Are you a wicked dragon who loves to compete in trick-taking games? Or a wise mouse who knows how to play abilities to gain the upper hand? Set your goals as a team and work together to earn more coins than your opponents in order to win!

What Is It?

Team-Based – Play in teams of a dragon + a mouse. In odd counts, there will be a “dual” role which does both roles.

Trick-Taking – Dragon players will play a pretty standard trick-taking game – lead suit, must follow, highest number wins unless a trump card is played. The mouse players will play cards for abilities to assist their teammate (i.e. by letting them draw gems which are the trump suit, swapping cards with them, and so on)

Predictive Bidding – Each round, teams will choose a number of goal cards to try and collect coins for achieving those goals (not completing the goals will cause them to lose coins). These will be things like winning a certain number of tricks, collecting certain suits, et cetera

Who Is It For?

  • 2 to 6 Players – Personally, I think that 4 players work the best by far. The shared mouse hand at 2 was awkward. The dual role for odd player counts wasn’t my favorite (again, an open mouse hand), and I thought 2 teams (4P) worked better than 3 teams (6P)
  • Ages 10 & Up – The dragon role is pretty straightforward, so it’s good for younger or less experienced players. The mouse and dual roles are a little more strategic so better for more advanced players
  • Fans of trick-taking and team games

PROS

  • Aesthetics – Gorgeous art / color scheme
  • Components – Nice cards and cardboard bits; cute lead token
  • Unique form of trick-taking game
  • Mouse role is fun – let’s you try to control a bit more of the game
  • I like that in later rounds you can select multiple goals to go for to try and get more points
  • Good variability in goals

CONS

  • A few typos led to a little confusion during the first play. I still don’t know what one goal card means (see photo –>)
  • I thought the 2 player game didn’t work that well
  • Runs a bit long for what it is

Final Thoughts

I thought the game played best at 4, so I’d personally recommend it at that exact count as I think it will lead to the best experience. I preferred the mouse role, as I thought it was more interesting to play the abilities than to just play the “normal” tick-taking style game trying to have the highest card for the trick. But at the same time, the trick-taking portion was how you actually scored points, so you still had to be attentive to that, as well as your personal goals. I think it you already like trick-taking games, this is well-worth checking out because it’s a neat, and unique twist on a classic mechanism. Plus, it’s quite a looker!

Additional Information:
Designer – Fertessa Allyse
Artists – Jay Bell, Beth Sobel
Publisher – Weird Giraffe Games
MSRP – $29.00
Website

*I was provided a copy of this game to do this review*

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