Dragonology

This game looks nice, but the thought that went into it is inadequate and the design is sorely lacking. The pieces are well molded but don't sit on the board squares well enough to prevent knocking them all over the place as you move other pieces around. The board is creased, which also upsets pieces from time to time. One of the intricate and unhelpfully over-sized dragon pieces fell apart within a week or two, and putting all of the game pieces back into the form-fitting plastic mold they came in is tiresome. The game board is unnecessarily hard to re-fold. If you can look past the wobbly pieces and lack of thought put into the design of the board, you won't be able to escape the dull nature of the game itself. A turn frequently consists of rolling a 12-sided die (which is the same color as the board, so it is continually hard to find again), then ponderously counting up to 12 squares in a number of directions to see if you can land your dragonologist on a valuable tile. You don't really travel meaningfully around the board so much as you zig-zag to and fro trying to hit special tiles without any real destination. You're rescued from having to use the die if you play a travel ticket card, in which case you can make illogically lengthy or absurdly short trips between special tiles. Don't try to think too hard about the board navigation system or why there are redundant land travel cards (Elephant and Stagecoach and Camel). There's no logic there. The Bit of Knowledge cards have an irregular shape which makes them hell to shuffle, gather, and hold. The instructions in the manual and on the cards are incomplete. leading players to have to make judgment calls on how the game should be played. Some of the special action cards are absurdly powerful and can wreck the balance of play instantly, while others are the more usual steal-a-card type. The basic upshot of play is that you repeatedly roll a die and count squares, then you draw cards trying to make a book of dragons before other players do. Whether those dragon cards in the book are still considered in your hand is anyone's guess, as the rules don't say. We play with books no longer in your hands and shown on the table. When you have enough dragons you move across a real map of Earth to a fictitious island, then you have to roll an exact number to reach the Dragon's Eye and win. What happens if you roll a 7 but need a 6 is not covered in the rules-- perhaps you should move backwards 7? Simply skip your turn? Who knows? This is an attractive game that is a pointless headache to play.