All it takes is one wrong step and… a clang! – review of the board game “Brzdęk! Don’t tease the dragon “

It is not easy to kill a dragon, so it is no wonder that the thieves who have decided to steal the gold and artifacts from under the reptile’s nose, stumble upon a whole lot of discarded equipment. And although the plan to sneak quietly into the dragon’s lair, pick up better loot and escape seemed perfect, our heroes did not foresee one thing. It is terribly dark in the dungeon, so every now and then you stumble … Unfortunately, the dragon has a very good hearing … here’s the Clank! Don’t tease the dragon .

Companions, gems, deals and monsters

Twang! Do not tease the dragon is primarily 183 cards and a double-sided board. In addition, there is a pile of tokens, cubes and pawns in the colors of the players, a dragon figure and a sack. The compact placed in the game serves its purpose, perfectly segregates cards into three piles (players’ deck, dungeon deck and reserve deck), which can be easily sleeved. Only the bag has no dedicated space and it needs to be slightly squeezed into one compartment. The box could be slightly smaller. I don’t see any point in giving a larger piece than the size of the board.

Feel the dragon breathing on your back …

Gameplay in Brzdęk! it is not complicated. This is typical deck building. On our turn, we play five cards from our hand. Thanks to them, we can gain one of the three resources, i.e. shoes (they allow you to move around the board), swords (used to fight monsters) and skill points (needed to buy new cards). Of course, sometimes you will also encounter unusual abilities, such as teleportation, generating a buzz, obtaining gold. The whole philosophy is based on creating combos between the cards and the board and on finding the optimal path (some corridors require a key, others require an additional shoe, and in others there are monsters that will damage us if we do not use up the sword).

As the name of the game suggests, buzzers play an important role. It is simply the noise we generate when we stumble or use unusual items (such as the Singing Sword). The drones are cubes in our color that we have to place in the drones area! when the card with the dragon attack symbol is drawn, these cubes go to the bag. Then we randomly draw as many as the dragon marker on the fury track shows. If a black dice is hit, nothing happens, but if it is in our color, we take damage (ten dice on the life track = death).

To win, we must go underground, grab the artifact (five to thirty victory points) and escape to the surface. The winner is the player who survives and scores the most victory points from artifacts, cards, and secrets. This is the game of Brzdęk in short ! Don’t tease the dragon .

On the way to the artifact

The gameplay gives a lot of satisfaction. I like deck building. Some cards have interesting effects, such as teleporting, forcing others to hit one clunk, or discarding cards to get swords or money or regain one health point. All this means that after the first turn, our deck will be different each time, sometimes more emphasis will be placed on eliminating clashes or on the contrary. So Brzdęk! offers many different possible tactical solutions, of course, it cannot be denied that the randomness in choosing cards from your own deck and the dungeon deck also has a big impact. Nevertheless, developing your deck and planning your moves around the map is rewarding.

I like that the cards are divided into types: companions, gems, deals, monsters. The last two stand out in particular. Purple cards (opportunities) offer an effect right away and are discarded, allowing you to move faster in the turn or regain health. Monsters, on the other hand, are clever use of swords to gain mainly gold. Of course, the title twinkles introduce an element of uncertainty. Better to be greedy or maybe take any artifact and run to the surface? Press your luck works well here. We not only devise tactics for the next round, but also estimate the risk.
Double-sided board definitely increases replayability.

Also, I like collecting money and buying items. The key makes it easier to move, the crown means additional victory points, and the backpack allows you to take another artifact. It is a pity there are no more equipment. Secrets, i.e. facedown tokens, that can be found in different rooms, are extra victory points, elixirs (health, swords, boots), money and dragon eggs. Cool thing. Randomly placing these tokens encourages exploration. It is worth mentioning that some secrets (e.g. a figurine of a monkey idol), items (e.g. a crown) have a positive effect on cards, so you can create different combos and gain victory points in many ways.

The elimination of players adds flavor to this game, and the person who finishes the game, fortunately, will not wait long, because when he dies or comes out of the dungeon, the final countdown will begin.

Run away you fools!

My teammates rightly pointed out that the buzzers should be marked with a symbol on the card, not just text, which is useful for explaining rarer and more complicated effects. A player who is eliminated, although he is still passive in the game, unlike, for example, in Monsters in Tokyo , may get bored, especially when the other players think for a long time. Despite everything, frequent playing can get boring, two maps are not much (add-ons come to the rescue, of course), especially since our route is determined primarily by the item we want to get, and the artifacts are always located in the same places. After all, these details are more like a spoon of tar in a barrel of honey, because Brzdęk! is a lot of fun.

Lochokrążca, Czyhacz, Rzygołak Rzygmunt…

Finally, I will mention two important things. First of all, I would like to commend the translators (Łukasz Gralak, Tomasz Międzik, Marian Dudek) for their good job. I like the descriptions on the cards (e.g. Ogre: Ignorance breeds aggression, and he is really ignorant ,  It crushes what it doesn ‘t  understand .  Which  is a lot ) and Polish equivalents, such as Gem Collector, Twardhead ( Orc Grunt), Tunnel Guide, The Queen of Hearts, Cichobiegi (Boots of Swiftness). Secondly, Brzdęk!     gains in replayability thanks to the application. It allows you to play solo and adds the Lieutenant’s mechanic to the multiplayer game. It is based on three events (e.g. take 3 coins on your turn) that may or may not have an effect (e.g. all players +2 buzzers). The application therefore puts even more emphasis on press your luck. Not only do we have to watch out for the buzzing but also the jellyfish’s (Lieutenant’s) anger. So you can optionally enrich the gameplay. The only drawback of the application is the lack of Polish language, but basic knowledge of English is enough to deal with this problem.

Is it worth teasing a dragon?

Definitely yes. This game is a great mix of different mechanics, so you can play a lot of games, and most importantly, it also offers a lot of emotions. Twang! he did not disappoint me, on the contrary – he charmed me.

We would like to thank Lucrum Games publisher for submitting the game for review.