Stats:
No. of players: 2-6
Amount of time to play: 3 hours
Age requirements: 12+
Set-up time: 10-15 min

Iron Dragon Rules Description:

Iron Dragon is one of several crayon rail games from Mayfair Games. In it you must build railroad tracks to cities in order to pick up and deliver goods. In return you get money to build more rails and upgrade your train. All this and it has a fantasy setting…what more could you ask for?

The goal of this game is connect seven of the eight major cities and get to $250 (wizard certificates) before your opponents do.

You start the game by choosing a foreman. Each foreman is of a different race that gives you advantages building rails through a specific terrain. You then get three cards with goods that need to be delivered. Every card has three different goods but you can only deliver one good per card. Each player then may spend up to $20 per round in a 3-round draft style building phase to get their initial track.

After that you begin in any city and may move your train and then build more tracks. Each turn you may spend up to $20. To build track you simply use the crayon of your color to draw right on the board. You may also upgrade your train for $20. Upgrades allow you to carry more goods or go faster. You continue to expand your network trying to connect seven of the eight major cities. Then you must deliver goods until one player has $250.

On your turn you may also switch your foreman. For $1 you can take the foreman off the top of the deck, but for $5 you may search the deck and choose whichever one you want. Either way this money goes toward your turn total of spending $20.

After completing a delivery you turn in that card and get a new one. The deck of new delivery cards also contains Event Cards. These represent random happenings in the world. Many cause players in certain regions to lose a good and a turn. Other Event Cards can cause rivers to flood and destroy track or not allow players to switch foremen.

You can even build rails to different ports and take ships to other ports. This can be helpful and less expensive then building track to more remote areas.

So Iron Dragon is a pick-up and delivery game in which you race to connect seven cities and have $250 all within a fantasy setting. Enjoy!

A Quick Review of Iron Dragon:

Although it is a bit complex Iron Dragon is fun and totally worth the ride. There is definitely strategic planning that must happen if you want to win this game. While getting the right cards at the right times can really bolster your planning. And even though it is not highly interactive, seeing someone build track where you were hoping to provides some conflict.

I must confess I am not a great Iron Dragon player. I do think there is a learning curve to this game and that more experienced players will dominate new players for the first few games. Since the world is made up, not knowing what cities produce certain goods or where cities are on the board makes planning for the beginner harder. Also if someone is able to earn a lot of money early it can be hard to catch up to them. Sometimes you will get lucky and get a string of deliveries in cities right next to each other. This can unbalance the game if other players are getting deliveries to cities they don’t connect to.

Still I think Iron Dragon is fun to play and even worth the time it takes to play (which can be 3+ hours). And more often than not after playing one game I am ready to play again, even if I lose. This game is currently out-of-print but can be found on ebay at decent prices from time-to-time.

Score and synopsis: (Click here for an explanation of these review categories.)
Strategy 4 out of 6
Luck 4 out of 6
Player Interaction 2 out of 6
Replay Value 5 out of 6
Complexity 5 out of 6
Fun 5 out of 6
Overall 5 out of 6