Fury of Dracula is a game that I recently picked up and have fallen madly in love with. As a relatively new user here at BGG, I was hoping that I, the green gamer, might be able to offer my views to you, the veteran gamer. I intend to go over the familiar topics of view for this game: components, theme, mechanics, and flow of play. After all that I’ll wrap it all up in a conclusion and tell you what I really think.

Components: The first impression is the most important impression you’re going to leave on somebody. Someone will always remember you how they met you, so you really need to dress for success. Fantasy Flight is famous for their lavish productions and just making these games look beautiful, even if it means going over the top. The people over at Fantasy Flight know this and have dressed there little Dracula to the nines. Fortunately, they sent him to the party wearing a classic tuxedo as opposed to Zubaz. What I mean to say is Dracula is a game that is produced with high quality, but it looks classy. It feels classy. It knew when to stop and not go too over the top. I appreciate this a lot. You open the box and components are simple but well made. The game board is a beautiful map of “olde Europe”. The cards are a really high quality, the artwork fits the theme of the game beautifully, and the layout is as pleasing to look at as it is functional. The cardboard chits that the game comes with also has beautiful, thematic artwork. The chits are printed on very thick and sturdy cardboard. The rule book, which is as big as the game box, is a little unwieldy at times. Mine has a lot of wrinkles in it from people trying to hold it open like a book. The miniatures that the game comes with are fun to look at but they’re not painted! I applaud them for leaving the painting up to the tastes of the individuals who own the game, but I haven’t painted mine yet and they are a bit of an eyesore.

Theme: This is where the game really shines. This game has the universe of Bram Stoker’s Dracula painted as the backdrop. The setting of an olde turn-of-the-century Europe just draws you in. The board itself makes you feel like you’re actually looking at an olde map of Europe. The theme is what drives this entire game. Everything is designed to fit the visual theme. All of the mechanics are designed to support this theme. Fantasy Flight did everything that they could to make sure that you feel like you’re hunting Dracula. Because of this, this is a top notch game.

Mechanics: I’m sure this has been beaten to death and if you’re reading this you probably already know how the game works, so I’ll KISS (keep it simple, stupid). The goal of the hunters is to slay Dracula. Dracula is trying to sire new vampires for his undead army in Europe (represented by a vampire track that goes up to 6 points). There are two sides to the game, the hunters and Dracula (the hunted). This gives the game a great cat and mouse type feel to it. I’ll discuss both sides’ options separately.

Hunter Mechanics: The hunters get to move around Europe from town to town. They do this by road, rail, or boat. Road offers a standard movement. Taking a boat offers you no chances to search for Dracula while you are at sea. In taking the rail, you roll a special die, which I think is a fantastic little mechanic. The possible outcomes of this roll are getting help up over papers and losing your turn or moving one or two spaces. Again with the theme of the game, if you’re in Western Europe with the newer railroad system, you have the possibility to move three spaces as well. This system of hunter movement offers interesting choices later in the game because not all of the towns are connected by rails and so it can become difficult to trap Dracula. Also, if you are on his tail, do you take the train to catch up to him and risk being help up and letting him escape, or do you just stay on the trail?

When in towns, hunters have the chance to re-supply. This means drawing items and events based on what size town the hunter is in. Drawing items consists of just drawing cards from an item deck. Drawing events gives another interesting choice for the hunters. There are event cards for the hunters as well as Dracula in the event deck. When an event card is drawn, it is drawn from the bottom of the deck and a symbol on the back of the card will dictate whether the card is given to the Count or to the hunters. There are some game-breaking cards in the deck that will just ruin your day (most notably the card that allows Dracula to teleport to any legal spot on the map). This adds a press-your-luck mechanic. Will you keep drawing events even though you have a chance to add to Dracula’s power as well?

Dracula Mechanics: Dracula moves in secret. He has a deck of cards that corresponds to all the locations on the map. As he moves he lays down a six card trail of all the locations he has previously been to (thus he cannot cross his own trail). When the trail grows to the long, the oldest played called falls off the trail. He can only move by road or by sea and the card mechanic allows to the hunters to reveal parts of where he has been. Dracula’s trail cannot be revealed when he is at sea but it costs him blood points to travel in this manner. The blood is amount of life that Dracula has and he starts with 15 of these points. This gives the hunters a great feeling of being a hunter because you can pick up his trail and then follow the trail around the map. As Dracula leaves these location cards, he puts a leaves behind traps, called encounters, on his trail cards. Some of these encounters are just traps, but others are vampires that Dracula wishes to have fall of the trail (this is known as maturing the encounter). Dracula can also place locations in his catacombs when they fall off his trial with the bonus of placing a second encounter on that space as well. This adds urgency to the hunters to find the count because if they don’t, he’s just going to pollute the map with traps that will be difficult to overcome.

Dracula also has powers that he can use throughout the game. The offer him the chance to recover lost blood, move more quickly, and even double back on his position.

Combat is a mechanic that can be somewhat frustrating at times. When combat is entered, both sides place a combat card (item or other attack) down on the board, and then there is a roll off. The cards are revealed and then winner of the roll’s card takes effect. There are numbers on the cards that will determine the winning card in the event of a tie. Then the result of the combat is read from winner’s combat card from a table containing the losers combat card. It is a pretty fluid system that can just make you made when you can’t get a good roll. It is also frustrating to learn that you are ill equipped for a fight and cannot do any real damage.

As play progresses day turns to night and eventually night turns to day. This is a GREAT mechanic because Dracula becomes more powerful in the night. At the dawn of a new day he becomes one step closer to winning the game.

Flow of Play: At the beginning of any given round of play, Dracula advances the time (kept on compass rose type clock on the game board) by one. He then moves in secret and places an encounter in his new locations. The hunters then go around the board in a set order and take their turns, moving, fighting, and collecting goodies. After players become accustomed to how the game plays and what they need to do each turn, each round of play starts to pass very quickly. This continues on until somebody wins the game.

Conclusion: What do I think of this game? I think it’s a masterpiece. It’s a beautiful game that just draws you into its universe. It encourages lots of interactions between the players. The game is really about egos. The Dracula player feeds his own ego by feeling that he is tricky enough to evade the hunters and create a vampire nation. The hunters have the pressing urge to deflate his ego and then feel great about themselves for doing it. Not everyone will like this game, however. Sometimes the game will frustrate a hunter player simply because they have been outwitted by the Dracula player and just want to give up. The game can take a while with new players because it is difficult to digest all the rules in one sitting. If you are willing to overcome the learning curve, this game is an Ameritrash masterpiece and must play for just about everybody.