Iron Dragon (board game)

Last updated
Iron Dragon
Designers Tom Wham & Darwin Bromley
Publishers Mayfair Games (UK, U.S.)
Players2 to 6
Setup timeapprox. 10 minutes
Playing time120 to 600 minutes
Random chanceMedium
Age range12 years and up
Skills required strategic planning, rail building

Iron Dragon is a board game by Mayfair Games. Unlike the other Empire Builder games, it is set in a fantasy world with dragon-based locomotives. Eden Games licensed the game from Mayfair to produce a Windows version of the game, Rail Empires: Iron Dragon.

Contents

Gameplay

The goal of Iron Dragon is to connect seven of the game’s eight major cities with rails and amass 250 gold pieces. Players spend money to build railways and earn money by using them to deliver goods such as dragons, wands, spells, pipeweed, gems, wine and ale. Demand cards indicate three different combinations of good requested, city to which to deliver, and payout; generally longer distances between good production regions and destinations yield higher payouts. Players can upgrade trains for speed and cargo capacity, hire foremen to reduce building costs in various terrain, and even set sail to deliver cargo. Interaction between players is limited to competition for routes, as only one player can own the connection between any two markers, and the usually negative effects of event cards, which affect all players but may harm some more than others.

Reception

Scott Haring reviewed Iron Dragon for Pyramid #13 (May/June, 1995) and stated that "Iron Dragon carries my highest recommendation." [1]

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References

  1. "Pyramid: Pyramid Pick: Iron Dragon".