Dragon Line Rulebook

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

• Components
• Setup
• Play
  • Draft Phase
  • Line-up Phase
  • Battle Phase
• Winning a Hand
• Card Breakdown
• Abilities
• Credits
• More Info

Components

• 35 unique Dragon Cards in five suits
  • 7 Air Dragons
  • 7 Earth Dragons
  • 7 Fire Dragons
  • 7 Ice Dragons
  • 7 Spirit Dragons
• 16 Activation tokens (on one card)

Setup

Players should ideally sit directly across from one another.

Each player should be given a set of 8 Activation Tokens (4 with the star icon, and 4 without). These should be placed face-down on the table before the player. (If this is the first time playing with this set, the Activation Tokens will need to be cut from their card, with care to ensure that all remain uniformly shaped.)

Note: There is no need to determine a first player in Dragon Line as all plays are simultaneous.

Play

A hand of Dragon Line is played in three Phases.

Draft Phase

Shuffle the 35 Card Deck, then discard 5 cards, randomly, into a pile off to the side. This will be the discard pile.

Deal the remaining cards into two 15 card stacks, and place one stack before each player.

Each player then looks at the stack before them, and drafts 1 card into their hand.

The players trade stacks, and each then draft 2 cards.

The players trade stacks again, and each draft 3 cards.

Each player should now have a 6 card hand.

Line-up Phase

Trade Stacks once more.

Each player chooses four of these cards to be their 'Starting Line'. The remaining 10 cards (5 from each of the draft stacks) are placed into the discard pile.

Each player places their Starting Line, in any order, face-down on the table, stretching toward the opponent's cards.

The table should look something like this:

[diagram: each player's four Starting Line cards laid face-down in a row, stretching from that player's side of the table toward the opponent's row]

Battle Phase

Each player uses their Activation Tokens, placed face-down next to each of their 4 Dragon cards on the table, to secretly select which dragons will activate this turn. A star Token indicates the dragon should be activated, while a blank token indicates that it should remain inactive.

When both players are ready, all Activation Tokens and Dragons are turned face-up to reveal each player's plans.

All Dragons deal and receive damage simultaneously according to the activated abilities (see Card Breakdown for more information).

Check the Dragons one at a time to see if any have received damage equal to or exceeding their health total. Turn these Dragons sideways in the line to indicate that they have been destroyed. (Because all damage is simultaneous, all activated abilities still function, even if the dragon was destroyed this round.) Players may use tokens to keep track of damage dealt, if needed.

Once all Dragon Cards have been checked for destruction, remove the destroyed Dragons to the discard pile. If no Dragons were damaged enough to be destroyed this round, the Dragon at the front of each line is destroyed.

Players may remove any of their own Dragon cards to the discard pile.

Move surviving Dragons forward (toward the center of the table) in the line, keeping their current order.

Each player then chooses cards from their hand to return their side of the line back up to 4 cards. These should be placed face-down at the back of the line.

Winning a Hand

Repeat the above Battle Phase steps until one player is unable to fill their line back to 4, the other player wins the hand.

In the case of a tie, the player with more total Health points on the table wins. If that's a tie, the hand is tied.

If scoring multiple hands, the winner gets one point plus an additional point for each dragon still in hand.

Card Breakdown

Each Dragon card shows a Health number, a Damage number, and an Ability.

Health: This number indicates how much damage a Dragon may absorb each round of the Battle Phase before it is destroyed.

Damage: This number indicates how much damage the Dragon deals to other Dragon cards. (Note that Spirit Dragons have no Damage number, and never deal damage directly.)

Ability: Each Dragon type deals damage in a different way based on their type (see below). Abilities do not distinguish between friendly and enemy cards.

Abilities

Arch (Air Dragons): Deal damage to the dragon one beyond the dragon in front of this dragon.

Strike (Earth Dragons): Deal damage to the dragon directly in front of this dragon.

Blast (Fire Dragons): Deal damage to the dragon directly in front of this dragon and the card beyond that dragon.

Explode (Ice Dragons): Deal damage to the dragon directly in front of this dragon and to this dragon itself.

Reform (Spirit Dragons): Change the statistics, as indicated, of the dragon directly in front of and directly behind this card. If two Spirit Dragons affect the same card any effects stack.

• Reform Damage.
• Reform Health.
• Reform Range (Affects each dragon type differently):
  • Does not affect Spirit or Earth Dragons.
  • Air Dragons damage the third dragon away (or fourth with two Range Reforms), instead of the second.
  • Fire Dragons damage a third dragon in front of them (no further bonus for a second Range Reform).
  • Ice Dragons damage two dragons in front of them and one dragon behind them, but do not damage themselves. (no further bonus from a second Range Reform).

Credits

Game Design - CB Droege Cover Art - Joanne Wojtysiak Card art (front) - Curtis M. McCartney Card art (back) - Amanda Troutman

Playtesters - Ilias Baidjiev, Betsy Droege, Tyler Luchka, Zach Smith, Ben Bastin, Joy Kitko, Emily McRae, Rob Updegrove, David Braud, Joe Lloyd, Amy Miller Hall, Emily Wake

More Info

For more information, and any rules errata, visit: HTTP://MANAWAKER.COM

Dragon Line and all associated rules and artwork is © 2014 Manawaker Studio. All rights reserved.