In Seven Dragons, players start with a secret goal color from the seven colored dragons and a hand of three cards. The Silver Dragon is laid on the table as the starting card; at this stage it is a wild card. The playing cards feature domino-like colored panels in the same manner as Aquarius, an earlier game design from Andy Looney.
On a player's turn, he draws one card and plays one from his hand. Cards are laid so as to connect matching colored panels. The deck also includes Action Cards such as Move a Card, Zap a Card, Trade Hands, etc. The used Action Cards form a discard pile, and the top card of this pile dictates the color of the starting Silver Dragon; once the discard pile has started, the Silver Dragon is no longer wild.
The first player to create a connected territory of seven panels matching her dragon color wins.
Reimplements
Aquarius (released in 1998)
Edo's Seven Dragons Review
Images
- Easy to teach and quick to play
- Good for different age groups (pre-k to older children)
- Family-friendly and fun with lots of play options
- Card visibility/readability on the board is poor due to detailed art
- Art may be too busy distracting from core gameplay
- Dragon tile-matching and sequence building
- Fantasy dragon world; modular board with color-coded tile matching
- Abstract puzzle with hidden goal elements
- Aquarius
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- Blocking/interaction — players can influence others' options through placement
- card actions — action cards allow drawing/swapping cards or changing goals
- Hand Management — hidden gold card influences goals and can signal others' aims
- Set Collection — collect seven dragon images to win
- Tile Placement — place tiles to connect colors and build dragon patterns
- Tile-laying — place tiles to connect colors and build dragon patterns
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- seven dragons is a tile laying game essentially though you are using cards where you're trying to assemble tiles by matching these different dragons
- it's fast-paced easy to play easy to teach lots of fun
- the cards actually really hard to see on the board and it's just too much detail
- this is too good of a game to get lost in all this art
- something I recommend picking up seven dragons