DDO Players Dastardly Dirigibles By Fireside Games Review

Grab your tap hats, and your monocles!

Professor Phineas Edmund Hornswoggle, known for building the highest quality airships, has announced his retirement. As one of the greatest airship engineers in the kingdom, you have gathered at the Hornswoggle factory in a competition to build the best airships you can and become the successor to the Hornswoggle empire!

Dastardly Dirigibles is a new card game from Justin De Witt and Fireside Games. 2-5 players are trying to build a airship, the trick is each player must use the same card when it’s played. Your trying to score the most points over the course of three rounds.

What’s In The Box

You will find, five guide sheets, Think of this as your blueprint for how to build your dirigible. 75 tarot-sized cards, which consists of seven different dirigible parts in nine different suits, plus a dozen “Special” cards. Your ship parts fall into the following categories: nose cone, lift engine, gondola front, gondola rear, drive engine, lift engine (again), and tail.

The artwork is topnotch. Great colors that pop out. The cards themselves are of good feel, they don’t feel too heavy and not “cheap” either, so I think they are just about right and should stand up as you play. The “Game board” is my only minor nitpick I have here. It’s a glossy paper that you unfold, the problem I had (Which I’m sure is because it’s new) it would not sit flat, and my cards keep sliding off. I’m sure after awhile it will stop doing this, again, minor nitpick, but just wanted to mention it.

Game play

Game play is pretty easy to learn, but there is so much strategy involved. Each player is dealt five cards and players choose a card to place before them from their hands. This card is forfeited to the table and this collection of cards forms the Emporium, This is also how you determine the first player, with the card closest to the front of the ship getting to go first.

On your turn you will draw up to five cards and choose three actions from the available choices. They can do the same action three times or any combination of the following:

Playing a card, either an Airship or Special card
Discarding a card
Swapping 1 card from their hands with one of the face-up cards in the Emporium
Wiping out the Emporium and drawing a fresh set of cards there
Passing

To play a card, you pick a card from your hand and play it on your Guide Sheet. Parts can be played in any order, but if there is already a corresponding part card on your blueprint, it must be discarded and replaced with the new one. This is where the “Dastardly” part comes in! When a player plays a card, say, a life engine card, all other players must look at their hands and they must play the same part card if they have it — even if this means replacing an existing corresponding card on their Guide Sheets. There a few exceptions to this, one example is, if a player has more than one of the part, they can choose which one to play.

Play continues from player to player until a player has completed their airship. The round immediately ends and scoring begins. Players are only given points for the cards which come from the predominant suit on their ship.

My Final Thoughts

Dastardly Dirigibles is a fun game that is easy to learn. With a lot of depth to it. The “Special” cards you can play provide a great as I always call it “Screw Over” Factor. I really enjoyed the mechanic where you had to play the same part on your own ship if an opponent plays that part, again that can lead to some great “screw over” if you wish to play it that way.

This is one of those game that you will play over and over, as I said it’s plays pretty fast once you get a grasp on the rules. The play time stated on the box is an hour, but I think once you get a feel for it, you can play it faster than that, this will be something you can break out at game nights for a fun start to your evening.