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How is this for Serendipity? I had just finished watching the documentary “Eye of the Beholder: The Art of Dungeons and Dragons” and was thinking about how much I loved the iconic Dragon renderings of Larry Elmore. (Okay, Okay, as a Teenage boy in the 80s I also really admired his renderings of female characters as well). I then jumped onto Looney Labs site to find a copy of Cat Fluxx and what should appear before my eyes but Seven Dragons....featuring the art of Larry Elmore. That had to be fate, right? Or maybe it was just my phone spying on me.
Since the art is what piqued my interest, I'll hit on that first. There are only the titular Seven total Elmore Dragons renders included: Red, Black, Blue, Gold, Green, Silver and Rainbow. So, yea, I was kind of disappointed that in the seventy two cards that are included it only has one piece of art for each dragon. So, you see the Gold Dragon in it's full glory taking up an entire card and then you'll see it cropped down on a card featuring two dragons...and then cropped further onto cards that show three or four different dragons on it. Even the goal cards use the same dragon image to define the various color goals, only reduced to a simple circular image in the center.
The way the game plays is that each player is dealt a goal card that features one of the base dragons. Then the singular Silver Dragon is placed in the center of the table as a starting point. It starts as a “Wild” dragon that can be used as any color. Then each player is dealt three starting cards and, beginning on their turn, they draw one card and play one card. Each of the dragon cards have a domino style layout and your goal is to connect like colored dragons and, ultimately, create a “trail” of seven like colored dragons that matches your goal card.
This is a Andrew Looney game, so you have to expect at least a little lunacy. That comes in action cards. Each action card features a base dragon and, when they are played, the go face up into a discard pile. Whichever colored dragon is currently on the top of the discard pile, the silver dragon “becomes” that color. So, more of a chameleon dragon...and if you never worked a chameleon dragon into your DnD campaign, you weren't really trying.
Well, the Looney doesn't end there. The actions themselves do a fantastic job of disrupting plans. The Rotate Goals action has everyone passing their current goal to the player next to them (and if you are playing with less that the full compliment of players, goal cards are still passed in that direction, only into a place holder position on the table). Just a nice little plan for when you don't know whose close to winning but you are sure as hell it isn't you. Or if you see someone going hard on the Gold Dragons, you can hit them with a Trade Goals card and simply swap with that player. Yes, it is just as annoying and frown inducing as it sounds. Did you just watch someone link a sixth black dragon on the table? Simply use the Zap A Card action and pick that card up and put into your hand. Did someone play a four panel card with a dragon color you were coveting? Use the Move A Card action and add it to “your” dragon chain. And if you really don't like your current choices, just use a Trade Hands action card.
Seven Dragons throws in some additional strategy to go with the Looney-C. You get to draw additional cards when making multiple connections when playing a single card. This also gives a bit of satisfaction when you can't really make a play toward your (current) goal but don't want to feel like you wasted a turn. The single Rainbow Dragon is the true wild card in the game as it can stand in for any other color, so you might want to hold onto that bad boy for a killing blow move at the end of the game (and pray no one uses swap hands on you).
Seven Dragons has a bit of that Fluxx flavor with the Swap Goals/Rotate Goals action cards but it fit perfectly into my never ending quest for different end of the evening, relatively simple (and more importantly fun) card games. I had no idea this had been around since 2011 and I'm kind of miffed I haven't been enjoying this for years. I like to say that I went down the rabbit hole of Larry Elmore art and found a most excellent dragon...or seven.
A review copy of this release was provided by the publisher. Therewillbe.games would like to thank them for their support.
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