That Randy Brown

Dragominos

We recently started playing Dragominos. Stephen loves dragons, and especially baby dragons, and both boys are familiar enough with domino style mechanics. We originally took it as an option to play at a board game store while I looked around, but that didn't play out so we played it over the weekend when trying to decompress at home.

The major things that Dragominos introduces are more dynamic planning and the way choice propagates across the play. It's still a relatively short game, and the boys will play it several times in a sitting--leading to probably 30-45 minutes of playtime. It is a competitive game.

The mechanics are straight forward on the turn to turn case, and both boys understand them, though sometimes decisions of what kind of dragon they want will superseded 'getting lots of dragons' as a strategy. This was a point of contention that made me think Flamecraft might not be a great fit yet, since strategy is intentionally subverted for preference, which, in a competitive game, leads to lots of losing choices.

One other thing that makes Dragominos unique in our games is that it is the first one that implements some sort of 'tableau' mechanic--where everyone has their own play space / dragon egg engine that they are exploring. I am curious what this game might look like if it were not a tableau game, but the opportunity to export this mechanic opens up a whole host of other games.