The Red Dragon Inn
Recently I’ve noticed my trend now of putting away the RPGs and whipping out the board games for some fun with friends on Saturday. I bought this game because my friend and I wanted to convert our significant others to RPGs, but it turns out it’s a hell of a game in it’s own right. A bit pricey, but has plenty of quality to back that up.
In this game you play a typical D&D-esque party (Fighter, Mage, Thief, and Cleric) after the big adventure, celebrating in the Red Dragon Inn. Play revolves around getting “accidentally” harmed and gambling, all the while getting more and more inebriated. The last person sober with money in their pocket wins.
I’ve never even thought of doing a review for a non-collectible Card game, but thought the best format would be to start with a product breakdown, then a play breakdown, then my conclusion.
Product Breakdown
What You Get:- 1 rules sheet, full color
- 4 player mats
- 8 glass beads: 4 red and 4 clear/yellow
- 30 card Drink deck
- Four 40 card Player decks.
- 50 Gold Coin counters
The Rules Fairly simple, they fit on one sheet of paper (front and back). Each player takes a turn by
Discard/Draw Phase: Discarding, then Drawing (up to 7 cards in a hand) Action Phase: Play an Action card Buying Drinks Phase: give a drink from the drink deck to another player’s Drink Me! pile Drink! Phase: Drinking from one’s own Drink Me! Pile.
It takes a few turns to get used to the swing of things, but after that, it’s smooth sailing.
The Mats The mats are glossy and colored brown wood grain with black lettering, printed on tough paper of some sort (posterboard, I think). There are spots for the Player Deck, Discard, and Drink pile, as well as the Fortitude/Alcohol Content continuum. The bottom of the player mat explains (it’s explained in the Rules as well): “Fortitude starts at 20. Alcohol Content starts at 0. Fortitude and Alcohol Content can’t be more than 20 or less than 0. If your Fortitude and Alcohol Content meet, you’re out!”. The turn order is also printed on each mat for easy reference.
The Beads Standard fish rocks here, red and clear, for use with the Mats described above. Red sits on one end of the Fortitude/Alcohol Content continuum for Fortitude, the clear/yellow sits on the other end of the continuum for Alcohol Content. I keep saying “Clear/Yellow”, that’s because the counters that came with my set are clear, but the rules reference them as “yellow”. I don’t know how much difference that will make, but in that regard your mileage may vary.
The Drink Deck sits in the middle of the table, waiting for somebody to deal a drink to another player (Buy Drinks Phase). It consists of:
- 3 Light Ale cards (low Alcohol Content)
- 3 Dark Ale cards (low Alcohol Content)
- 3 Wine cards (medium Alcohol Content)
- 2 Elven Wine cards (high Alcohol Content)
- 3 Dragon Breath Ale cards (knock-you-on-your-duff Alcohol Content)
These drink cards are simply Alcohol Content givers. The interesting ones to talk about are:
4 “With Chaser” cards: These force a player to take some Alcohol Content and then drink the next card underneath it as well. They can be “game enders” if the player doesn’t have a way to nullify them.
7 Unique Drinks: Holy Water, Wizard’s Brew, Coffee, and several others. Orcish Rotgut and Troll Swill both have conditions if the drinker is an Orc or Troll (respectively), which is confusing for a second (the characters are 2 humans, an elf, and a halfling) but makes me think Slugfest Games might be coming out with a companion set in the future (as the current game only supports up to 4 players).
5 Drinking Events: As if the Drink! phase wasn’t bad enough, these 5 drink cards actually call for the entire table to drink one or more drinks. The” Drinking Contest” is particularly destructive with 4 players.
The Player Decks
Deidre the Priestess: Great at healing and decent at accumulating gold. Bad at keeping sober.Fiona the Volatile: Great at taking it and dishing it out, drinks like a fish. Stinks at gambling.
Gerki the Sneak: Good at avoidance, but if he takes damage or drinks he won’t have any cards to regenerate these losses. Probably best at gaining gold from other players.
Zot the Wizard and Pooky: Is a bit good at everything, and has the same problem as Gerki when it comes to regenerating losses. His real problem is not specializing in anything, really.
Artwork: The artwork is readily apparent in the Player decks, and is all of the same quality as the cover art for the game’s box. If you don’t like the game’s box, you won’t like the art on the cards, and vice-versa.
I’ve played and won the game as every character, realizing their strengths and weaknesses. As far as game balance goes, I believe all the characters are rather even, which is a pleasant surprise when it comes to games that involve unique decks for each player.
There are four-five types of cards in the Player Decks: Action, Sometimes, Anytime, Gambling, and (for Gerki and Zot) Cheating. Action cards are played during the Action phase (one per Action Phase). Sometimes cards can be played whenever their condition is met. Anytime cards can be played whenever, even interrupting somebody else’s action. Gambling and Cheating cards can only be played during a round of Gambling. While Gerki and Zot have Cheating cards, Fiona and Deidre each have a “cheater smack down” card.
While the back of the box says each deck is “unique”, I found that each deck has 15 non-unique cards. As in, all 4 decks have 6 “Gambling? I’m in!” cards, 2 “I raise!” cards, 2 “Winning Hand!” cards, and the same 5 Wench-related cards. Each deck does have a unique backing and border style, and 25 unique character-related cards (though there are some similarities like each character having their own “I don’t think so!” card, these cards all have unique artwork). I will showcase my favorite of each character now:
Deirdre the Priestess: Title: “Oh no! I think that growth on your arm might be Mummy Rot!” Action card. Pick another player. They lose 2 Fortitude.
Fiona the Volatile: Title: “Sorry about that, I just instinctively aim for the head…” Sometimes card. Play this card when another player makes you lose Fortitude. They also lose 2 Fortitude.
Gerki the Sneak: Title: “Um, guys… I think there was a miscalculation during treasure division… Action card. (You annoy the others until…) Each player gives you 1 Gold
Zot the Wizard and Pooky: Title: “Look over there! It’s the Lich King!” Cheating card. Take control of the round of Gambling. Beats all Gambling and Cheating cards.
Gold Coins The game comes with 50 gold coins on two punch-out sheets. All coins are double sided with a spiral design, and while both sides look similar, if you look closely each has a “Heads” and “Tails”. I thought it was a nice touch. Each character starts with 10, and the extra 10 are for the Inn (who can be stolen from, or added to, over the course of play.)
Play Breakdown
The first time I played this game it was with Zot. He’s still probably my favorite character, but I like him more for his denial abilities than his crazy rabbit familiar. A couple turns of referencing my player mat and a few RTCS (Read the card, stupid!) issues later, and I had the game down pretty well and was having fun with it. Average play really is about an hour. I was a bit disheartened that only 4 players could play at a time, but only once was this an actual issue (I had 4 friends over and we couldn’t have everybody sit down and play).Play continues very organically, and only once did we have an issue that wasn’t quickly solved by RTCS or checking the rules. We had several laugh-out-loud moments during the game due to the circumstances some of the cards were played in. The game is rather tactical when it comes to how and when to play Sometimes and Anytime cards, and some players will be more skilled at the game than others.
I’ve played the game several times, and found it to have great replay value as well. This was something I was worried about when I purchased the game, so thought it necessary to mention here. Each play experience is different, because sometimes all of Gerki’s damage cards come up at once and sometimes Deidre is the one with all the good gambling cards, etc.
