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Andreas Propst
Austria
enzenkirchen
upper austria
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Today I had the great opportunity to teach the game to and test it with a new friend of mine, Börni, who, being in his early 40s, is a very talented musician, but hasn't played any card- or boardgames ever. All the more I appreciated Börni's open-mindedness and willingness to give BDB a go. I think playing with people without any gaming experience or game knowledge is a splendid opportunity to evaluate the game's value when it comes to a broader, mainstream audience...
Here's Börni (to the right) and me in the middle of playing the game:
The basic turn structue and gameplay were explained rather quickly, and Börni learned fast. Two major hurdles had to be overcome though:
Firstly the language barrier including the fact that Börni was not acquainted with gaming lino.
Secondly, it was hard for Börni to memorize the effects of the different Strategy and Item cards. As all my previous playtesters, Börni noted that if he had unique images on all the cards, he would have been able to associate card effects with a memorable image, meaning a much easier learning curve.
Strategy-wise we fought quite a lengthy poison battle, both of us fielding poisonous Dilophosaurus in the very beginning. While both of us inflicted a lot of Poisons on each other, I won the race by playing well timed Sacrifices, removing a lot of my Poison cards from the game while at the same time fielding poison-immune Brachiosaurus.
I bought a lot of Megalomanias, which, starting mid-game, allowed me to create 4 - 6 strategy card combos, which is rather the excepting in BDB when compared to some Action combos in Dominion for example.
At some point, Börni's Dilophosaurus succumbed to poisoning, he moved Spinosaurus to the front and I changed my strategy to another approach:
I retreated my Brachio and put Polacanthus into the active Dino Zone. I made heavy use of the "Charge" Strategy (+1 Draw, +1 Attach, +1 Attack).
Now you must know Polacanthus has only one attack, Tackle, which deals 10 damage for just one Attack card. What I did was I used Charge to attach two Attack cards and performing two tackles dealing 20 damage each turn.
Combined with the Poison Cards, my "Double-Tackles" brought down Börni's 55 Hit Point Spinosaurus pretty fast. The game was over after I had scored 2 KOs. Börni conceded as the game had dragged on so long that no more Dinos were left to buy for Börni, so we called it a game.
The game took us 2 hours, but with lots of explaining, chit-chat about non-game related things and cig breaks. Also we had quite a stalemate in mid-game, everyone just poisoning the other, while healing Dino HP with Repairs, so that may have been another reason why the game took longer than normal...
After BDB we played another of my games: Elemental Clash: The Basic Set
Börni enjoyed that one as well, got the rules in about 5 mins and annihilated me with an army of mermen and crab-people. He was able to deal 19 damage on the last turn of the game (granted, I gave Börni the best deck I had  ). Have a look at the picture below:
So here are Börni's thoughts after his first card games and his first time with a deckbuilding game.
Overall Börni enjoyed BDB a lot, although there were some hurdles to overcome, like the english card text, the "game lingo" he was not used to, the missing card art and the sheer variety of cards to choose from.
Börni said that the game offers a lot of choices and a profound strategic depth, which he will be able to fathom, enjoy and have fun with after he knows the game's workings better. Today he was just "sucking in information", which was fine considering he never ever played any games similar to BDB or Elemental Clash.
Börni also noted that for a total newbie regarding games like him, Elemental Clash would be an ideal introduction to the world of board/card games, but BDB has that quality as well.
When he left, Börni invited me to his place to play the game with some of his friends as well, which I am very much looking forward to! 
Well that is all for today.
As always, thanks for reading and until next time!
Yours,
Andi
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