Preview: Muster Your Dragons and Call Forth Storms in Trick-Taking Card Game Storm Dragons

The dragons clash and storms rage across the sky. It’s time for battle. Do you have what it takes to lead your clan to victory?

Storm Dragons is a trick taking, hand management card game that is currently on Kickstarter. Played over a series of battles, the player with the most dragons in their victory pile at the end of the game wins.

Gameplay

The deck is shuffled and either dealt out evenly to all players, or (once everyone is familiar with the game) drafted by players. Each player then shuffles their personal deck of cards and sets them aside as their draw piles before drawing up to five cards.

There are two types of cards: storm cards and dragons cards. The game is played over a series of battles. The player who won the previous battle goes first and may play a dragon or a storm card. If he plays a dragon card, he flips the challenge token either to the night or day side, indicating which will be active for this battle. If he played a dragon card, he then moves the token in front of himself. If he played a storm, the token is placed in the center of the table, to be claimed by the first person who plays a dragon.

You have two separate stacks in front of you, your dragon stack and your storm stack. When playing a card, you place it in the appropriate stack and may either place it on top, in which case the card is the head of the stack, or you may place it beneath the top card. You always keep both stacks splayed so that you can see all cards within the stacks.

There are four possible strength values which cards can have: a value for when it is on top of its stack during the day, when it is on top of its stack at night, and values for when it is beneath the top card during the day or night. Many cards also have special abilities, which are only active when they are played onto the top of a stack. Some abilities only activate depending on whether it is day or night. Special abilities include such things as allowing you to draw or play extra cards, or change the time of day.

After you play a card, you check the value of all your played cards and add them together. This is your battle strength. If you have a higher battle strength than the player who currently has the challenge token, you take the challenge token.  

On your turn you may also yield, if you have played at least one dragon in this battle round (whether or not it is still on the table). In this case you are out of the battle (and your played cards remain on the table). If you have the challenge token you may also issue a challenge. When this happens, you add one to your battle strength from the challenge token, and each other player who has not yet yielded has the opportunity to play one more card. You check your battle strength against each player in turn. If yours is higher than another player’s, they must yield and you move all their dragons into your score pile. If a player defeats you, they claim your dragons and you are out of the round. The last player left in the round wins all played cards that are still on the table, and moves them into their score pile.

When a round ends, each player draws at least two cards, or up to a hand size of five, whichever is more. You may then choose to discard any number of cards from your hand and draw the same number, minus one. If your draw pile runs out, you are allowed to shuffle your discard pile to form a new one.

The game ends once any player's draw and discard piles are depleted. A final battle round will be played, and then players add any cards from their hands and their draw and discard piles into their victory piles. Finally, you count how many dragons are in your victory pile. The player with the most dragons wins.

Review

Storm Dragons is a trick-taking game with a great deal of strategy and interesting combos to experiment with. Players are encouraged to draft their decks, once they become familiar with the game, which increases your ability to control your cards and how they’ll play off of each other — while still having that element of luck, as you never know when you’ll draw which card.

There are lots of factors to consider when playing cards. Are you playing it on top of a stack or beneath it? Does it have a special ability? How important is that ability? Some abilities can be used only one time, so you may be able to activate it now, and then play another card on top of it later in the round to use another ability. But this means you need to be careful about the order in which you play each card as well, while keeping in mind you may be challenged. The day and night mechanic will also affect your cards and how you play them.

The cards are a nice, oversized format, with the information being easy to read. The artwork is also quite good, and we enjoyed seeing the different dragons with an impressive amount of variety among them. The rulebook, however, could have been a little tighter and clearer.

Storm Dragons is enjoyably challenging and brings something new to trick taking games. Check it out on Kickstarter and judge for yourself.

Pros: Several elements to consider when playing cards, interesting blend of hand management and trick taking, nice artwork

Cons: Rulebook could be improved

Disclosure: this preview is based on our evaluation of an unpublished prototype of the game, which is subject to change prior to publication. While a modest payment was received to expedite the review process, our thoughts and opinions expressed here are honest and accurate.