Dragonfire is a new cooperative deck-building game in which you and your friends take on different adventures inside of the Dungeons & Dragons world. If you are familiar with the card game Shadowrun: Crossfire, you will be right at home here, It uses a similar game system to the one found in Shadowrun but there are a few new mechanics added in, including Skill Checks. I have never played Shadowrun, so I went into this with no comparison that at all.
To start out you will choose an adventure to start the game. The adventure will take place over multiple scenes and the adventure will describe how to set up the game, including setting up the encounters that you will have to defeat to finish out the adventure, these will include both monsters and locations.
At the start of every game, players will look at their character screens to see what Equipment Packs (starting decks) they get, their starting hand sizes, their health, and their starting gold. All of this will be based on the race and class of each character. You’ll also set up the market, which is made up of six cards that you will be able to buy and replace throughout the game.
A Dragonfire card is drawn when the game starts and play begins with the party leader. Cards are then played by the active player, as well as by the other players, but only if the card has the “assist” keyword. Once all cards have been played on encounters, the damage is calculated, and defeated encounters are removed, with gold awarded to the party.
If there are any encounters still in front of the active player, that player takes damage from those encounters. If the active player is not stunned, they draw two cards and then purchase cards from the market using their hard-earned gold. Cards bought are placed directly in hand. If all encounters were eliminated, the party either wins (if it is the last scene) or takes a rest and then the next scene starts.
If there are encounters still in play, the next player to the left becomes the active player and the play will continue until you have defeated all encounters, or you all die.
The Components
The cards are well made, I think they will hold up to use well, the text is very easy to read on them, which is a big for me, as I’ve mentioned in the past, I have some vision problems, and I was able to read the text on this cards very easy.
The artwork is top notch, The monsters will pop off the cards at you, it will draw you in, as you find yourself battling monsters as you progress into the next part of the adventure.
When you first start out all characters feel pretty similar, but you will soon start to add cards to your deck, that will help you stand out. You will start to gain XP that you can also spend to help progress. This is all handled by putting stickers on the character screens, which might seem odd at first, and might even scare some people about “ruining your game”. Don’t be scared. It’s actually worth it to track everything easily and there will be sold-separately character packs will have plenty more cards and stickers to add to your game.
Final Thoughts
Dragonfire is crazy fun, but my biggest problem with the game was the Quick-Start game was clearly made for four or more players. I was destroyed very fast while trying to do it solo (playing 2 characters), which doesn’t really make sense in a tutorial game, it seems to be you are just set up to fail at this one, and I can feel that if you have a 4 people, you will have a much better time. If you are playing a two or three-player game.
If you are a fan of Deckbuilding games, you will find your self right home here, it adds an enough of twist to make you want to see what is next.
Overall I think that Dragonfire is It is a unique deck builder, the theme of D&D fits well, and it does not seem as if it was tacked on, it’s a true D&D from its core. As I said earlier, I’ve never played Shadowfire, so I can’t comment on if this is “better” than it, I do know this is a crazy fun and it’s a great challenge, you will lose and lose often, you have to work with your other players, to figure out the best way to work together to defeat some of the monsters. This is one that you should add to your collection, and bring it out any game night.
Dragonfire can be purchased at your FLGS, or via Amazon
A big thank you to Catalyst Game Labs for providing our copy of Dragonfire for this review, it as always had no effect on the outcome of the review.
*The above Amazon link is an AFFILIATE Link, DDO Players will receive a small percent of your sale, this is a small way, you can help support the site.*
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