Dragonkeepers

• Designer: Michael Menzel
• Publisher: Kosmos
• Players: 2-4
• Age: 8+
• Time: 30-40 minutes
• Played with review copy provided by Thames&Kosmos

Anyone can herd sheep, but have you ever herded dragons? In Dragonkeepers, you compete against each other as magicians. Two stacks of cards form the “Magic Book”, which indicates which and how many dragons can be herded. With each card taken, this information changes, but luckily you can cast spells and return your cards to the Magic Book to change it in your favor and score! But which of your dragons can you spare to cast spells?

To set up, shuffle the two decks of cards and place them on their respective sides to form the magic book.  One card from each deck is flipped up on the table to form the first display of two cards.  The amulets are shuffled, and some are discarded based on player count.  The remaining amulets are then arranged by value.  The other pieces (crests, eggs, pearls, crystals and shadow dragon cards) are all placed nearby.  A starting player is determined and then each successive player gets one more starting card than the player before them.

The game is played in a series of rounds until the table has completed a number of amulets (8 total in a 3-player game).  In each round, players take turn in order, each turn having five parts:

1] Take Dragon cards – take 1 to 3 cards from the display.  Each time you take a card, you immediately refill the spot from the appropriate side of the book. There is no hand limit.  You must take at least one card.

2] Change the magic book – you may place one card from your hand facedown to each side of the magic book to change the number or color of dragon to your liking.  You can refer to the upper corners of the cards to see what is on the backside.

Playing with the designer

3] Play Dragon cards – now using the number and color seen on the magic book, you may play that exact combination of cards from your hand.  You place all dragons of a single in a single stack.  When you play your third different color, you will have to choose the placement of that stack.  This is important because you may never play a card onto a stack that is between two other dragon stacks!  That is, once you hit your third different color, whichever stack is in the middle will never be playable for you for the rest of the game.

4] Receiving a reward – if you were able to play the combination stated on the magic book, you get the reward shown on the left hand card of the book; you will always get at least one amulet piece.  Generally you take the lowest valued amulet piece.  Each time you get three amulet pieces, you complete an amulet; you then take a pearl (first red, then blue) and place it in the center – these score more points.  

You might also get a Shadow Dragon card – this card can be used as a wild card to match any color dragon.  If you earn a crystal, you can discard that on a later turn to draw a fourth card on your turn, you may only discard one crystal per turn.  If you get a golden egg, you keep it in front of you, they have a base value of 4 points.  At the end of the game, the player(s) with the most golden eggs flip one of them over and instead earn 16 points for that special flipped egg.

After you have played, check if you have played all 4 dragon colors.  If so, you can take the most valuable crest still available.  They are worth 16 / 10 / 6 points.

5] Completing the turn – Now, all other players (in clockwise order from the active player) can play dragon cards if they are able and willing to match the current Magic Book combination.  The other players may not alter the pages.  If they do so, they gain the appropriate rewards as shown on the left hand side of the book.

Continue playing until the end of the round.  Then check to see if the game ends – this is when 7/8/9 amulets are complete on the table for 2/3/4 players.  Players now count up all their points by summing up the points on their amulets, pearls, crests, and eggs.  The player with the most points wins, ties broken in favor of the player who has played more dragon cards.

There are some advanced variants which add some magic chests to the game, each giving a special rule which is in effect for the whole game.  You can play with 1 or more of these, either choosing them at random or selecting one to give your game the particular slant that you want.

My thoughts on the game

My first experience with the game was getting a demo from the designer at Spiel 2023; when I first saw it, I thought to myself that it would be a nice family level game.  We played a few rounds, but as we took the demo in the Novelties show, there wasn’t time for a whole game.  I was happy to see the game arriving on my doorstep just a few weeks later – I had known that there was going to be an EN version, but sometimes the delay between the DE and EN can stretch long…  The game showed up on a Friday afternoon, and we were having a dinner party the next night, and the game hit the table after we ate.

Sadly my copy did come with this adorable plushie.

Overall, it was well received.  It’s pretty easy to teach, and I took the liberty of doing some setup ahead of time so that we didn’t have to watch me count out 12 amulet pieces and then arrange them, and that we didn’t have to sort all the cards into the number half and the dragon half, etc.   It was really easy to show an example turn from the cards already set up and a quick riffle shuffle of each deck was all that was needed to start.

The game itself is pretty simple and easy.  Draw cards into your hand – trying to either collect cards that match others or to draw cards to allow you to alter the book into favorable combinations.  Ideally, you’d prefer to not have to use your cards to change the book that much, as each change still costs you a card – but you have to play cards to win the points!  

The crest bonus and restriction on playing colors in the middle of your play area is interesting.  You can easily focus on just two colors at the start of the game, and try to play them whenever possible.  Of course this does restrict your card draw a bit if you only choose these two colors.   Once you play a third color, this changes your restriction as now one of the old colors is pretty much dead to you.  Sure, you can still draw that color dragon card to use to change the book – but that will still count as one of your three draws for the turn.

There is an interesting hidden push your luck aspect to the card drawing which I have come to appreciate.  Initially it seems like you should always take 3 cards on your turn, but there are times when you have the perfect combination of cards in your hand after your first draw, and you just want to make sure that you can get rid of that particular set!   But, in general, it does seem that the more cards you have in your hand, the more likely you will be to be able to play cards later… or the more likely you’ll have a card in your hand that changes the book in the way that you want – especially as there is no hand limit nor penalty for having cards left over at the end of the game.

You have a few different strategy options.  Do you play smaller combinations, trying to gain amulet pieces as quickly as possible and therefore getting the more valuable red pearls?  Do you save your cards to play large combinations, taking advantage of multiple amulet pieces, and ideally, the highest valued ones?  Do you focus on eggs taking the guaranteed 4 points each but then likely also getting the big 16 point bonus?  All of the paths are viable, and you can traverse down multiple paths, changing direction based on the game state and what the other players are doing.

Rules: well, this is the second game this year from Kosmos where I’ve not been thrilled with the format of the rules (Exhibit A: LotR, Mt Doom).  I think I can see what they’re trying to do, but it isn’t working for me. Here, they try to give the rules in 2 four page pamphlets.  The main “rulebook” is really more of a quick-start guide, and then the “Companion booklet” has things like the piece manifest and other clarifications.  Like I said, I see what they’re trying to do, but man, I’d like everything to be in one place.  If I was someone who needed the simple rules, who is to say that this isn’t also the sort of person whose going to have questions about the rules or need clarification.  Additionally, there is one rule in the main rulebook which is phrased differently than the bolded clarification in the Companion book.  Rules: “you may take 1, 2, or 3 dragon cards…”.  Companion: “however, you have to take at least 1 card when it is your turn”.  To rules-lawyer me, these two things are NOT the same.  And, a beginner might not ever look at the Companion booklet as “you don’t need it for your first game”.  Umm, let’s make sure people play the game right the first time?!  (NB: I don’t know whether this is just a translation issue or not, I do not have the DE rules available at the moment, and even if I did, I probably don’t have the language skills to be certain of the meaning).

The components are well done.  The cards are on nice stock and I like the way they tell you what is on the back side.  The art is cute-sy, and most of the little dragons are cute, but there are a few which are not…  There are a lot of little counters, and they make the game a little bit fiddly, especially in setup of the amulet pieces; but there’s nothing to be done about that.  That would be my only gripe against this being a great starter/gateway game – is the amulet selection and organization takes a little bit of time; otherwise, you can set this game up, teach it and play it all in a short amount of time.  I think this one will also be great for families as well.

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it!
• I like it.  Dale Y
• Neutral.
• Not for me…