Chris Glein Game Design and Life

Dragon Family

Rulebook

SUMMARY

Your goal is to populate the world with your brood of dragons. You will do this by exploring the world, hatching eggs, gathering your hatchling’s favorite foods to help them grow, and finally finding them a lair to call their own.

COMPONENTS

Town Forest Mountain Ocean

62 hex tiles (8 town, 17 forest, 17 mountain, 20 ocean) 1 tri-hex starting tile

Egg Green Red Blue Gold

26 egg standee cards (with dragons on the back: 6 red, 6 blue, 6 green, 6 gold)

80 resources (green leaves, red rubies, blue pearls, gold)

10 handler meeples (2 of each player color)

20 lair stands (4 of each player color)

5 large nest cards

SETUP

  1. Each player takes a nest, chooses a color, and takes all handlers and lairs of that color.
  2. Place the two-sided town tile in the center of the play area.
  3. Each player places their 2 handlers on the town tile.
  4. Shuffle all tiles into a few face-down stacks.
  5. Deal each player 3 tiles from the stacks.
  6. Separate the dragon standees by color and place each color in a stack.
  7. Place all the resources in a central area to form the supply.
  8. Randomly determine a starting player.

Starting with the first player each player takes a turn in clockwise order until the game ends.

COLOR AFFINITY

Each tile has a resource that it produces:

Tile Resource
Mountain Ruby (red)
Forest Leaves (green)
Ocean Pearl (blue)
Town Gold

Each dragon has a favorite food resource (and all will accept gold):

Dragon Resource
Red Ruby / Gold
Green Leaves / Gold
Blue Pearl / Gold
Gold Gold

YOUR TURN

1) TAKE AN ACTION

On your turn you may do one of the following actions:

A) EXPLORE

  1. Place a tile from your hand adjacent to an existing tile where you have a handler.
    • The edges of the new tile must match the edges of any existing tiles. Water edges can only touch water edges, and land edges can only touch land edges.
  2. Move that handler onto the new tile.
  3. For each adjacent tile to the placed tile gain 1 resource of the adjacent tile’s type (add to your nest).
    • Example: If you place a mountain tile so that it is touching an ocean tile and a forest tile you would collect 1 blue pearl (from the ocean) and 1 green leaf (from the forest)
  4. Each other player that has a handler or lair on an adjacent tile gains 1 resource of that tile’s type.
  5. Draw a tile (so that you will still have 3 in your hand).

B) MOVE

  1. Move one of your handlers from its tile to any other tile (any distance away)
  2. Gain 1 resource of that tile’s type. Example: If you moved to a forest tile, gain 1 green leaf
  3. You may discard any tiles from your hand to the bottom of the tile stack. If you do, draw tiles until you have 3 in your hand.

C) SETTLE A LAIR

  1. Choose a tile where you have a handler and there is no existing lair.
  2. Choose a dragon from your nest that has 3 food resources on it and an affinity for the chosen tile (e.g. a green dragon and a forest tile).
    • Exception: Gold dragons may be placed on any non-town tile (no dragon can make a lair in a town).
  3. Place one of your lairs on that tile, adding the dragon standee.
    • If you have no lairs remaining the game will end at the beginning of the first player’s next turn (everyone gets an equal number of turns).

After taking your action for the turn, the following happens (in this order):

2) HATCH AN EGG

You may spend 3 resources of any one type (you may substitute gold for any type). If you do, take a dragon card from the egg stack that has an affinity for the resources type you spent. Add the dragon to your nest.

  • You may only have three dragons in your nest at a time
  • If you spend 3 gold resources you may choose any dragon type

Alternatively, you may spend 3 resources of any one type to take a gold resource from the supply.

3) FEED YOUR FAMILY

For each dragon in your nest you may add a resource of that dragon’s affinity (or a gold resource) from your nest to the dragon’s card.

  • You may only feed each dragon once per turn.

END GAME

The game end is triggered when a player creates their 4th lair or when the last tile is drawn. Finish the round so that each player gets an equal number of turns.

SCORING

When the game ends each player scores their dragons and territories:

  • Each dragon still in the nest is worth 1 point.
  • Each dragon in a lair is worth 3 points.
  • Then score 1 point for each non-lair tile that is part of your dragons’ territory. A territory is a set of contiguous tiles of the same type.
    • Any tiles with lairs are part of the territory but are worth 0 points.
    • If multiple players have lairs in the same territory then only the player with the most lairs in that territory scores those tiles. If there is a tie for most lairs then all those tied players score the territory.
    • Each tile only scores for a maximum of 1 point, regardless of how many lairs a player has in that territory.
    • Ocean territories must be connected by matching water edges. If the ocean tiles touch only based on their land edge and not a water edge then they are two separate territories. The player with the most points wins. If there is a tie, the tie is broken by the player with the most resources on dragons in their nest. If a tie remains it is broken by unspent resources. If a tie still remains the players share the victory.

EXAMPLE

This map has 5 potential territories. There is one forest territory with 4 tiles, one mountain in the West with 2 and another in the East with 1. There are two separate ocean territories, the North with 2 and the North East with 1 (they are separate because they don’t share a water edge). No dragons can ever claim the town.

CREDITS

DESIGN, ART

Chris Glein