Players: 2-5
Playing Time: 20-30 minutes

The Components

Dragon Parade comes in a small box that includes a game board, 15 seller pieces, 1 dragon piece, 36 cards, and 30 coins.

The Game Board: A small four-panel gameboard that depicts two winding streets curving away from the "Forbidden City". Together they form a track that the dragon travels along as it iterates back and forth during a game.

Sellers & Dragon: Little wooden men in the 5 player colors (white, blue, purple, yellow, and green). These are placed on the streets to mark where you think the dragon will stop.

The dragon is also a wood bit. It's a very nice figure, with a white dragon painted on red. Unfortunately it doesn't entirely fit in some of the spaces, a minor nuisance.

Cards: 36 cards that depict values from 1-8 in either red or yellow. The cards all feature the same artwork of a city gate, but are attractive. They're printed on glossy medium-weight cardstock.

Coins: Twenty small silver coins and ten large gold coins. The gold coins uniquely have a square hole punched out of the middle, which makes them look authentic and is quite cool.

Overall the bits for Dragon Parade are nicely produced and of good quality. The price point is a tiny bit higher than I like to see for a filler game of this type, but is in line with the pieces you get. I give it a "4" out of "5" for Style: good.

The Gameplay

The object of Dragon Parade is to guess where the dragon is going to land, then place your sellers there.

Starting a Round: At the start of a round of play each player is dealt five cards. They will then engage in three placement rounds, one at a time, progressing clockwise around the table.

A Placement Round: On a placement round a player does two things.

First, he plays a card. This depicts either a red or yellow number from 1-8. He then moves the dragon in the appropriate direction, either toward the red gate or (contrariwise) toward the yellow gate. In the process the dragon may move back and forth between the two halves of the city.

Second, he takes one of his sellers and places it on an empty space that is not "surrounded" with a seller on either side. This can be at any legal place on the board, irrespective of where the dragon was moved.

Finishing the Round: After three placement rounds each player has two cards left and has placed all of his sellers. He now secretly discards one of his cards and keeps the other. Then the players each play their final card, and the dragon is moved back and forth as appropriate.

Now the parade is scored.

If the dragon is sitting on a seller that seller (and thus its owner) earns 5 coins, while each other seller in the same connected chain earns 3 coins. Each other seller on the same half of the board earns 1 coin.

If the dragon is sitting in between two chains of sellers, each seller in those two groups earns 3 coins and each other seller on the same half of the board earns 1.

An Alternative Ending. A round of play can also end early if the dragon moves out a gate. There is no more card play. The sellers in the chain closest to the gate earn 3 coins each and everyone else on that side earns 1.

After a round ends the board is cleared, the players get their sellers back, and the cards are reshuffled.

Ending the Game: A number of rounds equal to the number of players is played, so that each player can go first once, then the player with the most coins wins.

Relationships with Other Games

As noted above, Dragon Parade is really a bidding and value assessment game. Knizia has down a few other simple games in this vein such as Loco! and Gold Rush and more complex games like Colossal Arena. I like this one quite a bit better than the other light games, because though chaotic, it feels like the game is set up in such a way as to give you some control.

The Game Design

Despite that, there is a fair amount of chaos in the game. You have to make guesses as you try and figure out what other players are doing.

Besides this interesting analysis there's also some interesting tactical play, as you try and figure out who to team up with, and interesting strategic play, as you note people that you can't join with due to point differentials ... and avoid them.

On whole Dragon Parade is a slightly above average game. I've thus given it a high "3" out of "5">

Conclusion

Dragon Parade is ultimately a bidding game with some cute theming and just enough ability to control what's going on to make it interesting.