Players: 3-5
Playing Time: 30-60 minutes
Difficulty: 3 (of 10)
As a caveat, I briefly worked with the designer, Rob Heinsoo, a number of years ago. I don't think that's unduly influenced my opinion of a pretty cool game, but you've been warned.
The Components
Three-Dragon Ante comes with 72 cards and a rulebook in a slightly oversized box.
The Cards: Large, Tarot-sized cards, of medium-heavy weight with very oddly rounded corners which give the game a unique look. Each card features nice artwork by Craig Phillips depicting the various dragons (and a few mortals) of the D&D world. They're stylized, but quite attractive.
Each card also includes a clear number and color at two of the corners. There's also text on the card which features the card name (e.g., "Blue Dragon"), the category (good, evil, or mortal), and a special effect power. It's unfortunate that no icons were used to make the powers easier to understand at a glance, as some players spent quite a bit of time paging between their cards, but the power text is overall pretty clear
Rules: A 24-page full color rulebook. The rules are actually quite simple, but some space is taken up with a very helpful glossary of all the cards as well as some very cool rules for how to integrate this game into your Dungeons & Dragons campaign.
Box: The game comes in a somewhat flimsy cardstock box that I suspect will just disintegrate through use. It's also oddly enough a bit larger than the cards both in length and width. Maybe they figure you're going to keep dice or chips or something in there. I dunno.
You'll need to supply your own chips or other markers to play Three-Dragon Ante.
Overall Three-Dragon Ante is a high-quality, beautifully produced game. The folks at Wizards of the Coast don't seem to have picked up on some of the lessons learned over in the Euro-design world about how to use icons to make cards more utilitarian, but that's a minor complaint. By my second game I could glance at the cards and know what they did. Thus Three-Dragon Ante earns a full "5" out of "5" for Style.
The Gameplay
Three-Dragon Ante is a gambling game where the goal is, as you'd expect, to win as much money as possible. You can play it with your friends at the table or you can have your characters play it in a D&D game.
Setup: Each player starts out with 50 gold in chips and is dealt an initial hand of six cards.
The Cards. The cards in Three-Dragon Ante each have a name, a strength, and a type. Most of the cards are either "good dragons" or "evil dragons"; there are a total of 10 types of these, covering the standard spectrum of D&D colors: black, blue, brass, bronze, copper, gold, green, red, silver, and white. There are 6 cards of each type, with a distribution of strengths from 1 to 13. For example the wussy white dragons are 1/2/3/4/6/8, while the brawny gold dragons are 2/4/6/9/11/13.
There are also 10 special cards: Bahamut (13), Tiamat (13), the Dracolich (10), and a collection of 7 mortals.
Each card also has a special power, which will be discussed more below.
Starting a Gambit: A game of Three-Dragon Ante is played as a sequence of "gambits", which start off with ante, then go through (typically) three rounds of play before someone collects the pot.
Ante. Players ante by playing a card to the pot. These cards are then revealed simultaneously and have a few different effects. First, the highest card displayed determines the cost of this hand. Each player must put gold into the pot equal to the card's strength. Second, whoever played the highest card gets to lead off the first round of the gambit. Third, the cards stay in the pot where they can be recovered by certain other card plays.
Playing a Round: Starting with the first player, each player is now going to play a card to their "flight", which will eventually be a set of 3 or more cards which will determine the winner of the gambit. There's no suit following or anything like that, you just play a card. However, you can use special powers on some cards and you can also sometimes form a "strength flight" or a "color flight" when your third card goes out.
Drawing Cards. If you have less than four cards you may draw cards at the start of your turn. If you have just one card you must do so. You flip a card up from the deck to reveal the cost, pay that amount to the pot, then draw your hand up to a size of four. You inevitably will have to do this, because you just don't get cards back fast enough. It's clearly better to do it when you think you'll win a pot then when you think you'll lose.
Using Special Powers. If the strength of your card is equal to or less than the strength of the previous card played, then you get to use the special power listed on the card. Each color of dragon has its own special power, which can involve: stealing money from the pot (blue, black, white dragons); stealing cards or money from other players (red, green, brass dragons); drawing cards (gold, silver dragons); taking cards from the pot (bronze dragons); or instead playing a new card from the deck (those wacky copper dragons). Each of the mortals also has a special & unique power.
You can always use a dragon's special power if you lead off a round (since there's no previous card to play less than).
Forming Special Flights. If, over a gambit, you get out three cards of the same color or the same strength, then you form a special flight which gives you immediate benefit. If it's a strength flight you get to take some money and cards from the pot, while if it's a color flight you get to take some money from all the other players.
Starting the Next Round. After each person has played during a round, then the next round of play begins with whomever played the highest card this time around going first.
Ending a Gambit: A gambit ends after three rounds of play (or more if the third round of play ends with a tie for the strongest flight). At this point whoever has the highest sum of cards in their flight wins, taking whatever gold is in the pot.
Alternatively a gambit can end early if evil dragons (or thieves) steal all the money from the pot beforehand.
After the end of a gambit each player draw two cards.
Ending the Game: This is a gambling game, so it can be played with pretty much any rules you want for when things end. The suggestion for a standalone game is until one person runs out of money, but there are a few alternatives as well.
Playing with D&D: I can't count the number of times that I've had a character start gambling in a role-playing games. Using dice and playing a "Yahtzee" variant seems to be the most common in-game gambling.
However the rulebook for Three-Dragon Ante suggests that this game can be played in your favorite RPG, and indeed it's got some great color for a D&D game. It also has special rules which list how a handful of skills (Bluff, Concentration, Diplomacy, Intimidate, Profession / Gambler, Sense Motive, and Sleight of Hand) can be integrated to the game. I haven't tried them, since I'm not palying D&D right now, but they look entirely delightful and I think this game would be a fun add to a D&D campaign.
Relationships to Other Games
Three-Dragon Ante is a gambling game, and thus it's tempting to call it Poker-like. Similar to Poker, you're putting out scant resources (here cards) and everything you bid is gone whether you win it or not.
However, Three-Dragon Ante is actually a very chaotic & original auction game. It's in the same family of games as Havoc, Beowulf and Taj Mahal, all games where you lose whatever you bid--but Three-Dragon Ante is an entirely original offering into the genre.
Besides regular auction mechanics, Three-Dragon Ante also includes a little bit of set collection, and even a tiny bit of card drafting (though the latter is pretty constrained).
The Game Design
Three-Dragon Ante is fun to play and entirely original. Its biggest strength is probably its evocative theming, but the gameplay works quite well too. There's a good mix of strategy & tactics, as you're constantly trying to play the best cards you can while at the same time setting up for the future. This works quite well because there are multiple paths to victory; at any time you could be trying to win a gambit, trying to win some scraps with low card plays, or trying to set up a set.
The special powers are a good port of what really makes the game. They're much of what's evocative here, and they allow a lot of the interesting tactics. At the same time they can result in some quite random results and they can cause some analysis paralysis until players become quite familiar with the cards.
This game has clearly learned something from the Magic: The Gathering school of design, which is a good thing. As a result you can set up some neat combos in the game, which just add to the interesting tactics.
Also worth noting: Three-Dragon Ante seems to play well with a variety of player numbers. I played with 3, 4, and 5, and enjoyed all the games. I thought the 4- and 5-player plays were slightly more interesting because of the larger number of players to compete against and the increased number of cards in the pot, but I was still very happy with my 3-player play.
Overall, Three-Dragon Ante is a great, enjoyable game. It's going to appeal entirely to fans of Dungeons & Dragons, whether they want to use it in their D&D campaigns or not. However, I think it entirely stands on its own as a good, if wacky, gambling game. I've given it a full "5" out of "5" for Substance.
Conclusion
Three-Dragon Ante is an auction-based gambling game set in the world of Dungeons & Dragons. However I think it rises well above its roots and is a very enjoyable, thoughtful, tactical, and wacky game all on its own. It's one of the best light games I've played this year.
