presentation

Iron Dragon

Trains, ships and a magical bridge

The basic mechanisms are identical for all games of the Empire Builder series: You start with 60 Mio. and build tracks, transport goods for money from town to town according to orders and build new tracks for new orders. The train can be upgraded to three loads or greater range. Track is paid for when built and using your own track is free of charge. Event cards can destroy parts of track. You win with 250 Mio. and a track network connecting all major cities but one.

The Iron Dragon variant is set in a Fantasy World. The map is expanded with an Underground area, offering Beer as sole commodity, and there are new terrain types on the map, for instance jungle or desert. So-called Foremen cards provide workers - changeable against payment - like Elf, Dwarf or Troll - for cheaper track building in the respective terrain types. In Harbors, you can switch from your train to a ship, again by paying for the ship. Those ships are used very individually by players, some only build track over land, others use ships almost exclusively. The fantasy geography takes a bit of getting used to, but is easily understood and the magic bridge between two of the major cities is an interesting strategic special!

Iron Dragon is basically a multiplayer solitaire game; you build your tracks and if you need to use another player’s track this is always possible, and the costs are affordable. The game is a very individual version of the system, the fantasy add-ons cannot be transferred to other maps. Each game is different, sometimes players cooperate in track building and delivery, sometime all build endless tracks on their own, and both ways work!

Players: 2-6

Age: 12+

Time: 180+

Designer: Darwin Bromley, Tom Wham, Team

Artist: Javier Gonzáles Cava, Mark Zug, atelier198

Price: ca. 80 Euro

Publisher: Mayfair Games 2017

Web: www.mayfairgames.com

Genre: Railway, track building, logistics

Users: With friends

Version: en

Rules: en

In-game text: yes

Comments:

Part of the Empire Builder Series

Revised new edition

Fantasy setting

Compares to:

All games in the Empire Builder series, in general track building games with transport

Other editions:

Currently none

Chance (pink): 1

Tactic (turquoise): 2

Strategy (blue): 1

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 0

Communication (red): 0

Interaction (brown): 1

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0