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Drakborgen Legenden
I and my group had to choose a board game that we had to play and then analyze. My group
chose Drakborgen Legenden. Drakborgen Legenden is sort of a remake of Drakborgen that is a Swedish board game in a fantasy environment that was published by Alga 1985. The Expansion Drakborgen II came 1987. The game is created by Dan Glimne and Jakob Bonds and was inspired by role playing games like Dungeons & Dragons.
Here is a short explanation on how the game works.
The goal of the game is that you have to get into the castle where the dragon is sleeping. Steal parts of the dragon’s treasures and get out of there before the sun goes down. The castle consists of rooms made on tiles spread all over the board creating a randomized labyrinth. These labyrinths are built gradually as the player draws and place a new labyrinth tiles as the player gets deeper in to the castle. Even the rooms’ content is randomized by card drawing. a room for example can contain valuable or useful objects or things that could prevent the players progress, like monsters and traps.
The games main element of excitement lays in that a) the Dragon can wake up and spit fire all over the intruders, b) time is short. Players who succeed to get out of the castle with most valuable treasures wins the game.
The best parts of the game:
- Risk/reward system in the dragon room.
When you are inside of the dragon room and the dragon is asleep, you get to take on treasure that could be worth a large sum of gold coins, and after that you have to pick a dragon card to see if the dragon wakes up or not. There is eleven card of the dragon sleeping and only one card of the dragon waking up. If the dragon is sleeping you repeat same thing again or get out of the before someone else picks a dragon card that makes the dragon wake up, because then you are trapped there and may not get all of your treasures out or get out of there alive.
- Every time you play it feels different.
With so many characters you can choose from and so many objects, for example throwing weapons, armor, healing items, magic rings, amulets and gold coins and many more. The characters all have different stats and abilities.
- Reward for exploring.
As I said before there are many items in this game and so to get those items you have walk into different room, but you don’t know what’s in that room until you turn the room tile. After that you will ether get something good or you may meet a dangerous monster or walk into a spider web or poisonous gas.
The worst parts of the game:
- Tile placement on the board causes frustration in players since slightest movement/touch of the tiles causes the whole board to be readjusted.
- Combat feels dull. The action of combat are not represented well enough through the combat in the game. Using a circled tile you choose between strength, intelligence, agility and armor. Strengths beats intelligence, intelligence beat agility, agility beats armor and armor beats strengths. If you get on the same stat, the one with the highest stat wins and the monster or plyer lose the difference in health. It is just the way you do it that is not working. You have to cover the tile with you hand and chose one of the stats on the tile, and then show the other player what you chose. This could go on for a long time if they have a lot of health, and do not choose the same tile.
- PvP combat is not encouraged since there is no gain.
What this means is if you manage to kill another player you don’t get there items. The risk is higher than what the reward is if I win.
The core game system:
The core game system is to explore tiles, to find items and reach the dragon to gain as much gold coin as possible.
The core game components to play Drakborgen is, 2-4 players, room tile cards, labyrinth tile card, character card explaining your characters abilities items and what stats he has, dragon cards, treasure cards, fighting tile where you fight you battles, monster card explaining what the monster will do and their health points, health point tiles. Magic cards for the wizard, magic rings for the players, sun tile to show how much time there is left and a 6 sided dice showing how There clouds and three suns and a normal 6 sided dice, to roll certain things in the game.
Characters:
The game is played that each player choose a character, some characters are better at fighting monsters while others are better getting through rooms, traps and doors, it is up you how you want play.
 
Gold coins and treasures:
Player wants to have the most gold coins before the time runs out. This is one of two ways, to win, the other one being if you are the only one alive in the end of the game.
Sun tile:
When everyone has done their turn you roll the dice to see if it is cloudy which mean no time is moving and if it is a sun you will move the sun arrow to show that time has passed. If the sun goes done everyone left in the castle dies. This is a way to make the player think before he moves and not feel safe in the castle.
Dragon room:
Each player starts in the corner of the castle and everyone moves towards the middle where somewhere the dragon and his treasures are hidden. The Dragon is important part of the game; here is where risk and reward really shines. You always get a treasure as long as the dragon is asleep, if you wake it up by picking a dragon card, you have to either escape the dragon room, but you can then lose treasure or stay and fight remember the dragon has almost impossible stats to beat.
Labyrinth tiles/room tiles:
Every turn you can move your character one labyrinth tile. You can go anywhere as long as there are no walls in your way, the walls there could be a hidden passage, if you have right symbol to do so. Each game you roll to see what symbol will be the hidden passage, which means you could walk through that wall. Most labyrinth tiles have red dot on them which means there is a room tile there. Room tiles can have items, gold coins, traps or monsters under them.
 
Items:
Items can help you fight monster or get through traps and doors.
Monsters:
Monsters can either run away from battle, choose not to fight or stay and fight. When you fight a battle you use your fighting tile to see if you or the monster wins. Some items that can help you against monsters are throwing weapons and items that make you stats better. Ther is special monsters that if you beat the you could get better stats or more gold coins, but those are rare but worth fighting.
With so many things that could stop you or kill you, you have be careful where you go. But there are so many random elements in this game that it is hard to plan what to do. It becomes more of a game of luck than anything else.
Who is this game for?
I think this game is made for people that like fantasy games possibly table-top role playing games. This game may not have the role playing element, but it has some of the other things that make it a table-top rpg game for example the exploring, finding items and gear to help you on your journey through the castle. What makes this game easy to play is that you don’t need a game master to play it, which means you can start playing whenever you want. You don’t need a big group for it to be fun either.
What makes this game more boring and frustrating is how slow and long it is. A campaign can take up to three hours. You rather avoid combat because how clunky and slow it is to kill someone. Also because of the system with rolling the sun dice to see how much time as gone by, it really does not work. All our games we just rolled a lot of clouds which meant we could ignore the time. With so many things that could stop you or kill you, you have be careful where you go. But there are so many random elements in this game that it is hard to plan what to do. It becomes more of a game of luck than anything else. Backtracking on the same labyrinth tiles you have already walked on is useless. There are no more items there or monsters, which makes it boring when nothing happens for three- five turns, you should have some kind of system that makes it possible to roll a dice and see if there is a chance they will find or fight something in that room. Fighting most of the enemies feels useless to because you don’t get anything from them, they don’t drop any loot. There are some enemies that do but it is so random and rarely do meet any special monsters like that. Killing another Player also feels useless. I wish I could loot their bodies if I killed them so I felt rewarded. Doors can be too hard to open, you have to roll a dice two times and both times it has to succeed for you to be able to open the door. The game does not have an aesthetically appeling look to it, every room looks the same.
 
The things that keeps this game together is the Variety of different classes you can choose from. Now some classes feel a bit better than others. Ít feels like more playtest should have been done. Now I will say that when there are only two players left the dynamic shifts and the game moves much faster. You roll the sun dice faster because of the tempo of the game is faster. Which mean time feels faster.
Drakborgen has great thing going for it like the discovery, challenge, fantasy setting, but it just miss some of the thing that could have made it a great board game.
 
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