Draftosaurus

• Designers: Antoine Bauza, Corentin Lebrat, Ludovic Maublanc, Theo Riviere
• Publisher: Ankama
• Players: 2-5
• Age: 8+
• Time: 15 minutes
• Played with review copy provided by Flat River Games

Your goal in Draftosaurus is to have the dino park most likely to attract visitors. To do so, you have to draft dino meeples and place them in pens that have some placement restrictions. Each turn, one of the players rolls a die and this adds a constraint to which pens any other player can add their dinosaur.

Draftosaurus is a quick and light drafting game in which you don’t have a hand of cards that you pass around (after selecting one), but a bunch of dino meeples in the palm of your hand.

To set up the game, place the appropriate assortment of dinosaur meeples into the tiny bag.  Also, give each player a Zoo board; making sure that all players are using the same side (Summer side is recommended for beginners, with a more complex Winter side found on the other).

The game is played over two rounds. Each follows the same pattern.  To start a round, players each pull 6 dinosaurs out of the bag and keep them hidden in their hand.  A starting player is decided, and that player gets the die.    There will be 6 turns in each round.

In a round, the player with the die rolls it, and then all players must place one of the dinosaurs in their hand onto their board following the restriction posed by the die.  However, the player who rolled the die is exempt from the restriction and can place their chosen dinosaur anywhere!  The summer board is split up into six distinct pens as well as a river area in the middle.

The possible die faces:

Woodlands – must be placed in a pen in the woodlands (green background)

Grasslands – must be placed in a pen in the grasslands (brown background)

Restrooms – must be placed on the right half of the board

Food Court – must be placed on the left half of the board

Empty Pen – must be placed in an empty pen

T-Rex – must be placed in a pen that does not have a T-Rex

The possible places to place a dinosaur:

Forest of Sameness – only one species can be placed in the six spaces

Meadow of Differences – each dinosaur placed here must be a different species

Prairie of Love – You will be rewarded for each pair of a species

Woody Trio – scores if exactly three dinosaurs are in this pen

King of the Jungle – scores if the species placed here is found more on your board than any other

Solitary Island – scores if the dinosaur here is the only one of that species found on your board

The River – this area is not considered a pen, and you can always place here. 

All players simultaneously choose which dinosaur they will take from their hand and where they will place it – and then everything remaining dinosaurs and the die) get passed to the player to the left.  Another round happens.  Do this six times until the hands are empty (all the dinos are placed.)  Then play a second round just like the first.  When all players have placed 12 dinosaurs on their board, the game is over and we move to scoring.

Scoring is mostly done by area:

Forest of Sameness – 2 to 24 points (based on number of spaces filled)

Meadow of Differences – 1 to 21 points (based on number of spaces filled)

Prairie of Love – each species pair scores 5 points

Woody Trio – 7 points if exactly three dinosaurs are in this pen

King of the Jungle – 7 points if the species placed here is found more on your board than any other

Solitary Island – scores 7 points  if the dinosaur here is the only one of that species found on your board

The River – 1 point per dino placed here

T-Rex bonus – 1 point for each pen that has a T-Rex placed in it

The player with the most points wins. Ties broken in favor of the player with the fewest T-Rexes.

(If you play the Winter board, it has different pens with different scoring rules… but otherwise follows the same general format)

My thoughts on the game

Well, somehow I missed this game when it first came out in 2019; and it was definitely well regarded then as it got a mention on the long list of recommendations for the 2020 Spiel des Jahres.  And, looking at the list of designers – it’s a veritable who’s who of French speaking designers.  Admittedly, this doesn’t feel like the sort of game that would require four accomplished designers to create – but hey – who am I to judge… I’m part of a 3-person team that designed a kids game (Flizz & Miez)!

In the right group, this is a swift playing filler/intro game.  The rules are quite simple to teach and learn, and the board does a great job to give you visual reminders of the rules and scoring.  The whole game usually takes about ten minutes, and it is the sort of game that often gets requested for an immediate second play! I like the fact that the game also gives you two different boards, and you can in fact incorporate both in a slightly longer game by combining the scores of the two sides.

So for casual gaming, this one is a hit.  With more serious gamers, you’ll have to watch out to make sure that players decide on placements prior to simultaneous play as well as making sure that people don’t see what dinosaurs are being passed around from hand to hand – and it’s nearly impossible not to see.  Sure, this isn’t the sort of game where people would need/want to have that sort of advantage, but knowing what dinosaurs are in the other player’s hands can definitely affect how you would make your own play…

I’ll likely keep this one around for introductory game nights or when we play with younger relatives.  It’s a great short game, and it might even make it into my shrunken game series (though I’ll have to copy/laminate the boards to do that).

Thoughts from other Opinionated Gamers

Patrick Brennan: Cute game, simple rules, pleasant to play. It’s the Fairy Tale mechanic – passing a diminishing hand of differently coloured dinosaurs and placing one in your park each turn to maximise scores in your differently-scored pens. Probably better online as you forego the klunky physical element of passing dinosaurs. Faster as well, under 10 minutes, and as such it’s become one of our online go-to fillers. I like the luck element which encourages you to set up to allow the max chance for the dice gods to be kind on the final placements each turn. Sometimes you win, sometimes you don’t, but it plays so fast while still allowing an interesting decision each turn that I enjoy the finale either way.

Dan B.: It’s a decent little drafting game, but definitely better online as Patrick suggests since passing the handfuls of dinosaur meeples around is a bit of a pain. I’ve played a lot more on BoardgameArena than in person. There are two expansions but I haven’t tried either of them.

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it!
• I like it. Dale, Steph H, Patrick Brennan, Dan B.
• Neutral. Mark Jackson
• Not for me…Joe H