SNAP Review – Dragonkeepers

We’re hatching? Summoning? Herding? I don’t know what we’re doing to them, but it involves cute dragons!

Game

This is a SNAP review for Dragonkeepers, a game for 2-4 players, ages 8 and up. Dragonkeepers was designed and illustrated by Michael Menzel, and it’s published by KOSMOS. The box says it plays in about 20 minutes, but in our experience it’s a little bit longer than that.

Art

So what’s special about the art in this game?

Michael Menzel’s illustrations never disappoint. Just look at all these adorable dragons!

The graphic design in Dragonkeepers is pretty good. There’s a lot of things going on with points, so it’s not as obvious as it could be, but it does a pretty good job.

Mechanics

All right Anitra, let’s talk mechanics. We are – collecting, I guess – cute dragons. How does all of that work?

There are a lot of bits to set up, like sorting these amulets into stacks of their number, putting out a number of pearls face down, separating out the Shadow Dragons, and dealing starting hands depending on player order.

Put the book cards in two decks: The color deck and the number deck. Flip one of each face up in front of the “book”.

On your turn, you will pull up to three dragon cards from this display in front of the decks – one at a time.

You can pick whether you want a number or a color each time you take a card.

Then, after you’ve taken up to three cards, you may put a card BACK ONTO the book if you want. Why would you do this?

You might want to do this because your next step is to play a set of dragons from your hand that correspond exactly to the number and color shown on top of the decks. So in this case, you may play three orange dragons into your tableau. You’ll play them on top of any other orange dragons you already have there.

But there’s another catch! You can only play dragons that aren’t trapped. In this case, my orange dragons have other colored dragons on both sides of them, so I can’t play more orange dragons for the rest of the game.

After you’ve played your dragons, take the reward shown on the number card. If you complete a medallion, also take a face-down pearl and put it inside the medallion.

Whether or not YOU played dragons this turn, everyone else around the table also gets a chance to play a set of dragons matching the book. Then it’s the next player’s turn to draw cards.

Regarding the rewards, this is the lowest medallion piece, this is the highest medallion piece, this is a shadow dragon, a crystal, and an egg.

Speaking of shadow dragons, they’re wild. You can add them to one or more colored dragons to make your group larger, but you can’t play them by themselves.

For a little more variety, these treasure chests introduce special shared powers for a more advanced game.

Once the pearls run out, the game is over. Tally up all of your different kinds of scoring pieces to find out who wins!

Expectations

Well Anitra, what did we think of Dragonkeepers?

This game looked adorable. And I trust Michael Menzel for solid gameplay.

I was also super excited for this one. I loved all the dragons, especially the cute orange guy on the front. We have a dragon lover in the family, so I was really looking forward to getting this to the table.

And like you said, we’ve loved Michael Menzel’s games in the past, and I felt good about him as a designer, too.

Surprises

But! We were surprised, for sure. Unfortunately, for this game, they were not really good surprises.

This game is basically an abstract set collection and tableau building game. The color of the dragon is the only thing that matters, not the fact that they’re dragons themselves.

The dragons don’t DO anything! No.

The theme is pretty pasted on, and so none of the excitement of dragons actually made it through into the game. So, our kids were honestly pretty disappointed, and I think that actually led to them being more bored than they otherwise would have been (if it just was an abstract). Because dragons are supposed to be exciting.

Yeah, the dragons on this are cute and the gameplay is solid, but the game as a whole just isn’t very exciting.

Once we got past a little bit of confusion about how to adjust the book cards, and playing out dragons after other player’s turns, the game ran smoothly. But no one was ever really super eager to put down their group of dragons; it just didn’t feel like you were doing much to advance the game.

Recommended?

So Andrew, do we recommend Dragonkeepers?

Despite the very adorable box, and the fact that dragons are totally in the zeitgeist (thanks, Daenarys), this one just fell flat with our family. We don’t mind this as a set collection abstract, but in terms of expectations matching reality, unfortunately Dragonkeepers didn’t.

It’s a perfectly functional game and it got its age recommendation just right. But when you look at this game box for ages 8 and up with a spellcaster and a giant dragon on the front? You’re definitely going to come to the wrong conclusions compared to what you’re going to get in the box.

We’re going to give Dragonkeepers three medallions out of five.

And that’s Dragonkeepers, in a SNAP!

Find it on Amazon, direct from KOSMOS, or at a game store near you.

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The Family Gamers received a copy of Dragonkeepers from KOSMOS for this review.

This post contains affiliate links, which do not change your price, but help support The Family Gamers.

SNAP review music is Avalanche, provided courtesy of You Bred Raptors?