The Dragon & Flagon First Impressions
“You don’t pick a fight when you’re drunk.”
“I had to punch someone in the face.”
~ Sam Hunter, The Devil’s Breath
The Dragon & Flagon is a tavern world-renowned for its most magical drink, The Dragon. Legend has it that one sip of The Dragon can give a hero wondrous abilities beyond their wildest dreams — but with a tavern full of thirsty adventurers and only one flagon left, things are bound to go wrong. Prepare your magic and grab your weapon because there’s only one true objective in this brawl — and it’s not just a sip of The Dragon. Only one can win and emerge with the reputation as the greatest fighter ever seen within the walls of The Dragon & Flagon!
So this is a programming game where you fight other people in a fantasy Tavern. But instead of dealing damage, you steal their reputation. The player with the most Rep at the end of the game wins.
Everyone has a character with a fantasy-ish class and a unique deck of cards… The Tavern is set up and each player places a standee around the edge of the board. Each player also programs 2 cards facedown on their board in slots 1 & 2…
The game is played around a time track. Each character in play has a token and everyone starts at 0 time. These tokens are shuffled and revealed one at a time. When a player’s token is revealed they flip the card in slot 1 and perform the action…
Time Track
The characters token is then moved a number of spaces down the track depending on how much time the action takes to resolve.
When everyone in a space has taken their action, players that took an action that turn move the card up from slot 2 to slot 1 on their track and add a card to slot 2.
The time token moves up a space, then you shuffle all the tokens in that space and go again.
The actions are varied such as picking up a Mug or Chair, throwing an item you’re carrying, Moving, Attacking, Kicking a Barrel, Swinging on a Chandelier, pulling a Rug out from under someone etc
Then, you have character-specific abilities like my Mage who could fire spells at people.
The last 4 rounds in the time track contain 4 face-down tokens, one of them has a guard printed on it. When the guard is revealed the game ends.
The Dragon & Flagon Positives
Each of the 9 characters has their own deck with their own abilities. Each will play differently and allow for different things. For example, I stayed almost still and fired long-range spells. The Swashbuckler swung halfway across the Tavern on a chandelier, diagonally (other characters can’ only go orthogonally) and hit 2 people. Plenty of replayability there.
It’s thematic with things just making sense… The actions you take and the consequences of them are realistic. If you get Dazed you have to program a 3rd action for a turn which messes up your plans. If you get knocked down certain actions won’t activate on your next turn. For example, you can get up and move no problem… but you can’t get up and have the sense to cast a Fireball…
It plays up to 8, but as turns are taken in a fairly random order and you’re usually in someone’s attack zone so you’re not out of the game for long.
The variable endgame thing is cool.
It looks really good on the table.
It’s fun 🙂
The Dragon & Flagon Negatives
Symbols on cards for the position of the player and the area of effect could be easier to read.
It’s like a better, but more convoluted version of Colt Express.
Summary
Very fun, thematic programming game with a good-looking board.
Jesta ThaRogue
