CMON's Amazing Tiles of the Dragon Castle

BURNT! All Burnt down! The Dragon Castle is in ruins but with tragedy comes opportunity for the nobles, who you included has decided to use the ruins of the old Castle to build a new Dragon Castle. 

Dragon Castle is a game based on the Asian game of Mahjong Solitaire but reworked to be played with up to 4 players, have a higher tactical depth and of course no gambling elements.

This is achieved by firstly building the "old" Dragon Castle by stacking the tiles in the middle of the table as according to the rulebook. Then the player who has last seen a dragon other than in the game becomes the first player. 

The first player in the game is then able to do 3 things during his/her turn:

1. Draw two exactly same symbolled tiles which must have at least 1 of their long side not blocked by another tile.

2. Draw 1 tile which must have at least 1 of their long side not blocked by another tile and then place a shrine token in your available pool on your player board.

3. Draw 1 tile which must have at least 1 of their long side not blocked by another tile and throw it out of the game and gain 1 point. 

After a tile is drawn, tiles can be placed anywhere on the player's board other than on tiles that still have their coloured side showing. If tiles of the same colour are connected octagonally (Regardless of symbol's differences) in a group of 4 or more, turn the tiles over and gain the resulting points. After which the player may add shrines according to the rareness of the tile. 

The game continues till only a single layer of tiles are shown, then a new action is unlocked. It is to collect a dragon token which is equal to 2 points. From there, play continues until someone collects a dragon token and when the '!' symbol is revealed on the middle board, everybody else then finishes the round and final scoring happens.

Points are finalised by adding up the point and dragon tokens a player has collected throughout the game and for each shrine on their board's height (1/2/3 tiles etc.). The player with the most points wins. 

Related: Board Game Mechanics 101: Worker Placement

If you think that is all to the Dragon Castle then you are wrong, as the game can be taken to a whole new LEVEL! (Get it...level). This is because you can also add spirit and Dragon cards to the game which gives players new powers and ways to score and adds even more depth to the game without adding much more rules. 

A family friendly evocative design that oozes an Asian aesthetic that is both easy to teach, quick to play and has the added benefit of drawing a crowd. Who knows you might get a person into the board gaming hobby because he/she happens to be somewhat familiar with the game of Mahjong. 

We at TOYTAG are now distributing many great games from the famed Board Game Publisher CMON! If you are interested in Dragon Castle or any other CMON titles. Do feel free to hit us up at WWW.TOYTAG.COM. We are more than happy to serve. 

E: huibin@toytag.com

Zhou Huibin is a smith of words who majored in Philosophy & History from the University of Western Australia and whose life has followed the flow of his hobbies. He seeks continual contentment in his ponders, reading, writing, painting and board games which fills almost all of his time.