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By: Kim
October 9, 2022
Overview
Flamecraft is a 1-5 player worker placement, action selection game where you play as a Flamekeeper to place Artisan Dragons at shops to amaze customers and shopkeepers alike with their Flamecraft. I Kickstarted the game last year, and after one of the smoothest fulfillments I have witnessed as a novice Kickstarter-er, I received this in the mail a few weeks ago!
In Flamecraft, you start with 6 starter shops on the board, and a randomized deck of facedown shops you will place and reveal when shops fill up with Artisan Dragons (as employees). Each player starts with a special dragon card (a secret objective for end or mid-game scoring) and 5 artisan dragon cards. You can do one of two things on your turn: gather resources or enchant a shop. When you gather resources, you will move your dragon mini/meeple to the shop you want, gather the resources from the shop, its enchantments, and any artisan dragon cards that are there. You may then play an artisan dragon from your hand to the shop, activate any dragon in that shop, and do the shop ability. When you enchant, you move your dragon mini to the shop you wish to enchant, pick an enchantment from the faceup enchantments available or one that you’ve reserved, pay the resources needed, gain the benefits, and place the card by the shop. You may then activate all the dragons at that shop by doing their abilities in any order.
The end of the game is triggered when the last card from either the artisan dragon deck or the enchantment deck is drawn. Everyone will get one last turn including the person that triggered the end of the game and the person with the highest score wins!
Thoughts
So far, I’ve played this 4 times at 2 players and 5 players and had a great time at all player counts! With 2 players you have more control over the game, which allows you to strategize a little more, but at 5 players it’s just a lot of fun. I was worried at first that it would be too light, but it’s not. There is still a fair bit of strategy to figure out. I’m really excited to get more plays of this in and introduce more people to these cute dragons!
The production is so good on all the components in the game! The Kickstarter version came with wooden resources, Game-Trayz inserts, dragon miniatures, and metal coins. However, the retail version comes with wooden dragon meeples that I think are still very cute and the neoprene playmat that acts as the board. From my understanding, this game should hit retail in the next few months and I highly recommend it because the art and game play do not disappoint!
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