Welcome to Lee’s Mandarin may I take your order?

Yeah I’ll have the Dragon Parade

Very good choice sir, light & enjoyable.

Does it come with rice?

If you would like I can bring you some.

Great
…. …. …..

Here you go sir.

Hey.. what the hell is this?

This is what you order: Dragon Parade, game by “Liner Knizia”. *

(*My apologies for perpetuating a bad stereotype. I know that Chinese-Americans don't really talk like this. I thought it was funny. Please feel free to insult Italian-Americans.)

Damn, I thought Dragon Parade was going to be lobster stuffed with steak. Oh well let’s take a look:

Dragon parade is a quick playing, easy-to-learn, game from Z-man games. Although the setting is a Chinese New Year celebration, let’s face the fact that this is just a thinly pasted on theme. In this game, a dragon dances to and fro while players place merchants along the path of the dragon hoping to be near it when the dragon finally stops. Points are awarded based on how close your merchants are to the dragon.

The game is comprised of a smallish board, a deck of cards, a cool wooden dragon figure, 3 wooden merchants in each of five player colors, and some cardboard coins. I can’t think of anything negative to say about any of the bits which is really weird but also good for Z-man because it shows some significant growth as a company when compared to some of their initial offerings. The board shows a winding path divided into spaces that is bounded by a red and yellow gate at each end and divided in the middle by the “forbidden city”. The path is colored red on red-gate side and yellow on the yellow-gate side.

To play the game, each player is dealt six cards. Each card has a red or yellow number on it. When it is your turn you play a card and move the dragon that number of spaces towards the yellow or red gate and then play one of your merchants on any space you choose provided that it does not go on the same space as another merchant or directly in-between two other merchants. Play goes around until all players have played all three merchants (unless an immediate round-end happens which I'll explain later). At this point each player discards two of their remaining three cards and all players simultaneously play their last card. The total is then determined and the dragon moves that number of spaces. Scoring then takes place. You get 5 points if the dragon lands on your merchant, three points each for any your merchants in the group closest to the the dragon on each "side" of the dragon (i.e. along the path in both directions), and one point for any merchants that don’t meet the previous conditions but are on the same “side” (i.e. red or yellow) of the city as the dragon. The round can also end faster than this if someone plays a card that marches the dragon out the gate in which case no more merchants are played and scoring is immediate. After you score, all merchants are removed, the dragon goes back to the Forbidden City, another hand is dealt and the whole process repeats. You play a number of rounds equal to the number of players.

So that’s it. There isn’t a whole lot of depth here and it’s very much a game of “chaotic gambling” as you try to guess where the dragon might end up. There is a bit of strategy in placing your merchants in such a way that they prevent other players from joining a group. I have noticed a lot of groupthink in this game meaning that once a player starts the dragon down the red or yellow path, most other players try to keep it on that side. Nevertheless, the start player is definitely at a disadvantage because he must play a merchant before any of the other players have played a card. If he plays red and everyone else plays yellow, he has lost points. Of course the ability to move the dragon completely out of the city keeps everyone from consistently playing the same color.

One strike against the game is that, although it says 2-5 players on the box, it isn’t much fun with two as the dragon doesn’t move very much. In fact, I would say it’s downright boring with two and if you are buying it with the intention to primarily play it as a two player game, you should find something else. Another is that the MSRP is $25 which seems a bit high for what you get in the game.


To it’s credit, Dragon Parade doesn’t feel like one of the “mad” Dr. Kinzia’s “frankengames” where he stitches a bunch of recycled mechanics together to make a soulless monster. The game feels like something original and in a group of four or five this game is a nice chaotic filler, or a good choice for families.