Dragon Delta

From: Eurogames / Descartes List Price: $30 Players: 2-6 Playing Time: 45 minutes  Type of game: Family Skill level: 2 Complexity: 5  Reviewed by: Peter Sarrett, Issue 24, September 2000

Dragon Delta is an innovative topographical challenge set in the eponymous river delta, where the water level is low enough for numerous boulders to poke above the surface. Youths from villages all along the river brave the frigid water in a race to cross the delta. The river’s too cold to wade across, but it’s too dangerous to just hop from rock to rock either. That’s where the planks come in.

Every player has an identical, color-coded set of six planks, each a different length. By laying these atop stones placed upon the boulders, players form bridges they can use to travel across the board. The first player to complete the journey wins the game.

Driving the action is a RoboRally-like system of preprogrammed actions. Everyone holds identical sets of action cards. At the start of the turn, players choose five of them and lay them face-down in a row in front of them. Everyone turns up their first card and, in turn order, performs the corresponding action. This is repeated for each of the five cards, the start player rotates, and the process repeats.

Actions let you do things like place stones and planks, move forward, jump over an opponent, and so forth. Only one pawn is allowed on each plank, so a blocked player may find himself forced to go backward or, even worse, into the water and back to start. In addition to the cards that help a player move forward, there are some which impede others.

One of these lets a player remove a stone or unoccupied plank from the board. A removed plank is added to the remover’s stock. The catch is that players can hold only one plank of each length, and no more than two colors. Removing the plank of your choice can require a bit of forward thinking, lest you find that you’re not allowed to take it.

By far the most nefarious cards are the dragons, one in each player color. If any player plays a dragon of your color, you skip your action for that round. If your subsequent cards depended on carrying out that action, you could well find yourself in the drink.

Another important restriction is that no more than three planks can rest on any stone, so it’s a good idea to get your ideal network created before the key junctions fill up.

Not that it really matters much. This is an extremely chaotic game. You might expect to be hit by a dragon, but it’s impossible to know on which action it will fall. And it could fall more than once! Planks disappear, opponents block your path, and the best laid plans don’t mean spit. I like the preprogrammed action mechanic, but every player’s ability to screw you up on any action means luck is far more important than skill. Normally I differentiate between chaos and luck, but they’re really one and the same here. Which makes Dragon Delta nothing more than a brain-optional diversion. Taken in that spirit with the right group it can be a hilarious romp, but I was hoping for something a bit more meaningful.