Flamecraft - Kickstarter Edition - First Play!

15th July 2023

It's a summery Saturday afternoon and we're participating in Wogglecon 8 at the Bisley Scout & Guide Hall for a whole day of gaming goodness!

I always thought dragons were a pretty bad bunch, what with their death-dealing fiery breath and perchance for human sacrifice.
Turns out they're a happy, cosy lot with a passion for artisanal crafting, or at least that's what they are in Flamecraft, a game all about dragons and err.... shopkeepers.

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What's in a game?

• Game mat: Flamecraft doesn't feature a game board, instead it makes use of a game mat, namely a long, narrow neoprene mat.
  Unrolling it reveals a sort of rural village green square setting with a park, spots of greenery, vegetable patches and like as well as a pair of parallel roads running lengthwise across the mat. Along these roads are numerous 'empty shop fronts'.
  Finally, spaces are allotted to decks and their 'respective markets' while a scoring track in the form of a stony path circles the central village green.

Set up & ready to play. That's one long village!

• Shop cards: These oversized cards each depict a colourful scene in their respective shops.
  As well as a (somewhat cheesy punned) name for the shop, each card also contains an icon which displays its type/resource in the top left corner, also a special ability may be shown in the lower half of the card.
  Along the bottom of each card are 3 'card spaces' - which will be filled by dragon cards, each of these spaces contains icons which indicate what type of dragon card can be played there and what actions they trigger.
  Shop cards come in 2 types:
  Starter shop cards: These 6 cards which correspond to the game's 6 resource types and start the game in play.
  Shop cards: These come in 7 types which also correspond with the game 6 resources, the 7th type is the 'special' type.

The red (Err.... meat?) resource starting shop card along its associated matching starter card.

• Dragon cards: As the name implies, these cards depict the game's dragons. Each dragon has a name and illustration, their card also details their action or bonus.
  Dragon cards come in 3 types.
  Starter dragons: These 6 cards start the game already in play. Each card shows its type/resource in the top left corner - which correspond to icons on the shop cards. The lower part of each card displays a 'flame' icon alongside whatever ability it confers when 'fired' up. More on firing up dragons below.
  Abilities allow players to acquire goods or give them away for victory points (VPs), as well as acquire more artisan or fancy dragon cards and so on.
  Artisan dragons: These are fundamentally the same as the starter cards but are acquired during play.

Deathfang and Cutlet.... Together, they fight crime?

• Fancy dragons: These are the 3rd type of dragon card and provide once-only benefits and come in 2 types shown in the top right corner. Day cards provide a in-game bonus when played during the game. Night cards meanwhile, provide a objective which scores VPs and are only revealed at the game end.

Sparkle is a 'day' fancy dragon card.

• Enchantment cards: We're not done with cards yet.
  Enchantment cards are landscape orientated cards that come in 2 types - purple and gold that provide 2 levels of difficulty, of which gold is the harder.
  Each one shows its name along with type in the top left corner. The centre of the card shows its 'cost', while along the bottom it lists what benefit it confers on the player who 'bought' it. Some benefits have 'tiers' which provide greater benefits, the more is spent on it.
  ​As well as providing players with their benefit, they are added to shop cards of the matching type which increases the goods that shop pays out when visited.

Example of enchantment cards.

• Meeples: Flamecraft: Kickstarter Edition uses 3d plastic models for player tokens.

Should this be a 'dreeple'?

• Tokens: 7 types of currency (6 kinds of resource and also money) are used in Flamecraft.
  For the Kickstarter Edition, the resources are all chunky shaped and screen printed tokens, while the money in the form of coins are made of metal.

Note: There are some component differences between the kickstarter edition of Flamecraft (Which is what are in the photos.) and the standard version. Basically, the kickstarter edition has higher quality tokens.

So thus, the overall component quality is good. Tokens are colourful, well presented and satisfyingly chunky, as as the metal coins. This version even comes with some tokens trays.
Having said that, I was not particularly fond of the 3d plastic player meeples. While they are chunky, bright and fairly good 3d sculpts, they're also unpainted plastic and essentially monochrome which somehow lends them a sort of drab quality. Ironically, the standard edition comes with screen printed meeples which in my opinion are much  more preferable.
The cards are the pretty normal high quality expected from modern games.

Without a doubt, Flamecraft features excellent artwork and art direction.
It utilises what is known nowadays as a 'cosy' art style. It's a breezy cartoonish style filled cheerful and colourful illustrations and gives the game a happy, positive vibe without being overly busy.
While the game does have a fairly big footprint, the upside is that it has a brilliant table presence.

There's quite a few icons in Flamecraft but many of them are self explanatory, a few might require players to initially reference the rulebook, it's nothing bad and won't prove an obstacle to players.

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How's it play?
setup

• Game mat: Roll out the game mat and perform the following.
  • Shop cards: Put out the 6 starter shop cards on any 6 shop spaces on the mat.
  • Shop deck: Right - this one is a bit more involved.
    First sort the shop cards into their 7 types (6 goods and specials.), then shuffle each into its own face-down deck.
    Next draw 1 card from each goods deck, 4 cards from the specials deck, shuffle them together into the shop deck and put them on to their spot.
  • Starter dragons: Take the 6 starter dragons and place them on their corresponding starting shop cards.
  • Enchantment deck: Decide whether to use either the purple or gold cards and shuffle them into a face-down deck. Next, deal 5 face-up cards on to their allotted spaces to create the enchantment card 'market'.
  • Fancy deck: Shuffle the fancy dragon cards into a face-down deck.
  • Artisan deck: Select the number of artisan dragon cards required as per the player count and shuffle them into a face-down deck and place it on its allotted space on the game board. Then deal 5 cards face-up on to their spaces to create their market.
• Player setup: Give each player the dragon meeple and score tracker in their player colour - place the score tracker on the scoring track.
  Fancy dragons: Deal 2 fancy dragon cards face-down to each player who should select one and return the other to the bottom of the fancy dragon deck.
  First player: Determine the starting player. Depending on player count, players later in the turn order will receive some starting goods.

On to play
Flamecraft uses a traditional turn order with the active player resolving their turn before play moves to the player on their left.
On their turn a player must visit one of the shops in the village and then they can choose whether to make use of the shop's facilities or enchant the shop.
A turn plays out as follows.

• Visit shop: The active player must visit a shop, furthermore, it must be a different shop to the one they currently have their meeple on.
  If any other players have meeples at the shop the active player visits, then the active player must pay each of them either any 1 good or 1 coin.
  Now that the active player is at a shop, they must choose from the following 2 actions; gather goods or enchant shop.
• Gather goods: This is basically - go shopping! The active player performs the following action and optional actions.
  • Gather goods: The active player must gather goods and acquires whatever is shown in the top left of the shop card which is usually a good but might be something else. Additionally, they also gain a good from each artisan dragon (Which is shown in the top left corner of each artisan dragon.) on the shop and from each enchantment that has been put on the shop - more on enchantments later.
    As well as goods, a player may acquire money or cards from gathering.
  • Place dragon: This optional action allows the active player to place a dragon on to a empty space on the shop card they are visiting.
    A dragon may be placed on to any of the 3 spaces provided they're empty and the dragon card's type matches the type required on the space. When a dragon card is placed, it will trigger the action alongside that requirement.
    Abilities on the dragon card just played are not triggered.
    Filling a shop: If placing a dragon fills the last available space on the shop card, the active player draws a new one from the shop card deck and at the end of their turn, reveals the new shop.
  • Fire up a dragon: The active player may optionally make use of the special ability of one of the dragons already on the shop card - not the one they just played.
  • Shop ability: Finally, the player may choose to use the shop card's own special ability.
• Enchant shop: The other main action a player can perform is to enchant a shop, this also allows them to perform a optional action.
  • Use enchantment: The active player must buy one of the available enchantment cards. The card will list its cost in goods, which can also generally be paid for with coins in place of goods.
    Gain rewards: When an enchantment is bought, it will confer a reward on the active player. This reward may also 'scale up' by paying more goods.
    Place enchantment: The active player must now place the enchantment card on to a shop card. No more than 3 enchantment cards can be placed on any shop card.
  • Fire up dragons: The active play may now choose to fire up all dragons on the shop card they just enchanted.
• End of turn: When the active player has completed their main action and optional ones, the end of turn occurs.
  • Reveal shop card: If the active player drew a new shop card in their turn, it is now revealed and placed on the mat.
  • Check limits: At the end of their turn, the active player can have no more than 7 of each good and must discard if they exceed that, coins do not count as a good and are not subject to a limit.
    A player can also have no more than 6 artisan dragon cards in hand, there is no limit to how many fancy dragon cards they may have.
  • Refill drafting markets: If there are less than 5 face-up artisan dragon or enchantment cards on the mat, they should be restocked from their respective decks.
  • Next player: Play now progresses to the player on the active player's left.

Endgame
The game end is triggered when no more cards can be drawn either from the artisan dragon deck or enchantment deck.
1 final round is played and the game goes to scoring.

Players now reveal and score their 'night' fancy dragon cards.
Players also earn a VP for each coin they posses.
These are totalled with their scores on the scoring track.

Points are tallied, highest score wins.

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Overall
Thematically, I'm not sure what to make of Flamecraft. It seems a little mismatched but conversely, it doesn't matter or feel 'off' because of it. Ultimately, the game's theme is its own thing and that thing is about going shopping and managing those shops!

Mechanically, Flamecraft is pretty straightforward, even though it appears to have a lot of moving parts, it's not as complicated as it first might appear.
For the most part, players will be gathering resources and when it comes down to it, choosing from 6 actions - those associated with the 6 goods and artisan dragons, other actions, optional or not don't really change.
Those 6 actions are the core of Flamecraft's gameplay and as well as some pretty standard choices that gain goods or cards, there's some more interesting options here, particularly one that allows the active player to gift goods to another player in return for VPs, something that's appropriately cosy for the game!
These 6 options form the crux of the Flamecraft's meaningful decisions.

Players need to use those decisions to optimise their actions, Flamecraft is all about optimisation. Players will find themselves gathering goods and coins which they will use to buy enchantment cards or fancy dragons which is the most reliable way to earn VPs - and they'll want to do it quicker than their opponents, creating a fast building engine is vital.
The thing is though, that essentially anybody can use any engine because all players players basically have access to all shops, albeit sometimes at a price. Luckily, day fancy dragons with their instant bonuses throws some asymmetrical elements into the mix.

While not really a light game, Flamecraft is fairly straightforward to learn and most players will pick it up quick enough. Although there was a rule that threw me off several times, which was; when an artisan dragon is played on to a shop card, it's special ability is not triggered and instead, the ability on the space it is placed on to is triggered! It felt counterintuitive to me!

Flamecraft is a fun game with an equally fun theme and I'm sure that a lot of people will enjoy it but it didn't quite click with me. I'm not entirely sure why but I felt like maybe the engine building and combo-moves were uninspiring.
This is another one of those games I'd happily play if it was someone else's choice but not one I'd pick myself.