Review Details

The Red Dragon Inn

Product Review (submitted on September 16, 2015):

Want to be mean to your friends but tired of Catan & Munchkin? Pull out Red Dragon Inn and get busy stealing their gold while staving off the affects of alcohol (at least in-game - real alcohol consumption is optional, possibly dangerous and, in some situations, illegal).

Players take turns buying drinks for other players, gambling their treasure away and doing dastardly deeds, like secretly turning other players' water into wine. Each players tracks their intoxication level as it goes up and their constitution level as it goes down. Once the two cross, you are out.

Oh, and you can gamble. Okay, gambling is the most awkward part of this great game. The system of cards to simulate card games is just plain strange. It can be fun and we have had players taken out after losing all their gold gambling, but gambling still seems to break the rhythm of the game.

Having played the game with 3-4 players, the more the merrier. I have purchased expansions just to increase the number of players at the table for future games. While maybe not the most appropriate theme, I have played and lost to kids as young as 12.

First player is usually out after 15-20 minutes, but I have had games last as short as 45 minutes and as long as 90 minutes. That brings out another downfall of this game: once a player is out, they may be sitting around for awhile as other players continue to drink & gamble.

However, since the game is very easy to teach and fun with not too much strategy required, it comes off the shelf and onto the table often.