Drago Borne - round one

Written by Ross Locksley on 01 Dec 2017

My other half and I have recently been given the opportunity to play the latest card game from Bushiroad,  Drago Borne, a trading card game for 2 players. 

Now, I'm not a Magic: the Gathering player, but I'm told there are similarities between the mechanics of the two games. Certainly, from what I can see, you could swap the artwork out between the two without batting an eyelid, save that Drago Borne has some beautiful anime style artwork (mostly reserved for the ladies) which lands it squarely in the "of interest to UKA" camp, especially after the fun we had with Ascendants of Aetheros.

What impressed me most about the game was how straightforward it was. With just a short tutorial found on Youtube, we had it mastered, and it's such a nice feeling to play confidently and not worry about complex rules. I'm quite happy to concede that increased exposure to this sort of game has made the rules easier to understand, but honestly this game is a doddle.

Essentially you have 3 forts to defend. Each fort starts with 2 deck cards face down, and when a fort takes a damage, you move one of the cards to your hand. You can have 2 monsters on each fort to attack your opponent or block attacks (unless you have a card that allows more) and you can lay ambushes in front of the forts that you can fire off too.

Then just attack each other.

Each deck has 3 dice, which you roll at the start of each turn to determine the defence level at each fort. If you've lost a fort, you can use that dice to boost a card of your choice.

Each deck consists of monsters and spells, each of which has a cost to use. This cost is paid by using resource cards, which are kept at the bottom of the board. You add a resource card each turn (and one more card to your hand), allowing you to call forward more powerful cards each turn.

And that's it. 

We were given 2 packs to play with and I gave Bryony first choice (I am, after all, a gentleman!). She opted for Mystical Hunters, leaving me with Alpha Dominance. As it turns out my deck was well-named as I annihilated Bryony in each of the games we played. The Stormfeather Screecher's ability to deal 2 damage to a fort made her a force to be reckoned with (essentially destroying an entire fort in one hit), and the Izarco-Tvash level 7 dragon card just decimated her army. As we understood it, Mystical Hunters is a strategic deck, and required a lot more thought to play effectively than the Alpha deck. Practice required I think!

We also picked up some expansion cards, and this was really the only disappointment of the game. Many of the Rally to War expansion cards were featured in the trial decks, and this was a surprise. I had expected everything to be different as per the Vanguard expansion decks. True, the box had an extra black dice and enough Niflheim cards to make a deck around that colour, but there's a lot here you'll have already in just the first 2 trial decks. Out of 240 cards, 3 were double rare, so that at least seems to be consistent with the meaning. It is useful if you want more of cards you already have I guess.

So what do we think? Well, it was certainly fun for me. Bryony was less enthused at the seeming uneven nature of the decks we were playing with, but I'm sure I'll coax her into a revenge game. You can turn around a game in 30 minutes if you're being swift.

The game is new and there's a dedicated site, www.dragoborne.com that contains loads of information, not to mention a stunning animated intro to the game. I'd highly recommend giving the game a go - it's still at an early stage in its release, but the future looks bright in our opinion.