Players: 2-5
Playing Time: 1-2 hours
The Components
Dragon Lairds comes with a game board, a large deck of cards, and a few other scattered bits.
The Board: A glossy four-panel gameboard. This is primarily a place to lay out cards, so there are spaces for havoc cards, resource cards, laird cards, commoner cards, and the "dragon fire sale". There are also a number of tracks on the board: for scores, for honour, and for the action counter.
The board (as with the rest of the game) features the fun fantasy art of Tom Wham. It's been put to good use here, giving the game board some depth and color.
Plastic Bits: There are 11 plastic pawns, two for each player (to mark their score and honour), plus a white pawn to mark actions. These are plain but do the job.
Cards: 160 cards total, including 155 playing cards and 5 queen/king cards (1 for each player). Each of these cards has a unique piece of Wham art, plus icons to show the card's color, geld earned, and royals earned. Some cards have a special power as well.
Though they're certainly utilitarian, and though the Wham art is delightful, I found the cards generally plain because of their white background and and the simple squares and circles used to depict geld and royals. This is my biggest complaint with the components; a great card layout could have brought the game up to a whole new level of quality, so it's a pity more wasn't done here.
Money: Paper money in denominations of 1, 5, 10, and 20. It's pape, and thus flimsy, but a bit sturdier than average. In addition, vibrant colors have been used to distinguish the different values of money.
Rules: A 12-page rulebook that's somewhat spare in examples and illustrations, but does a nice job of explaining the game and also has a great glossary of cards at the end. There's also a one-page synopsis of the game included as a separate sheet, which is a nice addition.
Overall, Dragon Lairds has good quality components that are relatively easy to use, but all of the layout is a bit spare, looking more like an old-school game than a modern release. Still, thanks in part to the always fun Tom Wham art, it's slightly above average, and thus I've given it a high "3" out of "5" for Style.
The Gameplay
The object of Dragon Lairds is to earn the most points through clever purchase of cards.
Setup: Each player starts the game with a monarch card which gives some combination of geld (gold), royals (victory points), and discounts on purchasing cards. In addition, each player starts with 15 geld. Four cards are given to each player, of which they put one into play, put another in the fire sale, and discard two.
The player markers are laid out on the honour track in a random order.
The Cards. There are four types of cards in the game: havocs, resources, lairds, and commoners.
Resources, lairds, and commoners cost money to buy, while havocs instead costing victory points.
All cards can generate gelds (money) every turn.
Lairds generate royals (victory points) every turn, while commoners and resources generate victory points only at the end of the game (but sometimes in huge piles).
Conversely, havocs are all about doing special things, usually involving interactions with other players, such as taking their cards, victory points, and money.
Each card belongs to a color, with the five colors corresponding to the five monarchs. Some cards give extra money or victory points if they're held by the monarch of the appropriate play.
Order of Play: In a round the following general things occur:
- Laying Out Cards
- Taking Actions
- Collecting Royals and Gelds
- Clearing the Board
Laying Out Cards: Each turn a number of cards are laid out on the board for purchase. The number can vary depending on what's drawn.
When a card is drawn it's placed on an appropriate space. There's one space for havocs, one for resources, one for lairds, and one to four for commoners (depending on the number of players). Additional cards of the same type are piled on top of those already drawn, requiring players to remember what's already down. This continues until there is at least card on each of the four to seven spaces, at which time players can begin taking their actions.
Taking Actions: Depending on the number of players, each player will get three to six actions. They're taken one at a time in reverse order of honour.
As an action a player may do one of several things:
Take a Card into Hand. A player can take a card into his hand at no cost, to a limit of four, but any cards still in hand at the end of the game will be penalized. This is a mechanism to store a card that you want to play later, but either you can't afford right now, or you're afraid it'll get taken.
Purchase a Card. A player may purchase a card (and bring it into play) either from the board or from his hand. The cost is listed on the card, possibly with a +2 cost if it's not in your color. The cost of any cards in the fire sale is halved.
Many havocs have an instant effect, but other cards will sit there and earn you money and victory points at the end of each turn and/or at the end of the game. Some cards will also give you special powers when they're out, such as stealing money or cards from other players or protecting some of your cards from havocs.
There's one other special rule for purchasing cards: you can "shift" cards as part of this action. This means spending a victory point to move a card from the top of a stack on the board to the bottom, which can let you get to cards that are more affordable and/or better suited to your strategy. You can do this as often as you want, possibly iterating through an entire stack.
Pass. Sometimes you won't have any money (or any desire to add cards to your hand), and so you'll just pass.
Collecting Royals and Gelds: After all the players have taken their actions, each player collects any royals or gelds that he earns every turn (as opposed to "finale royals" which are only earned at the end of the game).
Clearing the Board: Finally, all the administrative stuff is done.
First, anything remaining in the fire sale is discarded.
Second, the bottom card of each stack is moved to the fire sale.
Third, the honor track is rearranged in order of victory points (meaning that the player doing the best will go last on the next turn).
Ending the Game: The game ends either when the deck of cards is expended or when a player tops 60 royals during the scoring phase.
When this occurs each player scores their royals one more time, then his finale royals.
Now, each player counts sets. For each type of card (havocs, commoners, resources, lairds), a player gets 10 points for each complete set of cards he has, where there's one of each color. In additional, he may score one partial set in each type at 2 points per card, meaning that you can't score more than one card of each color in each type that isn't in a set. (Note that this is all errata that's missing from the rules.)
Finally, each player loses points for what's in hand: -5 points for stuff of his own color, or minus its value for stuff in other colors.
The player with the highest score wins.
Relationships to Other Games
Dragon Lairds is what I call a hybrid Euro-American game. Like a traditional Eurogame, it's got solid mechanics that allow for deep strategy. Like a traditional American game, it's got good theming and "take-that" mechanics that allow for a high level of player interaction.
More specifically, Dragon Lairds is very close in gameplay to Eurogame St. Petersburg. Both center around building up victory-point and money engines through the purchase of cards. I've always thought that St. Petersburg was a little staid and too easy to develop an ideal strategy. Conversely Dragon Lairds adds the color and variability that was always needed.
The Game Design
Dragon Lairds is, without a doubt, a game of hard choices. You always want more cards than you can take, and you also have to try and figure out which cards you need to get before someone else grabs them. Hard decisions are, in my opinion, always the first benchmark for a good game, and Dragon Lairds does a good job of meeting this goal.
The other big decision in Dragon Lairds is immediate gratification versus long-term planning. There are plenty of reasons for getting gold and victory points immediately, but on the other hand hanging back can let you set up for a last-minute push, all the while giving you early selection of cards due to low honor in the meantime. I was shocked in my second game of Dragon Lairds when a player who'd been trailed pretty dramatically for the whole game came within 10 points of victory due to laying in very heavy on finale royal cards.
Ultimately whether you like Dragon Lairds or not will ultimately depend on what you think of the "take that" mechanics that are common in American games. The havoc cards in Dragon Lairds are quite powerful, and can deliver you victory or defeat. There are some ways to protect yourself from them, but they're pretty limited. If you're a fan of American games like Illuminatus and Munchkin, this won't be a problem, but fans of Eurogames may find it too chaotic.
I'll offer one other caveat: though the box says "1 hour" both of my games of Dragon Lairds ran closer to 2.
In summary, when reviewing Dragon Lairds I measure it against genre American games, because it's clearly competing for the same audiences. Though the mechanics of the game would be more staid to gamers familiar with European releases, they're still quite new in the American field. Dragon Lairds does a good job of not just presenting a fun strategy game, but also mixing it with what makes American games interesting.
I've thus given it a "4" out of "5" for Substance: good.
Conclusion
Dragon Lairds is a hybrid of American theming and European mechanics. The result is a game that's colorful, interactive, and strategic in equal amounts. If you're a fan of games from Atlas, Steve Jackson, and others, then look toward Dragon Lairds--and Margaret Weis Productions--as a new entrant to the field.
