I discovered Dragon War while wandering the exhibition hall at Origins this year. The designer and one of his artist buddies was manning the booth, and they happily showed me the game. The concept is that this is a board game, where you move your piece across the board trying to reach the end of the board. Each space has you do something, like "move forward X spaces" or "lose X life points" or fight another player's character, etc. This isn't that interesting. What is is the fact that the "board" isn't really a board. Rather, the game board consists of 40 cards (playing card size, roughly) with a picture and 3 board spaces. The cards are laid out in 4 rows of 10 cards (or however available space permits) and then you move in order across, then down to the next row and across again, until you reach the end.
Each game comes with six characters. Rive are standard, and there is an extra "bonus" character from an available expansion pack offering more character options. Each character has 25 life points. Your life points will vary all over the place during the game, and if you ever reach 0 you are dead and out of the game (unless you use a certain optional rule, that is...).
The actual game components are well done. The playing pieces and life counters are made of a black, rubbery plastic that sticks a little to the coating on the cards. I really like this, as if you accidentally bump a card and it goes scooting all over the place, the piece should stay where you left it. The card art is good, and all done by Robert Kraus himself. The backs of the cards have "extra" art by Mr. Kraus that has nothing to do with the game at all. I think he just wants you to see as much of his work as possible. Mr. Kruas also indulges himself by including his own comic book characters in the game, though this doesn't detract any from the experience. There is also a deck of Fate Cards with the game that you get to draw from when you land on certain spaces. These are not well done, as they are not of a uniform size, which makes shuffling a problem.
Playing Dragon War was much more fun than I originally thought it would be. Game play is fast and hectic, and you can lose a leading position very fast. The chaos of gameplay can not be adequately described in writing; let's just say that anything can happen, depending on the board layout and how much the other players want to mess with you. The expansion sets add to this, but more on that later...
At Origins, they had a LOT of expansions for Dragon War. I got 3 of them at the convention, and they will be covered in later reviews. There are at least 15 expansions out there, most of which cost $3. This means that you have a large ability to customize the game as you see fit, with extra Fate Cards or extra board cards, extra characters, etc. This is truly one game that never needs to play the same way twice.
Style: 4 (Classy and well done)
Substance: 4 (Meaty)
