Full disclosure: A review copy of Flamecraft Duals was provided by Cardboard Alchemy.

Note: This review covers the Deluxe Edition of Flamecraft Duals; some components or their presentation may not match the Standard Edition.

Dragons are vaguely spooky, right? I mean, it can be Spooky Season and we can cover a dragon-themed game without it being too off-brand, I think. These dragons aren’t spooky in any way, shape, or form, but bear with me; I’m cultivating a vibe. Flamecraft dropped to much fanfare a few years ago as an approachable strategy game where the art got people excited and the gameplay kept them hooked. I reviewed it a while back, but it ended up not staying in my collection. Not because I didn’t like it; it was just a situation where a friend of mine was so smitten with the art and gameplay that it felt like she needed to have it more than I did, you know? Flamecraft Duals proposes shrinking that big game (it did take up the whole dining room table) down to a more manageable size and player count; so let’s see how it plays!

In Flamecraft Duals, you once again use the abilities of artisan dragons to accomplish various goals across town, building up shops and making supplies and, you know, a surprising amount of these things require fire, which is very helpful. Sets of three are going to be the way to go this time around, but you also might be able to get some of the legendary Hydragons to help you. They’re hybrid dragons, so they actually have two skills. So that’s pretty useful. For folks looking for more complex play, there are also Fancy Dragons and a Dragon Fountain to further challenge your spatial reasoning and your luck. Who will end up contributing the most to this cozy town? One way to find out!

Contents

• Setup
• Gameplay
• Player Count Differences
• Strategy
• Pros, Mehs, Cons
• Overall

Setup

Setup isn’t trivial, but it’s easy enough that I’m pretty sure I have it memorized after two games. So that’s nice! Give each player a cardholder:

You can shuffle the Shop Cards; each player gets two.

Place the Dragon Tokens into the bag (leaving out one of each color). There’s a pink one called Buddy; he’s not used in the standard game either. Shuffle them up.

Put the board in the center of the play area; I always forget that.

Each player gets three coins:

And you’re essentially ready to start! Draw one token of each color from the bag and place them on the six starting spaces.

For more advanced play, add in the Fancy Dragons; each player chooses one and they’re placed near the board.

Experts can also use the Dragon Fountain! The six Fountain Cards are placed nearby along with the Dragon Fountain; more on that later.

Gameplay

This one’s not too complicated, which is nice. Your goal is to collect points by completing Shop Cards, which you do by completing arrangements of Dragon Tokens! Each turn you’ll play, then score, then refresh.

To play, draw a token from the bag. Place it anywhere on the board, provided you don’t create a stack of more than three tokens. Then, you can use the Dragon’s ability! If you drew a Hydragon, you can choose either of the two abilities, but not both. They let you do things like draw and activate another Dragon, draw multiple, or move tokens around. They’re fun! They’re also optional.

Once you’ve placed and potentially activated the token, check the board. If you have the configuration printed on your card, you can score it! Configurations are either in a line or a triangle, and if there’s a match, you score the points. Note that you can score both cards if you get both.

At any point before you refresh, you can also spend a coin to draw two cards and then discard two cards to the bottom of the deck. Helpful! Either way, to refresh, fill your hand back up to two cards and the next player gets to go.

Continue to play until the bag empties or you run out of cards! That’s the end of the game. If you still need more tokens, put the out-of-play ones in the bag. After you finish your final turn. Your opponent gets one more turn but they can only score and / or spend a coin.

The player with the most points wins!

For more advanced play options, use two of the Fancy Dragons for extra coin options or passive effects, or add in The Fountain! The Fountain is an expert play option where if you can get four of the same token type in a line, you can score a Fountain Card and place The Fountain as a blocker! Anywhere you place it gets cleared and all the tokens but one get returned to the bag. You’ll place that remaining token on your next turn instead. To use The Fountain mode, remove one extra set of each token before starting. Have fun!

Player Count Differences

None! This is a two-player games only week.

Strategy

• Make your placements work for you! You should be trying to place and use abilities to get both of your cards scored every turn as many times as you can. This means playing extra tokens or moving tokens around or using other tokens abilities as necessary. For hybrids, sometimes you can use them to activate more than one thing if you place them right and you have the right combination of cards. Always try to figure out your highest-scoring move as quickly as possible.
• Do you need movement or just more? Some tokens just let you play more tokens; others let you move them. It’s important to know which one you need, as some will let you pick from multiple ability options. I wouldn’t recommend just adding tokens to the board for its own sake; try to be strategic about what you want where.
• Hybrid Dragons can be very helpful for certain configurations of tokens. Not only do you get your pick of two possible abilities, but they can also count as either token for configurations. I’ve had Hybrid tokens help me activate three cards, once, but that was with a Fancy Dragon that lets you have three cards in hand. There’s very few of them in the game, though, so don’t waste them.
• It’s not the worst thing to spend a coin, but they are worth end-game points. I usually recommend spending one on your last turn if you can’t score anything so you at least have a few extra options. That way, you’re starting at +1 total points, but if you spend 1 point (via a coin) to gain 2 or 3 points, it’s a net positive.
• There’s not much you can do to block your opponent, so it’s usually better to not bother.
• Sometimes you don’t want to mess with the board state; I usually just stack a token on a token of the same color when that happens. Your abilities are similarly optional, so you don’t have to activate the token that you just played if you’d rather not. Sometimes your opponent has already made both your configurations for you or you’ve done it a different way but the extra token you got to place could mess things up. It’s valid and strategically sound.
• Be careful that you’re not leaving your opponent a chance at the Fountain, if you’re playing with that mode! If you put three in a line, you’re running a big risk, but even two can be risky with certain Dragon Tokens that might appear being able to move things around or swap tokens. Part of it depends on what color your opponent draws and what the probability is going to be, but you can technically calculate that on the fly if you want. Don’t, for so many reasons, but you can get a vague idea.

Pros, Mehs, and Cons

Pros

• Sandara Tang‘s art continues to impress. I mean, she’s got a ton of art credits, but boy howdy she knows how to make a world feel bright, alive, and vibrant. There’s layers to it and everything is colorful and engaging and pleasant. I’ve always liked the Flamecraft world, so getting to see more of it is a genuine delight.
• The quick abstract play is great. It’s definitely abstract but it’s not too thinky; the small play space and the somewhat-limited palette of options make it mostly easy to figure out what you want to do on your turn. Analysis paralysis starts breaking into the game once players start trying to figure out how to score both of their cards on one turn, which isn’t always possible or easy.
• The deluxe edition is delightful and portable. The deluxe edition essentially builds the board into the box in a lovely dual-fold package with a fancy clasp instead of a telescoping box. I like it a lot! It feels very fancy and feels very portable, and both of those are great things for games.
• I really like the hybrid dragons! They add a lot to the game. The abstract elements of the game blend very well with the whole thematic idea of getting multiple dragons into a certain arrangement, and the Hybrid Dragons play very well to that effect, since you can use them for either element (sometimes both, if you have two arrangements overlapping). There’s a Wild Dragon in the Fancy Dragons that does similar things, and that’s very interesting.
• The stacking element is nice as well. It gives you a lot of extra real estate to work with and forces you to think in three dimensions, as some abilities can clear one or both tokens off of a three-token stack. It’s still not hard enough to be a particular frustrating point for players, either, so they’ve nicely balanced the complexity.
• The cards are a very nice texture. Maybe too nice, as they slip past each other sometimes, but they feel very professionally made and high-quality.
• I appreciate the extra challenging modes. They’re not essential to your enjoyment of the game, but I think the Fancy Dragons add a nice bit of game-to-game variety and the Fountain adds some head-to-head elements that don’t necessarily feel like take-that. There’s not a lot of opportunity to explicitly block an opponent unless you know what they want, but placing the Fountain can make it challenging for them. Or for you. Plus, the Fountain gives you explicit goals that are public, so that makes it a bit easier to figure out what your opponent might be going for.

Mehs

• I wish the tokens interlocked a little better to make stacking less treacherous. They’re smooth and can sometimes be knocked over by clumsy hands. It is a small board, after all. Something to just increase the token-to-token friction would be nice.
• I also miss the Shop Card puns. It helps with worldbuilding, yes, but I also just like to see puns when I’m playing a game. It feels more targeted towards me and my interests.

Cons

• I also wish the coins did more in the standard game. Getting to cycle in two more cards to potentially get you out of a hole is fine, but it’s an entire component and mechanic that doesn’t feel strictly necessary in an otherwise pared-down and streamlined game, so it either gets overlooked because players don’t want to spend points to potentially gain points or it just feels a tiny bit clunky. The extra modes use the coins a bit more, which helps, but I wish there was something else they were doing in the first game.

Overall: 8.25 / 10

Surprising nobody, I definitely prefer Flamecraft Duals to the original Flamecraft. It’s got almost everything the original game has going for it (except the puns, which I am sad have been lost to us) but it’s smaller, faster, and easier to travel with. Sandara Tang’s art is once again the highlight of the game, though I am a sucker for the design and construction of the deluxe edition box. A little clasp and a built-in board go a long way towards making me appreciate a game as a product and a game as an experience, I’ll say. Here, though, Flamecraft becomes an abstract game for people who don’t love abstract games. There’s movement and manipulation and stacking, yes, but the veneer over top of it is a cute and cozy game of friendly dragons and quiet shops. While I find that heavily-themed abstracts can be hit or miss, this one is certainly a hit. For the most part, at least. The coins are kind of just … there, which is fine, unless you’re playing with the Fancy Dragons (I particularly like the one that rewards you for spending all your coins but only gives you a 50/50 shot to spend one). I think it just hits the sweet spot between theme and art and gameplay, and that’s tough to do for an abstract strategy game. They usually hit too abstract (or they’re Santorini and they’re essentially perfect, which is also very unlikely). If you love dragons, though, you like abstract strategy, or you’re just looking for some cute art and compelling gameplay, I’d definitely recommend checking out Flamecraft Duels! It’s a great one.

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