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Flamecraft
Nov. 22nd, 2023 11:43 amMy wonderful brother got me the tabletop board game, Flamecraft, for my birthday - and Dave and I tried it out over the weekend. We were a bit apprehensive because the main reason my brother thought it would appeal to me is because the art is absolutely adorable - but he didn't know anything about whether or not it's actually a good game!
But - the art is so frickin' adorable! So I was glad to own it regardless, just so I could look at it all and go - awwwwww!
Anyway - in the game, you play Flamekeepers, who are essentially temp agency workers for artisan dragons looking for jobs in a cutesy village. So far, so adorable...
You have to gather resources, assign dragons to roles in shops and work out which abilities to utilise each turn, in order to be able to pay the right cost to cast enchantments on the shops, which gets you reputation points and also increases the number of resources you can get at each shop...
Everything about the game is so beautifully designed, from the rollout village map (which is unfortunately a bit too long to fit on our gaming table, but we managed) to all the different types of cards that have unique and gorgeous pictures on them.
And it's one of those games that is reasonably simple to learn - but quite complicated to figure out how to do well at. Which is usually a good combination.
I don't think Dave and I played it well at all - but we both enjoyed it. We didn't use or do a lot of the available options, which suggests we weren't strategising very effectively, and one of the cards I got late on seemed to unbalance our points differential quite a lot. I think there's a lot more to consider and learn about the game - and it will be very different with four or five players - so I'm looking forward to playing it again!
But - the art is so frickin' adorable! So I was glad to own it regardless, just so I could look at it all and go - awwwwww!
Anyway - in the game, you play Flamekeepers, who are essentially temp agency workers for artisan dragons looking for jobs in a cutesy village. So far, so adorable...
You have to gather resources, assign dragons to roles in shops and work out which abilities to utilise each turn, in order to be able to pay the right cost to cast enchantments on the shops, which gets you reputation points and also increases the number of resources you can get at each shop...
Everything about the game is so beautifully designed, from the rollout village map (which is unfortunately a bit too long to fit on our gaming table, but we managed) to all the different types of cards that have unique and gorgeous pictures on them.
And it's one of those games that is reasonably simple to learn - but quite complicated to figure out how to do well at. Which is usually a good combination.
I don't think Dave and I played it well at all - but we both enjoyed it. We didn't use or do a lot of the available options, which suggests we weren't strategising very effectively, and one of the cards I got late on seemed to unbalance our points differential quite a lot. I think there's a lot more to consider and learn about the game - and it will be very different with four or five players - so I'm looking forward to playing it again!
