Seven Dragons

Perfect if you're in the market to buy a dragon. Several colours available.

Type: Strategy / Card
Players: 2 to 4

Time to explain to others: 1 minute

Time to play: About 20-30 minutes

Difficulty: To play 1/10, Game difficulty 4/10

Portability: High
Overall: 8/10

Seven Dragons does to card games what Ticket to Ride does to board games. It is possibly the simplest game you can possibly imagine, but it is done in a really intricate way and with stunning artwork.

The game is effective dominoes. You get a secret card, showing the colour of a particular dragon. You then need to play cards to try and make an unbroken chain of seven images of that colour dragon. Said cards might have one, two, three or four different colour dragons in them.

It is very easy to block an opponents' chain, so a degree of bluffing at the start is of the outmost importance (starting a chain of a different colour, for example). And then, you are at the mercy of the cards, if you are supposed to make a green chain, and all you have are red, blue and yellow dragons, you're not going to have a nice day.

You also have special cards, that allow you to move cards, eliminate cards, etc, providing the ever necessary element of randomness to the game. Also you have two other dragons, the aptly named Rainbow Dragon (all colours at once), and the silver dragon, the first piece of this dragon-y puzzle, whose colour continuously changes as the game evolves, giving you another dragon of your colour....Until your opponent changes him to something else.

Rui's conclusion: Seven Dragons is possibly the best introductory card game I've come across. The instructions even cover introducing the game to toddlers, starting them on the artwork, and then moving up in complexity as they age. Fantastically simple, entertaining, and very pretty!