Flamecraft Review

I'll be honest, I wrote off Flamecraft when I first saw it. Admittedly, this was fairly early in my board gaming journey so I was more interested in cooler, more intense themes but the more I learned about it, the more intrigued I became.

In Flamecraft, you'll be moving your dragon around town gathering resources and playing cards to the shops in order to fulfill enchantments for points. When you choose to gather at a shop that you visit, you'll collect each resource that is at the shop on every single card, including other dragons. You then can play one from your hand if it can be added to that shop to get points, coins, or even fancy dragons. Then you can activate any one dragon there. All of the basic dragons do the same thing depending on their suit. If you choose to enchant, you'll turn in resources and add it to the shop while collecting points along the way. Then you get to activate ALL of the dragons at the location. Any time a shop has 3 cards added to it, a new one comes out. Some of them have special abilities that can give you more stuff. Once the enchantments deck is depleted, the game will come to an end. Players will add up all of their coins and any fancy dragons that can be fulfilled. Whoever has the most points will win.

I've mentioned fancy dragons a couple of times but what are they? These essentially act as your secret objectives. Some of them can be fulfilled at any time and others are for the end of the game. There are some that work better than others but you may pull one that will score points just for simply having others at the end of the game.

There is also a solo mode which more or less plays the same way as the multiplayer game for you. All of the colors are in play and when your turn ends, you'll flip the top card of the dragon deck and place it in the first location that it can go into. Then add an enchantment if there's one that matches the suit. This is a high score game but what it does differently is incorporating achievements. If you beat 75 points, you can fulfill 1 achievement and add in more cards to the deck the next time you play. I hope to one day get to do one of these.

The Good: This is a pretty standard worker placement, resource gathering game but it does everything so well. You'll never feel like you're totally constricted at any point in the game and there is enough variety of spaces that every turn feels like it's sending you in the right direction. It's not too mean; if you need to go to a shop that another player is at, simply give them a resource and carry on with your day. That's as mean as it gets other than the competition for enchantments. I adored the artwork as well. Sandara Tang has made this world feel so alive.

The Okay: I love that the game uses so many silly puns and ridiculous names for the dragons but I do wish that instead of the suits all functioning the same way they had different actions or even a secondary action somehow.

The Not So Good: For such a simple game, I found myself really overthinking turns in order to fulfill objectives. This isn't normally a problem but because the game presents itself as family friendly you may find it a bit challenging to play with the younger side of the age range. I'll admit I've never actually tried to play with a 10 year old but I imagine they would struggle with it.

Final Thoughts: I've never been so happy to be wrong about a game. Flamecraft, despite it's non serious theme does so many things so well. Between the silly puns and gorgeous artwork lies a game with surprising depth and strategy all within a really approachable package. There is only a few rules and they're generally easy to follow and that will allow for people who are newer to boardgames, especially worker placement games, to pick it up quickly and be effective early on. I cannot wait to see what else Manny Vega has in store for this game.

Thanks to Lucky Duck Games and Cardboard Alchemy for providing me with a review copy.