Dragon Castle

Plays: 2Px2.

The Game

Dragon Castle looks like mahjong, but it's not mahjong. It is inspired by the computer game Shanghai, which has mahjong tiles, but is nothing like mahjong. In Shanghai, complex structures are built using mahjong tiles, and your challenge is to dismantle the whole structure by removing pairs of identical tiles. It is a solitaire game. Not all tiles are free to be removed. A tile is free only if there is no tile on its left or on its right. So when there is a row of tiles, only the leftmost and rightmost tiles are free. The others are all locked. When you remove a tile, the one next to it will become free. Dragon Castle uses this free tile concept.

Before you start playing, you need to build the structure at the centre of the table, which is called the old city. The game comes with a few recommended structures, but you can also design your own. This particular board shows one of the recommended structures. The numbers indicate how high you need to stack the tiles. There's a 3D diagram at the bottom right to help you visualise how the structure will look like.

Once you are done, the structure will look like this. This is a 2-player setup. The discs at the bottom left are countdown discs. You have a stack on the left, and you place one disc per space on the other spaces. The number of spaces to use depends on the number of players.

This is a player board. It starts empty, except for that one temple on the left - that black roof. During the game you claim tiles from the central board and place them onto your personal board, and you score points.

This reference card lists the actions you may do. You have one action per turn, and you have four options. The three basic actions always involve taking one tile (remember it must be a free tile) from the current highest level. The first variant is you take an additional tile. It must be an exact match of the first tile, and of course, it must be a free tile too. It can be from any level, not necessarily the highest. The second variant is you take a temple instead and put in into your personal supply. The third variant is after taking the mandatory tile, you discard it for 1pt. Normally you don't discard tiles and you place them onto your player board. The fourth action is to claim a countdown disc (worth 2pts). You can only do this when there is only one layer of tiles remaining on the main board. Claiming a countdown disc pushes the game towards the end. If an exclamation mark is revealed after a countdown disc is claimed, the current round will be the final round.

This is the exclamation mark. With two players, the game end is triggered once the second countdown disc is claimed.

When placing a tile you claim onto your player board, there is only one rule you need to remember. You may not place it onto another face-up tile. That means you may place it onto any empty space. You may stack it on top of a face-down tile, and stacking is usually good. You may not place it on top of a temple, but you don't need to try to remember that, simply because it's physically impossible. The tile would fall off.

At the top there are three face-down tiles. You may stack new tiles on top of them. The new tiles themselves must be face-up though.

The one at the top is the start player marker. The reference card at the bottom explains the consolidation mechanism. Whenever you have an adjacent group of four or more tiles of the same colour on your player board, you must consolidate them. You score points based on how big the group is, then flip the tiles over. Depending on the tile colour, you may build temples on the tiles just flipped over. Red, yellow and green groups let you build one temple. Blue, black and pink (it looks like purple in the photo) groups let you build two temples. Pink gives you a 1pt bonus too. These temples must come from your personal supply, so it is important to have collected them beforehand. Temples are worth points at game end, depending on which level they are on. The max is 3pts per temple.

If you look at the blue tiles in the foreground, you will see that by placing another blue tile, you can form a group of five by linking the single blue and the group of three. The red tiles are already at level 2, so when you reach a group of four to do consolidation, you can build a 2pt temple. If you want to create a big group, you need to plan carefully. You will need to create a few small disjointed groups smaller than size 4, and then use one tile to link them all together at one go.

In summary, when you play Dragon Castle, you are dismantling the old city brick by brick, and using those bricks to build your own new city. As you do this, you try to score as many points as possible.

Two important elements I have not yet mentioned are the dragon cards and the spirit cards. There are many such cards, and for each game you play, you randomly draw one dragon card and one spirit card. A dragon card specifies an additional scoring criterion to be applied at game end. A spirit card provides a special ability which can be triggered by paying a face-up tile or a temple from your player board. This particular dragon card (left) lets you score the values of one red, one yellow and one green face-up tile. The spirit card here (right) lets you build an additional temple whenever you do consolidation. With this in play, it is easier to build temples, which also means you want to build a healthy stockpile of temples.

The Play

I played two games with Chen Rui. She won the second game, and was very happy to have beaten me. She is the youngest at home, and often plays with the expectation to lose to her father, her mother or her elder sister. Winning is always extra satisfying for her.

There is much planning ahead in Dragon Castle. You envision the kind of new city you want to build, and you try to get the right tiles to help you build it. You need tiles of the same colours, so you must watch what colours your opponents are collecting. It may not be a good idea to go for colours which many others are already fighting over. However it is also bad to let anyone have a free reign over a particular colour. Sometimes you want to take a tile just to deny someone else. Every move you make may open up new possibilities for your opponents. That's something to consider too. You keep an eye on all the currently free tiles, and also upcoming free tiles.

It is not necessary to always go for big groups when doing consolidation. If you consider the point values, a 4-tile group earns 2pts, while an 8-tile group earns 8pts, so bigger groups sound like a much better deal. Naturally they are harder to make too. However one advantage of creating smaller groups is you can complete them quickly then build upwards. You want to create good locations for your temples. The dragon card in play greatly affects your architecture. You must make good use of it.

My pink tiles are stacked high, and I plan to build two temples at level 3 once I do consolidation for the pink tiles. I had unintentionally created an air well in my new city - that hole in the centre.

The yellow, green and red face-up tiles are built this way for the dragon card scoring, with no intention of reaching any group of size 4 for consolidation.

Chen Rui turned her temples into a pagoda.

There are only level 1 tiles on the main board now, which means you can start claiming countdown discs. If you don't think the remaining tiles will help you much, you should go for the discs and end the game as soon as possible. This way you deny your opponents the opportunity to score more. The discs are worth points too.

That dragon card at the bottom left indicates that you get to score extra points for temples in one column and in one row. Also you get bonus points if that row or that column is fully built with temples. This encourages a specific building style.

I had intended to build one complete column and one complete row of temples. My column was complete now, but my row was one short of completion. I had made a mistake. I should not have completed the column yet. Now that section at the far left only had two spaces. It was impossible for me to create a tile group of size four. Thus I could not do consolidation, and that meant I could not complete my row. I had royally screwed myself! Idiot! Idiot! Idiot!

Chen Rui had tiles at level 4! However temples at level 4 would be worth just 3pts, not 4pts.

The Thoughts

Dragon Castle is a light family strategy game. What immediately sets it apart and catches your attention is the Shanghai-like mechanism. However, it is only a small part of the game. The more important part of the game is not the dismantling of the old city, it is the construction of your own new city. You plan how to create colour groups, you build temples, and you customise your city to maximise points from the dragon card of the day. Planning your city and seeing it materialise is satisfying. There is little player interaction at the player boards, but at the main board you do have player interaction. You have to consider which colours your opponents are collecting, and that means you need to watch their personal boards. Sometimes you want to take colours you don't need simply to deny your opponents. Sometimes you delay taking a tile which would unlock another tile which your opponents want. One common situation when multiple players want the same locked tile is nobody being willing to take the tile to free it. Everyone knows the moment it is freed, it will be snatched up. So everyone delays unlocking it, until tiles on that level start running out, and eventually someone is forced to claim the blocking tile. This reminds me of Richelieu by Michael Schacht.