnership Ask an extra three questions in a game by expending their coins. A 3-player variant allows each player, in turn, to play with a dummy hand.
Relationships to Other Games
Four Dragons (2004) is a trick-taking card game with a few unique features. First, to score points you must collect two different types of cards. Second, some of the cards have special features when played. Third, the play of some cards can block the play of other cards. (Other differences from trick-taking games, such as the fact that there’s no ranking within a card rank, and thus the first card of that rank wins, are less notable.)
An earlier game that features some of these same features is Twilight (1997, later rereleased as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde). In that game, two different types of cards, souls and sanctuaries, multiply their scores together when captured, while there's just one card, the Purgatory, that has any particular special effect. Four Dragons is considerably more complex.
Four Dragons also reminds me slightly of anti-trick taking games, particularly Hearts, which has specific scoring cards, and has some tricks that you don't care about and some you may want to take. (Though in Hearts you avoid the tricks with points while in Four Dragons you're more likely to avoid the tricks without.)
Four Dragons was originally released as Dia de los Muertos (2000) with lower quality components and slightly different card distributions.
The Game Design
I always find it slightly difficult to examine the game design of pure card games because there's such an innate simplicity to them. Clearly, the core mechanics of holding and playing cards are beyond reproach, while the actual mechanics of how the game works are often more subtle.
And subtle, as it happens, is a good word to describe Four Dragon's game play. Unlike most trick-taking games, it's not just a question of playing high cards to take tricks, because the highest cards can either be invalidated (with the 3, which remove 10s) or else blocked (since all of the rest of the high cards are colored). Worse, just taking a trick with a high card doesn't give you anything, because the trick has to have value in the way or Rain or Earth cards. As a result, the playing of cards to every single trick is a very careful balance.
There's also a large aspect of trying to figure out what your opponents has in his hand, probably more so than in most other trick-taking games. Since the holding of certain cards (particularly 3s, 10s, and the scoring cards) is so important, and since it's possible to block certain high cards (if their color is blocked), knowing approximately what your opponent is holding can be a great asset in the game. The Ask card (and potentially coins) aids in this a lot.
Overall, I'd say that Four Dragons has very involved tactics--perhaps too much so. I consider myself a pretty good card player, but I couldn't figure out how to play at all through the first hand. (I got better in later hands, though my partner & I ended up losing by one set.) Conversely, I think the game gets considerably better the more you play it; you just need to really invest some time to truly appreciate the tactics of the game. If I regularly got together with 3 friends to play card games, this one would be high on my list.
My only complaint about the game was that it felt like there was just too much card passing. Between the Swaps (a mechanic I generally like in partnership games, by the by) and the exchanges due to winning hands, it felt like you were frequently waiting for someone to decide what card to give back.
Overall, I think the design of Four Dragons is quite intriguing, and that it works very well to create a deep trick-taking game. I give it a high "4" out of "5" for Substance, with the comment that it might go higher if I had the chance to play if for a bit more.
Conclusion
Four Dragons is an entirely intriguing advanced trick-taking game. It's not recommended for the casual players (or the faint of heart), but if you're looking for a card game to regularly play, that's got a lot of meat to it, and is quite different from anything else out there, this is it.
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