The Tea Dragon Society: Adorable Dragons and Fond Memories

It is your job to raise your dragon, bond with it, and make memories over the course of one delightful year.

Based on the graphic novel of the same name by Katie O’Neill, The Tea Dragon Society is a deck building card game about bonding with and nurturing your dragon.

Gameplay

Each player chooses a dragon and takes its starting deck. The market cards are shuffled and four are placed face up in the center of the table. Each time one is bought, you will replace it with a new card. The game also includes memory cards, which are divided into four different seasons. At the start of the game you begin with the Spring memories face up above the market cards. Whenever there is only one memory card remaining in a season, you discard it and reveal the memory cards for the next season. The game ends once only one Winter memory card remains.

A card will have several pieces of information. It will say how many growth points it is worth, and how many growth points it costs. Some cards also have special effects when they are drawn or when they are in play and a specific other card is drawn. Some cards are also worth points.

On your turn, you may either buy a market or a memory card, or you can choose to draw a card from your deck. Players do not keep cards in their hands, rather when you draw a card you place it face up in front of you. The cards in front of you are called your hold. Some cards you draw have negative effects and will force you to discard from your hold, unless you buy other cards which prevent this. When buying a card, you place cards from your hold into your discard pile in order to gain their growth points and make the purchase. When a market card is bought, it goes straight to your hold. When a memory is bought, it goes into your discard pile and then you reshuffle your deck.

When the game ends, players add all the points from the cards in their deck and the player with the most points wins the game.

Review

This game is just bursting with cuteness, which may or may not be your thing. Just looking at the cover of The Tea Dragon Society you know it’s going to be adorable. The dragons are little and cute and you just want to hug them. Opening the game and finding the illustrations on the cards of the dragons doing various activities, the cuteness just continues to increase. The artwork is done by the author of the graphic novel, so it’s no surprise that it is exceptionally high quality. We were unfamiliar with the book before playing the game, but there’s a rich world in the cards that you can appreciate and enjoy without being familiar with the source material.

The game is quite easy to learn, though there were one or two moments when we were met with a combination of cards that we weren’t one hundred percent certain how to resolve. Also, if you make some bad decisions early on, it’s hard to come back from them, especially in a two player game.

There is a simplicity to the game, though, that is charming. The hold is a mechanic I hadn’t seen in previous deck builders, and The Tea Dragon Society would be a great introduction to the genre, while also being a game children could enjoy.

Whether you are familiar with the graphic novel or not, The Tea Dragon Society is pleasant and delightful, and features some of the most adorable dragons you will ever find.

Pros: Absolutely adorable artwork, light and easy to learn

Cons: Hard to come back once you start to lose, some ambiguous moments in the rules

Disclosure: we received a complimentary review copy of this game.