BURNT! All Burnt down! The Dragon Castle is in ruins but with tragedy comes opportunity for the nobles, who you included has decided to use the ruins of the old Castle to build a new Dragon Castle.
Dragon Castle is a game based on the Asian game of Mahjong Solitaire but reworked to be played with up to 4 players, have a higher tactical depth and of course no gambling elements.
This is achieved by firstly building the "old" Dragon Castle by stacking the tiles in the middle of the table as according to the rulebook. Then the player who has last seen a dragon other than in the game becomes the first player.
The first player in the game is then able to do 3 things during his/her turn:
1. Draw two exactly same symbolled tiles which must have at least 1 of their long side not blocked by another tile.
2. Draw 1 tile which must have at least 1 of their long side not blocked by another tile and then place a shrine token in your available pool on your player board.
3. Draw 1 tile which must have at least 1 of their long side not blocked by another tile and throw it out of the game and gain 1 point.
After a tile is drawn, tiles can be placed anywhere on the player's board other than on tiles that still have their coloured side showing. If tiles of the same colour are connected octagonally (Regardless of symbol's differences) in a group of 4 or more, turn the tiles over and gain the resulting points. After which the player may add shrines according to the rareness of the tile.
The game continues till only a single layer of tiles are shown, then a new action is unlocked. It is to collect a dragon token which is equal to 2 points. From there, play continues until someone collects a dragon token and when the '!' symbol is revealed on the middle board, everybody else then finishes the round and final scoring happens.
Points are finalised by adding up the point and dragon tokens a player has collected throughout the game and for each shrine on their board's height (1/2/3 tiles etc.). The player with the most points wins.
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If you think that is all to the Dragon Castle then you are wrong, as the game can be taken to a whole new LEVEL! (Get it...level). This is because you can also add spirit and Dragon cards to the game which gives players new powers and ways to score and adds even more depth to the game without adding much more rules.
A family friendly evocative design that oozes an Asian aesthetic that is both easy to teach, quick to play and has the added benefit of drawing a crowd. Who knows you might get a person into the board gaming hobby because he/she happens to be somewhat familiar with the game of Mahjong.
We at Brajkishore blind are now distributing many great games from the famed Board Game Publisher CMON! If you are interested in Dragon Castle or any other CMON titles. Do feel free to hit us up at WWW.Brajkishore blind.COM. We are more than happy to serve.
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Zhou Huibin is a smith of words who majored in Philosophy & History from the University of Western Australia and whose life has followed the flow of his hobbies. He seeks continual contentment in his ponders, reading, writing, painting and board games which fills almost all of his time.
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At the GAMA Trade Show, Cool Mini or Not (CMON) and Dark Sword Miniatures have teamed up to produce A Song of Ice & Fire: A Tabletop Miniatures Game which will be coming to Kickstarter in quarter 3 of 2017 and in retail stores possibly in early 2018.
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Now an important note about the game is that it is based on the books and not the series of A Game of Thrones and that the initial Kickstarter release is for the starter set of House Stark Vs. House Lannister. That being said after the Kickstarter the game will not be lacking for content as there will be new releases for the game every month after the Kickstarter. These though will be sold at Game stores as CMON correctly understands that a miniatures game lives and dies with continual play in stores.
The game is basically one of individual miniatures forming units that are put into unit trays that move and fight together, many units forming an army. Units are bolstered by heroes in units who provide their bonuses to that unit.
All the miniatures are going to come unpainted and be made of a quality plastic and thus long spears and swords will not be bent like miniatures from many other games in the boardgaming world.
If you want more details or want to see the slides to the Presentation. Do click on this link to see Rodney Smith from the Watch It Played Youtube channel talk about it and click on this link for a video from Board Game Geek who interviewed CMON themselves about the game.
In conclusion, if you are worried this will be a money sink...you are right. Thus my tip is for those like me with limited funds to indulge with focused purchases. For me it will be with my favourite character Tywin Lannister, which I intend to paint and use in other games as a proxy. May your wallets survive the Winter...that is coming.