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| By Catalyst Game Labs |
Dragonfire! You'll Get Caught Up in The...
One of my favorite board games of all time is Shadowrun: Crossfire. It was a great deck builder with an underutilized cyberpunk theme, and some great mechanics that really fixed a lot of the things that I tend to dislike about deck builders in general. So when I heard about Dragonfire being the first real follow up to Crossfire, well, just imagine a 14 year old girl at a Justin Bieber concert... Well, I don't know... Is he even popular anymore? WHATEVER. I was REALLY excited!Dragonfire was going to be set in the world of Dungeons and Dragons, a setting I've been familiar with, well, pretty much since I was conceived. But contrary to the name, there is so much more to it than simply DUNGEONS and DRAGONS. Can a deck building card game REALLY capture those elements?
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| One of my mother's actual ultrasounds... |
So, now this pseudo-sequel is out and with it comes the promise of streamlined mechanics, and new surprises along the way, while keeping the same core gameplay that made Shadowrun: Crossfire a cult classic. But does it give you enough to stand on its own two legs, or is it just a reskinned cash grab?
Dungeons... AND Dragons...?
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| Males and females actively seeking dungeons/dragons... |
Dragonfire is a cooperative deck building game where players make characters, then spend turn after turn fighting the baddies that are presented to them. Similar to other deck builders, players start off with small decks of weak cards, while a veritable smorgasbord of powerful cards stares them right in the face, waiting to be purchased and incorporated into the players' decks. But unlike other deck builders, Dragonfire players don't get better cards by creating a never ending loop of "Play These Cards to Buy These Cards". In Dragonfire players use Gold to buy new cards, and they only receive Gold from killing bad guys or escaping traps. This makes Gold a finite resource, and turns your opportunities to purchase a card into real game changing decisions because you can't expect that you'll ever have that much Gold ever again for the rest of the game! This tends to leave players hankering for Gold more than Yukon Cornelius.
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| Silver and GOLD... |
Combat is fairly straightforward. Each enemy has different Levels of their Health. These Levels are the types of Damage they need to receive in order to move onto the next Level of their Health. Clear all the Levels, and they're defeated. Levels can be as simple as 1 of a specific color, like Blue or Red, or as daunting as 4 or more of any kind of damage like the Minotaur below, whose Levels show 4 of anything, 1 Blue, 1 Blue, and 1 Red. This is daunting because all of the damage for a single Level must be done in a single TURN before moving on. Yes, that's right. You need to do 4 Damage to that Minotaur before you can move onto the much easier 1 Blue. If you can't deal 4 Damage in one turn, well, that Level becomes an invisible wall blocking your progress, so you better hope one of the other players has something to help you or bust through on their own, otherwise you're ass is grass.
If you don't manage to kill your monster, then they deal their damage, 1 in the Minotaur's case, to you at the end of your turn. This may not sound like a big deal, but after a few playthroughs, you start to realize that there is not much in terms of HEALING in this game. I have LITERALLY NEVER played a game where I ended the game with more than a fart of life. It's usually more like the world's saddest balancing act between 1 Health and death.
Dungeon Diving for Cash
The cards are a nice quality, and have a unique finish that I don't think I've ever felt before, and I love the foil finish for the Magic Items you get from completing a mission. As a former competitive TCG player, pulling one of those, and playing it scratches a similar itch to when you drop that super rare foil card in a traditional TCG. |
| "I'll play my potion of Ogre Strength..." |
My biggest complaint with Dragonfire's components is the same complaint I had with Shadowrun: Crossfire. The stickers. Every character sheet has space for upgrades that you buy with XP, and these upgrades come in the form of stickers that are easily placed on your Character. Now, I'm not against stickers. I own Risk Legacy and Pandemic Legacy and I love them both. But this is not a legacy game. Now, don't get me wrong, the stickers are nice, each has their effect clearly written on the sticker itself for easy reference, but at the end of the day, if you run out of stickers, or you max out your character, that's it! Sure, there are more character sheets that come with the game, but when you run out those you have to pay $25 for the Character expansion pack for more!
Meanwhile, you've got Fantasy Flight and CMON Games out here giving away free refills for Star Wars: Imperial Assault and Massive Darkness like Hi-C at McDonalds! You can't even give us a PDF download, Catalyst Game Labs?!? NOT EVEN A PDF?!? Come ON! I mean, honestly, I know I can make photocopies of everything at work, but that's not the POINT. I already paid $60 for this game, now you want me to shill out another $25 for stuff that I need to play the game that I already had, but used because I played the game, so I now need more?!? Not cool. Not cool.
Buy It!, Try It!, or Fly It!
Listen, I really like this game. It's got a Campaign mode with an interesting story and unique missions in addition to letting players keep the Magic Items that you gain from game to game. If that's not your bag, you can just do one-off dungeon crawls, building your character up over time until they're so devastating that you'll want to make a new one. And I LOVE the class system in this game. You see, each class is tied to a specific color, and is by extension, the expert in dealing damage of that color type in combat. It helps players work together and not fight over the same cards from the Market, and more importantly, unlike our society's ACTUAL class system, it makes everyone important and vital to each other's success.
The Magic Items, customizable Enemy Decks, and a few other tweaks make Dragonfire feel like it's own creature and not just a repackaging of Shadowrun: Crossfire.
But...
This game is HARD. It's not quite as punishing as Shadowrun: Crossfire, but it is most definitely DIFFICULT. Not to mention that I KNOW the game's stickers will upset people, because frankly, they upset ME. All that said, it's still worth a look if you were a fan of Crossfire, and it's different enough if you already own Crossfire. That said, this may be one of the few cooperative games that can cause table-flipping as players snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory, and because of that...
The Verdict...?
TRY IT!
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