Welcome to our Review of Flamecraft, published by Cardboard Alchemy and Lucky Duck Games! In this 1-5 player game, you take on the role of a Flamekeeper in a world where Dragons are just like you and me. They go shopping daily, and the players grow their Reputation by placing their dragons in shops, creating enchantments, and trying to fulfill the needs of the fancy dragons. Do you have what it takes to become the best flamekeeper in the land?
Game Overview
Flamecraft has you moving around an interesting gameboard. Each turn, you move to a new store, deciding to either buy Goods or cast an Enchantment. Play continues until either the Goods or Enchantment deck runs out. Whoever has gained the most Reputation on the reputation track wins the game.
Game Components
The game comes with a wide variety of components which all look cool! We love the art style of the shop cards, the dragons, and the neoprene board! We are still determining if the neoprene will be in a retail version, but the board has some fantastic artwork.
Our Kickstarter edition of Flamecraft also has custom-made gold coins for the campaign. The coins had some weight to them. The shops are really well-named. The starting butcher shop is called Draco Bell (Taco Bell), the potions shop is Potable Potions (a parody of Potent Potables – a common Jeopardy category), and the bakery is called Critical Rolls (named after the popular series Critical Role)
Game Setup
The setup for Flamecraft is pretty straightforward. Players lay out the starting six stores and then create a deck of ten additional stores that can come out during the game. Then they deal out three artisan dragons to each player and five more to “The Park.”
Finally, they shuffle the fancy dragons into a deck and the enchantments into a separate deck and put the top five cards from each out on the board.
After placing the reputation marker, the players are ready to get started!
Gameplay
During your turn in Flamecraft, players can move between shops gaining goods, placing artisan dragons, firing up those dragons, or enchanting the Shop. The goods you gain allow you to enchant the stores. All these actions can gain you hearts and advance you along the reputation track. We like the counterplay of gaining goods and spending goods to gain hearts. It makes for an interesting strategy game.
Gaining Goods
If you gain goods from a shop, you can collect either one good or coin for the Shop’s goods icon, one for any enchantment good/coin icon, and one for each artisan dragon at the Shop.
Then optionally, you can place another artisan dragon in an open slot on the shop board. The goods icon on the dragon must appear in the space for you to put it there. Since you add dragons that you can later revisit, this is an engine-building game allowing you to gain more goods in later rounds.
Whenever you fill a shop with three artisan dragons, you must draw a new shop and place it in an open shop slot in town facedown. The players reveal it at the end of the turn. We love the suspense of not knowing which shop will come out next.
Players can gain rewards by placing dragons, enchanting shops, and fulfilling the goals of the fancy dragons.
Also, when gaining goods, a player can “Fire Up” a dragon on any one dragon in the Shop. Firing up gives you extra goods or abilities during your turn.
Lastly, players can use the Shop’s ability when gathering goods, which usually requires you to spend goods to get something.
Some special abilities allow you to give other players gifts to boost your Reputation.
Enchanting a Shop
If you decide to enchant a shop instead of gaining goods, players choose a card from the enchantment row that matches the Shop’s icon and pay its goods cost to place it behind the Shop. You can use coins in place of goods. Once you pay the cost, you gain the reward at the bottom of the card.
The next thing you do when enchanting a shop is to “Fire Up” all Dragons instead of just one. Firing up while enchanting a shop allows you to gain rewards from all dragons in a shop.
Players can enchant a maximum of three times in one Shop.
If any ability says to “Reserve an Enchantment,” you may take an enchantment from the display row and place it in front of you. You can only have one enchantment reserved at a time. This allows you to use that enchantment later on and not immediately
End of your Turn
Players flip up any new shops that have come out. They discard down to a hand size of 6 dragons and a token pool of 7 goods of each type. Finally, if the artisanal dragons in the park or the enchantment row don’t have five cards, the players draw cards from their respective decks until they do.
End of the Game
Once the players draw the last artisanal dragon or enchantment, all players get one final turn. After everyone has had a go, Players return all coins to the fountain and gain one heart on the reputation track for each. Then each player reveals the Fancy Dragons with a moon symbol and gains the amount of Reputation to add to their score.
In the case of a tie, the player with the most artisanal dragons in their hand. If that number is the same, the number of goods in their supply determines a winner.
Overall Impressions
So what did we think of Flamecraft? Having these dragons and placing them down in the shops is fun. It is an engine-building game as everything you add to the board produces more goods as the game goes on. Then those goods you collect get used to enchant a store, gaining you more Reputation. There’s an excellent give-and-take between the two halves of the game. The fancy dragons are where She-Hawk preferred to play her strategy… The more fancy dragons, the higher the reward at the end of the game. We love that you can have multiple strategies for playing the game, and it still works well.
We also love the quality of the components in the Kickstarter edition and highly recommend this game for retail!