Dragoon: Ice Age (Preview)

[Editor’s note: The following preview is based on a complete, but not finalized, product; in advance of a crowdfunding campaign. -dc]

Full disclosure here, I love Lay Waste Games. I’ve loved almost everything I’ve played of theirs. I especially love Dragoon. So when the opportunity to preview Dragoon: Ice Age came up I was SUPER excited. Unfortunately, circumstances kept delaying my playing it as much as I wanted. Which, as I would discover, was more important than usual. One of the middle groups I played Ice Age with, was super critical of it. But after playing it with different groups afterwards, I can confidently chalk most of their comments, while not invalid, mostly up to this not being their preferred style of game. 

I pointed out above that I was playing a prototype. I also want to point out that I was specifically playing a prototype that I acquired 3.5 months ago. Any prototype is always subject to change, but the final version is going to be drastically different in almost every way. The only exception is probably the way the game generally plays. I want to be really clear about that because one of the only issues I had across all of my plays came from the rulebook. 

Gameplay is largely straightforward once you get going: 

-Gain resources for tiles you have Followers on. 

-Draw and place two tiles (facedown). 

-Spend Resources to gain new Followers and/or move followers. 

-Fight when appropriate.

Straightforward, right? Even when you get into the details, the details aren’t hard to grasp but it takes a fairly big info-dump at the start to get there. There are nine unique tile types, each of which has different properties. Players have three different types of Followers, each with their own properties and which interact with specific tiles in different ways. The Ice Dragon, another unique piece, starts the game off the board and can be brought into play and controlled by any player during their turn. Quest cards add yet another level of complexity to players’ strategies.

Got all of that? 

Okay, here’s how you win: Find all three of your gems. Complete three quest cards. End your turn with a follower standing on your Ice Castle tile and at least three followers standing on Penguin tiles. Not at all convoluted. 

I’ve obviously left out a lot of details for narrative purposes, but it’s a lot upfront. To bring it back around, some of the info-dumping issues will be improved with a finished and formatted rulebook. With that being said, I love the unique blend of randomness and strategy in the game. Each player’s nest tile is placed on the board based on the player count. A player’s Ice Castle can be placed on top of any revealed Penguin Tile, later in the game. But the rest of the tiles are drawn randomly, and placed in any open space the player wants. The biggest strategic part of that comes from the Gems. There is a specific Fish, Weapon, and Cave tile that gives each specific player one of their gems, as well as one of each tile type that gives anyone that gem. A strategic player might place those tiles away from the player who needs them, making it harder to achieve that goal. An experienced player quickly learns how to overcome that challenge, and such a take-that placement is far from game endingly bad. 

The other random/strategic part is in the Quest cards. This prototype came with 12 cards, seven of which are randomly chosen at the start of the game. Each Quest can be completed by the number of players minus one. Making the competition for them potentially more fierce in a two-player game, as only one player can complete each one. Again, I found that experience can be the real kingmaker here. The more I understood the options and obstacles that would likely come up, the faster and easier I was able to set myself up to knock out the Quests with scary efficiency. I finished one game having finished four of them (you can only officially finish three) and another where I set up fourth and fifth card that I could have taken had I needed to. Newer players almost universally struggled to remember and achieve enough Quests until very late in the game. Knowing how to play a game will almost always give a player an edge, but it just seemed to have a significantly bigger impact with this game.

I realize that all of that may come across as overly negative or judgemental. But please don’t think that pointing out potential flaws in a prototype is anything more than blunt honesty. I loved playing Dragoon: Ice Age and even the most critical of my players would happily play it again. There is a ton of things on the super-exciting side of the coin.

The components, which are very simple in this prototype, still manage to show off some of what the look and feel of the finished game will be. The followers were laser cut, making me assume they came from some iteration of the art. The Hunter and Warrior penguins are adorable and the Baby Dragons are consistent with previous Dragoon artwork. The surprisingly robust backstories for each tribe of penguins are absolutely glorious and even convinced a few players to change the colour they wanted to play. The Ice Dragon piece came out of the original Dragoon, which was to be expected. But it got a stretch goal wish stuck in my head: I hope the final Ice Dragon is a previously unused colour and that there are either expansion rules or a matching set of Dragoon player components.

Pending the final production, is Dragoon Ice Age my favourite Lay Waste game? Honestly no. But even as a prototype, I’d still probably rank this at #3. I suspect the finished game will land as my second favourite Lay Waste Games release to date, after the original Dragoon. I don’t know if it can overtake that #1 slot, but I can hardly wait to find out, and I can hardly wait to tell you all about it!

You can sign up on Kickstarter to be notified when the Dragoon: Ice Age campaign goes live.

You can also find Lay Waste Games online at www.laywastegames.com or on Facebook at facebook.com/laywastegames.