It’s still cool to review games that are almost 20 years old, right? Sweet.
In the Year of the Dragon is an action selection game by designer Stefan Feld, and published by Alea in 2007. Players take on the role of Chinese rulers around the year 1000, and strive to earn the most prestige during a month in which a lot of bad stuff happens.
The gameplay is simple. Each round, the 7 action tiles are shuffled and placed into even-ish groups. Each player in turn order places their dragon at one of those groups and takes an action corresponding with one of those action tiles. If a player wants to go to the same group as a player who went before them, they have to spend 3 Yuan (currency) to the bank for the privilege of doing so. These actions include things like earning money, getting fireworks, building more castles, harvesting rice, and so on.
After everyone has done an action, each player has the chance to hire a single artisan, adding them to one of your palaces. Some of these workers improve your actions in future rounds, others come into effect during the event of each month.
After everyone has hired someone and slotted them into a space in your castle, an event happens. There’s a face up track of 12 events, which also tracks the end of the game. The first two months are peaceful, nothing happens. But after that, famine strikes, which requires you pay a rice token for each castle you own, or release a worker from their service for each rice you’re missing. Some events are a plague that require you to lose 3 workers, but having a healer in your employ will soften that blow. Others like the fireworks show have players compare the number of firework tokens, and awards points to whomever has the majority, then requires the players who earned points to discard half their tokens.
Finally, at the end of every month, some points are scored. At the end of the 12th month, a final scoring takes place, and the player who has the most points is the winner!
Overall, In the Year of the Dragon is a pretty simple game. Setup is quick, with the most tedious aspect being the need to separate out the worker tiles. The rules are easy to learn and teach, and each round of the game is quick and satisfying. It’s fun to try and figure out what’s important to you in each moment, as you might be preparing for the impending famine, or you may be looking ahead to a greater danger.
It’s kind of fascinating to go back and play games that are almost 20 years old to see how games have developed over time. For instance, the idea of losing some of your workers is pretty hard to come by in a more modern game. Most designers are aware of a players’ loss aversion, and avoid explicitly taking things away from a player. A large part of the game is just mitigating the disasters and planning how to eke out a few points in between your disaster preparations. Another thing that feels aged, is that there’s no catch-up mechanisms at all. In fact, it’s often the player who is doing poorly that gets punished even further (like when the invasions happen and the player with the least soldiers loses a worker).
I enjoyed how interactive In the Year of the Dragon is, for a euro game. Players can get in your way, but you can always spend money to do what you wanted to do anyway. Turn order is hugely important, as it ensures you’ll always get the workers you want, and you’ll never be blocked out of any action tiles.
I’m not sure how many different paths to victory there are. In the Year of the Dragon is a very low luck game, and there is no hidden information, which I enjoy. I think a lot of player’s strategy is dictated by the events row, and how players manage to mitigate the bad things that happen. In one of our games, a player used their very first action to purchase a major privilege, which bestows 2 points per round. But then they ended up getting blocked out of the money spot and lost 2 workers to the Dymo’s tribute event. They still won the game, but I was a mere 6 points behind them, and I didn’t buy a single privilege throughout the entire game. In the Year of the Dragon is tightly balanced, and if players don’t make mistakes, then everyone will be separated by single points for most of the game.
Something that really annoyed me was that there is no balancing for being first, second, third, or last. The first players get first picks, and subsequent players cannot make the exact same move as those who precede them. The first player gets first pick of the actions, too. If the first action is to buy a privilege, no other player can follow them, it just seems like a pretty clear advantage.
In the end, In the Year of the Dragon is a simple euro game. It’s fast to teach and play, offers plenty of interesting decisions, and lets players interact with each other in fun ways. It’s not fun to lose some of your staff due to tragedies, but nevertheless, In the Year of the Dragon is a game that I would happily play anytime. I don’t think any subsequent games would feel drastically different, nor are there a myriad of strategies to explore, if exploration is vital to your enjoyment. But it’s still a fun game, and one that I would never shy away from playing.
