Players: 2-5
Works well with just 2: Yes!
Age: 12+
Playtime: 75-100 min (but that’s very inflated, it never takes that long…)
Complexity: medium
Action selection in medieval China, with a nasty event everyone needs to deal with at the end of each turn.
Build palaces, staff them with doctors (against the plague) farmers (to feed your people during droughts), soldiers (gotta fight those invading Mongols)—hell, even courtesans to keep everyone entertained and score bonus points each turn.
In the Year of the Dragon might be the quintessential Stefan Feld design. You’re faced with interesting (i.e. agonizing) choices all through the game, you get to score points in multiple ways, and the system scales amazingly well from 2 to 5 players (one of Feld’s specialties). The priority track is genius: do you recruit staff that will perform better, or accept a slightly diminished performance in the hopes of going first on the next turn?
The game is also very straightforward; the most difficult concepts to explain are the end-of-turn events, and even those are not complex at all. This means your group is up and running in a matter of minutes, and the game is short enough—an hour on the outside—for someone to request another go at it when the final reckoning comes.
A 10th-anniversary edition was released a few years back, and it contains the Great Wall of China and Super Events expansions. Well worth getting—this is the kind of game that remains in a collection for a long, long time.
Most easily forgotten rule: When you pass to get money, you get BACK to 3 yuan. So if you had 2 already, you only get 1 more. (A lot of people just take 3 yuan, no matter what.)
In the Year of the Dragon might be the quintessential Stefan Feld design. You’re faced with interesting (i.e. agonizing) choices all through the game, you get to score points in multiple ways, and the system scales amazingly well from 2 to 5 players (one of Feld’s specialties). The priority track is genius: do you recruit staff that will perform better, or accept a slightly diminished performance in the hopes of going first on the next turn?
The game is also very straightforward; the most difficult concepts to explain are the end-of-turn events, and even those are not complex at all. This means your group is up and running in a matter of minutes, and the game is short enough—an hour on the outside—for someone to request another go at it when the final reckoning comes.
A 10th-anniversary edition was released a few years back, and it contains the Great Wall of China and Super Events expansions. Well worth getting—this is the kind of game that remains in a collection for a long, long time.
Most easily forgotten rule: When you pass to get money, you get BACK to 3 yuan. So if you had 2 already, you only get 1 more. (A lot of people just take 3 yuan, no matter what.)
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