Terrorizing the Countryside (Dragon's Hoard)

You wake up groggy, hungry, and warm in your little cave.  To your left is the gold you've captured, to the right is the sheep you left for breakfast.  As you munch on your favorite snack, you get to contemplating.  As nice as the gold is, you aren't seen as much of a dragon yet.  So, with steel resolve, you vow to kidnap a princess today, knight or no knight.  Besides, you should get something for allowing that wizard for building his tower above you.  You stretch your massive body, and unfurl you wings, flying off for your next prize in your Dragon's Horde.



BACKGROUND:  Dragon Horde is a card game for 2-4 players, published by Mortensen Games.  You take the role of a dragon, devouring sheep and collecting treasure while fighting knights.  Rules change depending on the number of the players, so we're assuming a 3 player game.

GAMEPLAY:  Each player takes a hand of four double sided cards, and on their turn takes three cards from the Field of four sheep cards.  Players then have an action phase, which they play an action card, and a treasure phase, where players may play either a Lair or a Treasure.



TREASURE:  Lairs can be played for free in place of a Treasure, and can store Treasure cards for points.  Treasure cards must be played by discarding the matching colors of sheep on the left side from your hand, located on the back of the cards.

WINNING:  When a player plays their 10th treasure, then the game continues until the player with who started would play, in which the game ends.  The player with the most points wins.

CONCLUSION:  Dragon Horde is a nice little game with a real solid level of strategy behind it.  Really, they could have just had treasure and sheep, and I think it would have been a fine game, with a level of gathering appropriate treasure for your Dragon, but adding Action cards adds a level of manipulation to the game it needed.  I also love the fact that there are uses for both sides of a card.  Most card games will only use one side, with the other for hiding the card from players, which is fine and necessary for a lot of games, but adding a use for both sides is, well, unusual and pretty smart.  I see a lot of ways to simplify and push this kind of game out the door, but done in this fashion is clever and keeps the game interesting. 
However, I do have a couple minor gripes.  First, Lairs.  The rules, at least in the version I played, doesn't specify if all Treasure goes into the Lair, or only the Treasure played after the Lair.  In addition, the player to start doesn't get to play when the game ends unless they end it.  While that gives every player an equal amount of turns, it does spring it on that player, giving them no chance to react at the end.  Still, for all my gripes, this is still a really solid game that isn't hard for kids or adults to learn, and is fun for both groups.