Dragoon Board Game First Impressions

Dragoon sees your dragon claim cities to steal treasure.

They also steal from each other!

You and your fellow dragons have lived peacefully on your island…until now. The invasion of humans has awakened your instincts to dominate and hoard as much gold as you can get your claws on!

Dragoon Game Play

The cloth (for some reason) board is laid out. Each player has a dragon cave where their dragon starts.

To Populate, the player rolls the 2 dice and determines what to do based on its grid location once more than a number of players.

If it’s empty, a dark village tile is placed. But, if a dark village tile is already there, it’s flipped over to a red city. If there are no options to place a tile in the location, a neutral character called the thief gains 3 treasure.

The Action phase starts with the player in last place deciding who goes first. Then the start player draws a card and spends 3 action points:

• 0 – Play a card in hand
• 1 – Move 1 orthogonal space
• 1 – Claim a population tile you’re on by placing a totem on it
• 1 – Destroy the population tile you’re on for 2-4 gold
• 1 – Roll a die and steal that much gold if in another dragons cave
• 1 – Steal gold from the thief if on their treasure
• 1 – Discard a card and draw a card
• 2 – Draw a card

If two dragons are in the same space they automatically fight. They both roll a die and the higher roll steals 3 treasures, the attacker wins ties.

Tribute Phase

After all players have taken action, there is the tribute phase. Players roll a die for each village or city they have. On a 1 they lose the claim token on it, on a 2 they get nothing. They also get nothing if another dragon is stood on it and automatically count as a 3/4/5 if they are stood on a tile they own.

On a 3/4/5 they get 1 gold per village and 3 gold per city. They get 2 and 4 on a 6.

At this point, if a dragon has 50 gold they win, if not a new round begins.

Theme

Dragons wrecking towns and cities in a world where humans inexplicably keep rebuilding… Yep.

Setup

Setup is the same as laying the table. Cover it in a cloth and stick things on it.

Components & Artwork

The cloth game board and the game comes in a cloth bag too. No idea why? I mean, it’s unique and looks pretty nice but I would prefer a box and a board. The art on the board is actually quite nice with its minimal mountains

The bag the games comes in doubles as the scoreboard which is clever I guess.

The pieces look 3D printed and are low quality.

The art on the cards is really bad. There is no effort here and I’d like a bit more theme to the art on the cards.

Ease of Teaching

It’s very straightforward. Cards in hand are hidden information but they explain themselves very well.

Dragoon Summary

I recently played Godzilla: Tokyo Clash which is a more complicated and much better-looking game. It’s also more fun which is important.

But these are not my kind of games so I’m never going to rate them highly. I prefer to fight while racing, fight while civ building and fight while fighting other things. Direct conflict with another player or players is not really my thing.

It’s also very random. As the tiles populate with a die roll, they might appear on the other side of the board to you. Even if you spend all 3 action points moving you won’t get there and won’t be able to do anything if you could.

This is the same for the thief’s location. If it pops up next to you, you can easily score 6-10 gold on your next turn.

I like that last place picks turn order. It’s a good way to balance the game a bit.

But I would give Dragoon a miss personally.

Jesta ThaRogue