Still trying to figure out these Minion End-Game rules. Let me see if I can list what they need to do, in priority order, then I can take a stab at how.

1. Masters should be protected from their minions.
2. Minions should be weakened.
3. Masters should have some level of control over and/or interaction with their minions.
4. Other dragons should be able to capture a minion and become its master.
5. Minions need their own goal, if not re-gaining autonomy and potentially winning, then something else.

Here goes an attempt at some rules…

Instead of being eliminated, dragons with zero or fewer life remaining become the minion of the dragon who defeated them, known hereafter as the dragon’s master. If a player loses his/her last life on his/her own turn, that turn ends immediately.

• Upon losing their last life stone, defeated players give their new master the last life card to be placed sideways under the master’s life card(s) as a token of fealty.
• The new master gives the minion a card from his/her hand to be the minion’s new life card. The master places life stones on the card equal to its value.
• When that life is lost, the dragon who damaged the minion last becomes the minion’s new master, granting the new minion a new life card. A minion dragon who takes its own last life becomes its own master using a life card from the player’s own hand.
• A minion cannot initiate an attack against his/her master (though a Counter maneuver is allowed in defense).
• Masters can cast cauldron spells at the begin/end of their minion’s turn.
• When a minion draws a new hand, before looking at it he/she first gives it to his/her master who may exchange one card in his/her hand for one card in the minion’s hand.

Let’s see if these rules accomplish what I set out to do (although only playtesting will really tell).

Masters are protected from their minions, except from spells and from minions who get sick of their masters dumping low combat cards on them and decide to counter attack. I think that’s fair play, getting rid of low cards is an important part of the game, half-heartedly roughing up one’s minion is a legitimate strategy, as is turning around and smacking one’s master with a Counter.

Minions are weakened by their masters cherry picking from their hands. The old -1 penalty on attacks was too hard to remember to apply, I think this will be even more of a hindrance (masters will likely dump their 3s, 4s and 5s onto their minions in exchange for high cards or spells, although a more diplomatic player than I might be more clever). This also makes the above mentioned Counter maneuver far less likely.

Masters have a lot of control of their minions, in both seeing and stealing from their minion’s hands. Combine that with the ability to cast spells during their minion’s turn and having a minion is going to be pretty cool, you’ll never forget who your minion is, and players will be fighting over them.

Giving a minion a life card from what’s left-over after a presumably high card was used to defeat them means it’s likely to be a smaller card. This reduced life, the added power granted by having a minion, and the minion’s typically reduced will to live, means that minions are likely to exchange hands. That, and the only current way to regain control of one’s self is to commit hara-kiri via a spell, so teetering on the brink is the ideal state, if you’re a minion.

As I just mentioned, the goal of a minion at this point is to cast a Charged Lightning or Pact* and defeat yourself to become your own master. A dubious goal, and not easily achieved, but some of the feedback I received was that it’d suck if a dragon that you already defeated came back and won the game. So it shouldn’t happen very often at all, that way it’ll be cool when it does, so players might forgive the unfairness. Besides, can you think of a more twisted game mechanism than regaining autonomy by casting a Pact (with the Devil), The Devil being the original tarot card behind that spell?

* I think only these two spells could be used to defeat yourself, but I may need to either clarify the wording or put in some rules about “targeting” to make it clear whether you can Drain yourself, or other things like that. Targeting rules might be a good thing anyway, “target dragon” takes up much less room on a card than “a dragon of your choice”.

Thoughts?

I’ll have to balance out these rules by playtesting, but if any body’s following along here and thinks of anything I’ve forgotten to include from the last time we played the comments are open.

New Rules! I’ve played a lot more multi-player games since I last worked on Dragon Duel. One of the things that people have been observing during playtesting all along is that despite it’s name, Dragon Duel makes a very engaging 3-4 person game. The only problem is, it’s easy to get killed off early and have to sit out. But not anymore. Here is my original take on some end-game rules where dragons stick around instead of dying.

Instead of being eliminated, a dragon with zero or fewer life remaining becomes the minion of dragon who defeated them, known hereafter as the dragon’s master. The minion dragon keeps its last life card face up in front of it. Should the minion dragon gain 1 or more life it becomes its own master again.

• Minions cannot attack their masters.
• Minions attack other dragons, but with a -1 penalty.
• If a minion defeats another dragon, that dragon also becomes a minion of the same master.
• If a minion takes any damage, the dragon who did the damage becomes that minion’s new master.

Since writing the above rules we have played with them a few times and found them lacking. I’m toying with several possible mechanics, but the key decisions appear to be deciding how much control of their fate a Minion should have, and how much influence they should have on the remainder of the game. These decisions may be made by simple trial and error. Give a Minion the possibility of regaining control and see what happens. I’d like to experiment with increased interaction between Master and Minion, as well as increased control over the Minions behavior. I don’t know where it’ll go, but I know this idea is headed in the right direction.

Comments are open. Please toss your ideas into the mix.

Fast forward to 2006, Dragon Duel is back in action. Josh from work introduced me to Looney Labs, that “that hippie game company”, so I’ve seen a whole new take on game design and rules presentation. The rules sheet for Early American Chrononauts was particularly inspiring in it’s non-linear approach to teaching rules. I have attempted to emulate them in this, my latest version of the Dragon Duel rules. The text has only the most minor changes, but the presentation is far more visual, emphasizing in-game reference and using varying text sizes to prioritize the information.

New Rules!
Beta 2.1 Rules

The first round of spells are done: Rules / Spells. Now all I’ve gotta do is figure out how realms are going to work, polish up the rules, and start playtesting!