Iron Dragon

Mayfair Games

2-6 players

Play time 3 hours +

Game Contents & Setup:

Within the Larry Elmore Illustrated Box you will find: 6 piece interlocking board showing the map of the world, 6 game pieces with corresponding color crayons, 1 deck of load/event cards, load counters, a sheet of load stickers to applied to the load counters, train cards, ship cards, engineer cards & paper money. (I recommend buying the laminated, one piece map and using wet erase markers instead)

To start the game each player starts with 60 gold, 3 randomly selected load cards, a randomly selected engineer, and a teapot engine

Game Play:

Players build rails between cities so cargo can be delivered. Each turn, players are allowed to spend up to 20 gold pieces, which will allow them to build certain amount of track (dependant on the mile markers), upgrade their engine or buy new engineers. Trains move between mile markers as designated on the individual train card, from 10 (Teapot) to 16 (Iron Dragon).

The train type also determines how many loads it can carry (2 or 3). If rail is not built to a city, there are a couple of options, build the rail yourself, pay to ride someone else’s rail if they are already built into the city, or via ship.

During the course of the game players will build tracks from one city to the next to deliver the goods listed on the load cards that they are dealt. Each load cards has three load options, the player gets to pick one by determining which load is most advantageous to them, some runs will be short with track already laid, others can span the width of the board, and until that card is turned in, any of them can be selected as the game dynamic changes. The value of the run is determined by the distance the commodity is from the location on the card making the request. Once a run is completed the load card and load counter is traded in for payment (and a new load card), sometimes if the card lay right, several loads can be delivered to the same location. If you find yourself in a situation where none of the loads will work for you, you may skip a turn, discard your hand and get three new load cards.

Once you get accustomed to the map, things become easy to spot as cities like Kola and Kutno are located in the country of Koland, while the cities of Eaglehawk and Eabannet are located in Eusarch Two areas of the map are difficult to build through without the proper engineer. The Jungles in the south cost 3 gold a mile marker (the catmen reduces the cost to 1 gold). The other area is the Underground. Unless you are the Orc or the Troll, every turn spent building or moving underground incurs a bribe of 1 gold which is either paid to the Orc (except for the Troll), or the bank if the Orc is not in play. The Troll can only build underground so he should probably be avoided.

The engineers are one of the biggest changes from its cousin Empire Builder. Each engineer offers the player some sort of advantage, like paying 1 gold to go build through the mountains (as opposed to 2 gold) or reducing the costs to build over bodies of water. The other is the inclusion of ships into the mix. If a player wants (and they have enough movement to do so), they may end their turn on a port and randomly draw for a ship. If they want the ship drawn they must pay the cost indicated on the card (This does not go against the 20 gold limit per turn). This ship will carry the train and its load at the specified speed, from 8 to 13. There are a couple of drawbacks to consider when dealing with the ships, the first is the loss of the remaining turns both when acquiring the ship and when landing in port. The other is, there must be track laid to the port if there isn't some there already, as only 3 of the major cities have ports attached

Within the load deck, event cards will show up, ranging from floods (which wipe out tracks over rivers), sandstorms which wipe out all desert tracks, snowstorms and hurricanes which reduce train movement, to things like vampires being released from the underground. which forces loads to be removed from a train.

To win the game a player must have 6 of the 7 major cities connected and have 250 gold.

The game is fun without having a bunch of player undercutting that can happen in other games, be prepared for it to take up the entire evening.