A Dragon's gift, by Scott Almes

Button Shy have a consistent style about their games - and I’m sorry to say that part of it is going away. Inspired by the microgame challenge on Board Game Geek, the idea was: can you create a playable game out of just 18 cards and a rules sheet? Why 18 cards? That’s 2 sheets of paper as a 9-grid, so it’s quite easy to prototype and create as a print-and-play.

(Actually I don’t know if the Button Shy games or the BGG challenge came first. If I’ve got it wrong let me know in the comments!)

Button Shy went one step further and said “Hey! 18 cards and a small rule sheet fit really nicely in these small wallets, let’s make a series of games like this!”

The sad part to me is that Button Shy recently announced they are no longer making wallet games - they’ve switched up to a box model. I don’t think this fundamentally changes the content of the games coming, it just removes a little bit of their uniqueness from the landscape. That said, a whole bunch of small boxes are probably easier to manage in my board game collection than a bunch of wallets which have a habit of turning invisible when stored sideways.

I’m sure they still pack fine for taking on holiday too. (Waves to Curious Nat who’s spending some quality time in Greece right now!)

Within Button Shy’s range of 148 wallet games, one subset is the solo game series designed by Scott Almes - I counted 11 such games on a BGG search of Button Shy’s catalogue. And here, by solo games, I don’t mean “Games which are usually multiplayer but have a solo mode” - I mean “Games that are to be played solo and don’t even have a multiplayer mode.”

So, if you play and enjoy A Dragon’s Gift, you might just find that there is more in the series that you’ll enjoy - among them Food Chain Island, Ugly Gryphon Inn, Unsurmountable, Fishing Lessons, The Royal Limited, The Last Lighthouse, A Nice Cuppa, Hyperstar Run, Lands of Amazement.

The base game is very simple to learn. There is a gift you must offer to a Dragon that’s been terrorising your village - the gift is to earn your survival. There are village cards with basic resources and roads to transport them on, and there are special transports you can use to connect resources in rule-breaking ways. Craft enough resources - including the Dragon’s Gift of course - and you win the game with a final ranking anywhere from Somber through to Joyous!

Each turn you take the top card of the village deck and add it to your village, connecting to at least one other village card by at least one road - you don’t have to line up the card boundaries as roads exit the card at 8 different points so you can connect cards at an offset. Also you have 2 orientations to choose from - the card can be played directly or flipped 180, but not played in landscape orientation.

Instead of placing a new card, if you have placed a craftable resource in such a way that either the required resources can be delivered to it via road crossing no more than 2 card boundaries to do it, or your special transports can be used to get the resources there, then you can craft the card, flipping it over and scoring a precious point. Every village card contains one basic resource and one craftable resource, and to obtain a top-tier Joyous victory you need to craft every single one.

It’s worth paying attention to those 3 special transports you have at the beginning of the game, as they dictate what you need to plan around as you construct your village. If the Cannon Sender is in the game you may be able to reposition an awkward card after using it, but if the Autocopter is in play, which delivers along rows and columns in your grid as long as your cards line up exactly, you’re maybe going to want to avoid connecting cards slightly offset. That’s a solid maybe, because connecting at an offset seems very powerful for the flexibility of the roads it connects - and I’m not giving that up easily!

Eventually, by choice or by force, you will need to place the gift card that you set aside right at the beginning of the game - and you must craft it immediately using the same rules as before - basic transport over road from up to 2 cards away, or special transport if you still have some available.

Fail to craft the gift card and that’s an immediate loss. However, crafting the gift card does not itself guarantee victory, as you must also craft from at least 9 of your 12 village cards to give your people hope. Craft more than 9 village cards to achieve those higher tiers of victory.

I’ve had a good few games of A Dragon’s Gift - I’m actually performing a show in the theatre this week and have been using the game to kill some downtime between shows.

I found the game simple enough to understand to play straight off the bat, easy enough to get a low tier win first time, but challenging enough that the top tier win still eludes me. This isn’t the first Scott Almes solo Button Shy game that I’ve played - and so far I think it’s fair to say that, of the ones I’ve tried, that summarises the whole series. Simple pickup, reachable goals, tantalising epic victories available to hone your skills towards.

It’s short too - though obviously it depends on how long you’re going to agonise over your card placement, It probably took you as long to read this far in the article as it would to go and play your first game.

Having backed the game on Kickstarter my copy of A Dragon’s Gift came with 2 expansions: Beacons and Exotic Transports.

I’ll leave it for you to decide whether that’s a blessing or a curse, but on the surface this is an expansion which increases options rather than strictly changing rules…

I haven’t played with the expansions mixed in yet, but I suspect that once added I’ll not be taking them back out. If I have the confidence in my village building skills to add the beacons then I’m always going to want them there, and the added possibilities the transports bring are always going to be welcome.

A lot of the fun of a solo game is in discovery. In the beginning you need only learn how to play the game correctly - you go in blind not knowing what is even in the deck, attempting to figure it out as you go along. Are any of the cards duplicates for example?

My first game was a win by the smallest of margins - 9 resources crafted and the gift. I concentrated on the Gift ensuring I would at least be able to do that. That felt good, and it was probably at least a little luck driven. Would I be able to repeat the win on my second go? Would I be able to reach the higher ranks of village jollity?

But after a while, you cannot help but notice things about how the game is constructed. You ask yourself questions about the nature of the randomised gift - does it matter which gift you draw? Are some harder than others or does symmetry rule? How are those 12 village cards connected? What are the design rules that went into those 12 cards, and how do they affect your game?

As a mathematician I cannot resist trying to understand the “shape” of a game¹ and this game is no exception. Below I share more thoughts as I’ve learned more about the game, but treat them as spoilers. If you’re at all interested in playing the game at this point, if I were you I would stop reading, grab a copy of the game, and come back after you’ve played to see if you agree with my insights.

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Ok, let’s start with the base game - first of all there are 12 cards and 3 basic “circle” resources. These are symmetrical in that they each appear on 4 cards.

The dragon’s gift itself is always crafted from one circle, one square and one hexagon. 3 of the gifts go vertically up the above diagram, having a circle and a square of the same colour, with the hexagon crafted from the other two squares. The other 3 gifts are crafted from a circle and a differently coloured square, topped again with a hexagon that uses the other two squares.

In this way hopefully you can understand that every gift requires direct access to one of the square resources, and indirect access to the other two through the hexagonal resource that requires them.

Amongst those 4 cards that depict one single basic resource, you have 2 duplicated “square” resources, where you might expect one of each. That might be important to know - the only square resource you will find Magic with is Coin. Never Timber, and never Scroll. Similarly, Ore is coupled with Timber and Wood with Scroll.

You might also expect the Magic resource to pair with the hexagonal resources that use Scroll, but that’s not the case. You’ll find Magic with Axe and Shield. Axe is made from Coin and Scroll, so this one makes sense as Magic is found with the square resource that is made from Magic, and the one found on the same card as Magic. Shield is weirder though, being made as it is without Scroll.

Knowing what doesn’t exist in the deck can be hugely important to get those top-tier wins! However, knowing what is co-located on a card is only half the battle - one of the Wood + Scroll cards is enormously disconnected thanks to the road layout on that card, where only one card, Wood + Axe, has those two resources directly connected on the card, and thus equally available to surrounding cards.

Ok, spoilers over! Go get the game and have a few rounds yourself, see how it makes you feel to puzzle over the lives of these villagers via efficient construction!