Each player controls a team of dragon hunters (two knights, a thief, and a wizard). Like all dragon slayers, they only have one goal: Cool magic items and lots of treasure!
Actually killing a dragon? It's a piece of cake. The most difficult part comes after the smoke clears and the dragon is dead: Agreeing how to divide the loot!
Components
- 18 Dragon cards, and one Market card
- 24 Adventurer cards (4 each in 6 colors)
- 24 Magic Object cards
- 6 Score cards
- 6 Treasure Screens & Scoring summaries
- A cloth bag for holding the Treasure tokens
- 126 wooden Treasure tokens*
- A sixty seconds sand timer
Setup
Each player takes:
- a set of 4 Adventurer cards of the same color (2 knights, a thief, and a wizard) which are placed in a row face up in front of the player.
- a treasure screen for hiding treasures from the other players.
The Dragon cards are shuffled and placed facedown in the center of the table. This will form the draw pile for the Dragon cards. The top four Dragon cards are turned up and laid in a row in the center of the table. These are the first Dragons that may be attacked by the players.
For each Dragon card laid face-up on the table, draw random tokens from the bag equal to the number on the bottom left number on the Dragon card.
The Market card is placed in the exact middle of the remaining cards of the Dragon Draw Pile. This means that it is placed between the 7th and 8th Dragons remaining in the deck.
Advanced Rule : The Magic Object cards are shuffled. Each player receives one Magic Object card facedown. Once received, the players may look at their cards. The remaining cards are placed face down in a pile next to the stack of Dragon cards to form a draw pile.
The last player who killed a dragon begins the first turn.
Dragon Cards
At all times (until the Dragon draw pile runs out), there must be four Dragons face up in the center of the table. These are the Dragons that may be attacked by players. A killed Dragon is discarded from the game and replaced with a fresh, healthy Dragon from the top of the draw pile.
In the top center of each Dragon card, there is a number that indicates the Dragon's strength.
The numbers on the bottom of each card tell you how much treasure the Dragon possesses. This is broken down into two parts:
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A known part, which is the number of random tokens drawn from the treasure bag as soon as the Dragon is placed in the center of the table. The number of tokens to be placed is indicated in the lower-left corner of the card.
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A hidden part, which is not known until the Dragon is killed. The indicated number of Dragon card. Place these tokens on top of the tokens on the lower right corner of the card are drawn from the treasure bag after the Dragon has been killed, but before treasure shares are negotiated.
All of the treasure tokens placed on the card are drawn at random from the treasure bag.
Adventure Cards
Each player has 4 Adventurers, who each have an attack value printed on the upper center of the card. Thieves and Wizards also have special powers. (The descriptions of the powers are detailed with the rules for sharing treasure).
Each player places his four adventurer cards face up at the start of the game. These active adventurers are used to attack Dragons. When a Dragon is killed, the Adventurer comes back to the owning player but must be placed face-down.
At the beginning of a turn in which a player has no available face up adventurer to send out to battle a Dragon, all of the player's face down Adventurers are turned face up, and all are again available for battle.
Game Play
The first player is the last who has actually killed a Dragon. You can also randomly select a player to go first. Players take turns in clockwise order.
Each turn, players will be trying to kill off the vulnerable Dragons. As soon as a Dragon is killed, its treasure is completed by adding tokens equal to the Dragon's hidden treasure value.
If the Dragon was killed solely by the adventurers of one player, that player takes all of its treasure. If several players helped to kill the Dragon, the treasure must be divided between them. An agreement must be found in a limited amount of time.
Attacking Dragons
Each turn, the player sends an adventurer to battle against one of the four vulnerable Dragons. The player may attack any Dragon, no matter if and how many adventurers are already attacking it.
To indicate the attack, place the attacking adventurer face up under the Dragon card. Overlap the adventurer cards attacking the Dragon so that the color and attack values of all the adventurers, as well as the Dragon's strength, are visible.
Each time an Adventurer card is placed under a Dragon, add up the attack values of all of the Adventurers currently attacking that Dragon, and compare the result to the strength (the top center number) of the Dragon.
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If the sum of the attack values is less than the Dragon's strength, nothing happens. The Dragon remains alive, and the adventurers keep fighting the Dragon. The next player then takes a turn.
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If the sum of the attack values is equal to or greater than the Dragon's strength, it is killed. The players proceed to complete and divide the treasure.
Shading the Treasure of a dead Dragon
Once a Dragon is killed, its hoard is completed by drawing the indicated number of tokens of the Dragon's hidden treasure (the number in the bottom right corner of the Dragon card).
If the Dragon was killed by adventurers owned by one player, that player takes the entire treasure and hides it behind their screen.
If the Dragon was killed by adventurers owned by several players, the sand timer is turned over.
As soon as the sand timer is turned over, the involved players immediately negotiate how to divide the treasure between themselves.
If the players who killed the Dragon all agree on the exact distribution of the treasure within 60 seconds, then they divide the treasure as agreed.
Rules of Negotiation:
All treasure negotiations and agreements must heed the following rules:
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The terms must be specific and not rely on any sort of luck. For example, players may not throw a die, or flip a coin, to decide who receives any part of the treasure. Nor may they choose to take tokens at random or otherwise divide the treasure without specifically assigning every token to a player.
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The players must divide all of the treasure. None of the treasure may be discarded.
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The players may not agree on anything other than the split of the treasure. In particular, players may not agree on how to share future treasures.
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If the sand timer runs out before the players agree on how to split the treasure, then the treasure is removed from the game. (It is not placed back into the bag, but into the lid of the box).
Negotiating with Wizards and thieves
If one or more Wizards were present at the slaying of a Dragon:
The Wizards have a priority to seize Magic Objects (the red tokens). Therefore, if there is only a single Wizard in the group, the owning player immediately takes any red tokens before negotiation begins on how to split the rest
of the treasure. Even if the negotiation fails, this lone Wizard gets to keep his Magic Objects.
If there is more than one Wizard attacking the Dragon, then the red tokens are divided along with the rest of the treasure in the negotiations as usual.
Advanced Rule: Instead of being seized by Wizards, the red tokens are always included in the negotiations for all of the treasure (ignoring the previous rule).
When a player controlling a Wizard ends up with a red token in their share of the spoils, the player also takes the top Magic Object card from the deck (if getting two or more red tokens, he draws one Magic Object card for each token).
If a player who does not have a Wizard involved in the killing of the Dragon receives a red token as part of his treasure share, he does not get to draw a Magic Object card.
Each Magic Object card may be used once during the game and then is discarded. If the Magic Objects draw deck is exhausted, the discard pile is shuffled to make a new draw deck.
If one or more thieves are present at the slaying of a Dragon:
When a Thief helps to kill a Dragon, the Thief's owner takes a token, at random, from behind the screen of one of the other players involved in killing that same Dragon.
If there are several thieves, the thefts occur in the same order in which the Thief cards were played to attack the Dragon.
The thefts occur after the negotiation took place, regardless of whether or not players managed to agree on how to share the treasure.
Advanced Rule: A Thief who steals a red Magic Object token does NOT get to draw a Magic Object card.
If one player has both a Thief and a Wizard attacking the same Dragon:
When a Thief and a Wizard from the same player are involved in the killing of a Dragon, the Wizard helps the Thief. The player may look behind the screen and choose the token to steal instead of drawing it randomly.
After the shares are divided
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the players take back their adventurer cards who killed this Dragon and place them facedown in front of themselves.
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the Dragon card is removed from the game (put back into the box).
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a new Dragon is drawn from the top of the draw pile and its known treasure (bottom-left number of tokens) is drawn from the bag and placed on the card.
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The next player in turn sends out an adventurer to attack a Dragon.
The Market
When the seventh Dragon is drawn from the Dragon card draw pile and placed onto the table, the Market card is revealed on top of the Dragon draw pile. This indicates the opening of a market.
Players are not required to reveal what sort of loot is hiding behind their screens, but may do so if they wish.
Players have one minute (turn over the hourglass to mark the time) to freely trade any treasure tokens they wish. Only treasure tokens may be exchanged, and no new Magic Object cards are drawn.
After the market is completed, the market card is removed from the game and the game continues normally.
End of the Game
When the last treasure token is taken from the bag, the game is almost over.
From that point on, adventurers may attack only those Dragons already on the table. When a Dragon is killed, it is not replaced by a new Dragon from the draw pile.
Additionally, since there are no more tokens available to complete the treasure of the remaining Dragons, the players must divide only the treasure that was placed when the Dragon card was drawn.
The game ends when the last Dragon is vanquished, and all of the treasure has been divided.
Once the game ends, each player reveals the contents of their treasure stash, and points are counted. The player with the most points wins.
In case of a tie, all tied players win.
Scoring for Treasure (basic Rule):
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Silver pieces are worth 1 point each.
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Gold pieces are worth 3 points each.
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Magic Objects (red tokens) are worth 1 point each.
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The Black Diamond is worth 7 points.
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For each of the five other colors (the gemstones in green, blue, purple, yellow, and the white diamonds), the player with the most tokens in that color scores 15 points (with 3 players), 12 points (with 4 or 5 players), 10 points (with 6 players).
If players are tied for the highest total in a color, they each score the full bonus points.
Scoring for Treasure (advanced Rules):
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Silver pieces are worth 1 point each.
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Gold pieces are worth 3 points each.
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Magic Objects (red tokens) are worth 1 point each.
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The Black Diamond is worth 19 points. The black diamond is cursed and the player who owns it does not score for the e) and f) paragraphs below. If the player owning the black diamond solely has the most of one color of gems, then no player scores for that color gemstone.
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Each set of five gemstones, one each in green, blue, purple, yellow and white is worth 5 points.
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For each of the five gemstone colors (green, blue, purple, yellow, and white), the player with the most tokens in that color scores 12 points (with 3 players), 10 points (with 4 or 5 players), 8 points (with 6 players).
If two players are tied for the highest total in a color, they score half of the bonus points (6,5, or 4), If 3 or more players are tied, they all score nothing.
Strategic Variant
Negotiation can be tough in this game, and generate strong feelings. If you want to avoid this, or simply just don't like negotiating, you can replace the sand timer negotiation phase with the following procedure :
The player who is involved in the fight and has the least participation in the fight (who has the lowest total attack value) divides the treasure in a number of shares equal to the number of players involved.
Then the player with the highest total attack value chooses his share, then the one with the second-highest total attack value, and so on. The player who made the divvying up takes the last remaining share.
If two players have the same attack value on a Dragon, the one who first placed a character on this Dragon is considered stronger.
Each share must have at least one token.
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