Aladdin's Dragons

I can see how this game may be seen as chaotic, but it's chaotic in a very fun way. ;) Each player has a set of pieces numbered 1 through 9, which are placed face down in various areas of the board, competing for different resources or abilities. Players take turns placing pieces, and then once all the pieces are placed, they are turned face up, and the player with the greatest total value of pieces in that location gets the prize. In some areas, there are prizes for second and/or third. At the bottom of the board is the dragon's lair. Each round, a dragon card is flipped up which says which dragons have treasure, and how much is to be awarded for 1st/2nd/3rd place in that area that round. This is the primary way players acquire resources: by competing for and winning these treasures. Of course, sometimes the prize might be a bunch for first place, and nothing for second! At other times the difference between first and second might be only a small gem. Turning over the tiles to reveal that one player put down their 9 and 8 and beat the others who each looked to have put down more, or that someone had placed a tile to contest for a small treasure, and no one had bothered to fight them, and the tile they placed was actually their 1, is quite fun.

Other areas to fight for control of are the market (trade one gem for 3 gems of other colors... which can help create colors you have a lot of); the caravanserai, the winner of which gains the camel (which means they go first, and break ties); and so on.

At the top is the palace. Here, players must play a number high enough to defeat the palace guard to enter and compete for the artifacts in the palace. But the palace guard is a number randomly chosen between 1 and 10! So it's possible for a player who fought hard over the artifacts to not even get in (and thus lose the benefit of the pieces played in the palace), because the palace guard was too high for them, while a player who played a high number against the guard and less inside the palace walks away with the artifacts for cheap. We had this happen a couple times, and it was the source of great enjoyment.

One of the things I like about this game is that even when bad things happen to you, it's fun and entertaining.

--Alex_Rockwell?, SeattleCosmicGameNight20030208

Sounds as though each turn of Aladdin's Dragons consists of multiple parallel turns of Raj?, in which case, count me in!

--Ron_Hale-Evans?, SeattleCosmicGameNight20030208

That's a pretty good description. It's certainly fun in the same way that Raj is fun. You reveal the stuff people placed face down, and then watch as people win with a low number, or outdid your big number with something slightly bigger....

--Alex_Rockwell?, SeattleCosmicGameNight20030208

I like auction games! This and Pizzaro_&_Co.? are two that I like very much and they are quite different in play. I really do enjoy how AD has you bidding on auctions in an unstructured manner but they are revealed as a story from the dragons, through the market and to the palace.

--ChadUrsoMcDaniel, SeattleCosmicGameNight20030208

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