Game: Drake & Drake

Thread: The "No Quarter" card.

keithpottage — 2008-08-24T10:48:19+00:00

Would you please tell us what you think the phrase "in any direction" means on the "No Quarter" card. Does it mean (a) that the opposing players tile(s) must be pushed in a straight line away from the first player's pieces or (b) that they can be pushed at 90 degrees from the player's tile, hence the phrase "in any direction"? Alternative (a) would seem logical but that wouldn't really explain the phrase.
Thank-you.

Thread: How is the tile value working?

wildjcrt — 2008-06-28T19:09:56+00:00

I buy a English version of this game.
When I finish reading the rule, I don't see anywhere mention about tile value when scoring. I'm strange in this , and may someone tell me How is the tile value working in this game?

Thanks. ^^

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Toynan — 2007-12-23T15:44:22+00:00

Summary card

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Toynan — 2007-12-23T15:42:14+00:00

Promotional card

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Capitaine Grappin — 2007-10-25T13:19:51+00:00

French edition (back)

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ddkk — 2007-10-11T04:28:57+00:00

Drake & Drake - Yellow Cards

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ddkk — 2007-10-11T04:26:27+00:00

Drake & Drake - Orange Cards

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ddkk — 2007-09-18T01:28:25+00:00

Drake & Drake - Board (with better resolution and lighting)

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ddkk — 2007-09-18T01:25:36+00:00

Drake & Drake - Back Cover (English Version)

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ddkk — 2007-09-18T01:23:18+00:00

Drake & Drake - Box Cover

Thread: Drake and Drake - "Sword a fun, or doubloon yer money back!"

Auzette — 2007-08-28T00:04:30+00:00

Theme: Pirate Drake is green with envy. Pirate Drake is purple with envy. Drake is Drake's brother. Drake likes to invade and loot islands as much as his brother Drake. Drake discovers his brother Drake on the same island. Now it's up to players' to take on the role of Drake (or his brother Drake) and pillage more loot, drink more rum, and acquiesce to the request of the siren's call for glistening gold treasure more than the other brother Drake.

Goal: Taking on the role of Drake (or... well, you know... his other brother Drake), players must control the largest portion of the spaces on the island. More points are earned by capturing spaces with gold and rum. Keeping a crew together (adjacent) earns additional territorial bonuses.

Playing: Drake & Drake setup is quite easy. A small board depicting an uncharted island is laid flat in front of the two players (additional players would require purchasing Drake & Drake & Drake & ...). The island is divided into a grid of squares. Some squares show water, which is off limits for placing pirates, though they can be pushed by a group of opposing pirates into the crocodile infested waters. Other spaces have kegs of rum, while others have highly prized treasure chests.

A deck of cards is shuffled and dealt out to players, half to Drake and the other half to ... his brother Drake. These cards represent the actions that can be performed by the two Drakes during each round. Players take the top eight cards from their deck to form their hands.

Next to the game board are stacked the pile of pirate tokens. Both players use the same pool of pirates, as each pirate token has a green side (envy) for Drake, and a purple side (envy's brother) for the other Drake.

In each player's deck are yellow and orange cards. Yellow cards are called Landing cards, which display a pirate on them ranked by strength from 1 (Jimmy Buffet level pirate) to 3 (George Foreman pirate). Action cards are orange, and provide special actions that disrupt the state of the board or mess with the other Drake's plans. Each round, players choose from two to four cards to place face down next to them. The number of cards a player chooses relates to whether the player is using powerful action cards or the common landing cards... the more action cards played, the less landing cards can be played.

Once both players choose their cards for the round, they're flipped over (the cards, not the players) and resolved based on the numbers shown on the cards. So, for instance, if I have cards numbered 5, 11, 23, and 30, and my opponent has 7,8,15, and 34, we would take turns sequentially from 5, 7, 8, 11, 15, 23, 30, and 34. This unusual twist means that players often take several turns in sequence before their opponent. Players are forced to weigh using more powerful cards later in the resolution against playing less powerful cards earlier in the round.

Over the course of several rounds, players invade the island, trying to form large, uninterrupted groups of pirates on the most valuable spaces of the island. Action cards thwart opponents by allowing players to flip over enemy pirates and convert them to their side (if those enemy pirates are flanked by stronger pirates), eliminate an enemy pirate from the board, push a pirate off the edge into the sea to its watery grave, or even infect surrounding enemy pirates with a nasty plague and remove them (as well as the infected allied pirate) from the board.

When neither player can play cards, or when the game board is completely full, the game ends. Points are tallied for Drake (and of course his brother Drake) based on what sections of the board their pirates occupy. Also, territorial points are tallied based on the groups of pirates for each player. Thus, a player with two pockets of five pirates would get points, and a player with one pocket of ten pirates would get more points (a lot more so, since the larger groupings are worth dramatically more points). The Drake who scored the most points wins against the Drake who scored the least points. For a wonderful house rule, the loser Drake has to change his name. That way, everybody wins, as the "same name" jokes die a well received, albeit belated, death.

Good Points:

* Quick and Easy - The game plays in 15-30 minutes, with minuscule downtime. Players interact with modest frequency, sometimes through direct confrontation and others times by crowding areas or cutting off portions of the game board to minimize the other player's bands of pirates.

* Balanced and competitive play - Runaway games are infrequent in Drake & Drake, since players get equal input into every round of the game. Timing is important, since pirates placed early in the game in pivotal locations remain candidates for some nasty action cards later on. On the other hand, action cards may wind up being useless if proper targets for those action cards disappear as the board changes during round resolution. Drake & Drake is neither too random or too predictable.

* Move Order Mechanism - The number system used to resolve the turn order of each round adds quite a bit more strategy to the game, forcing choices beyond just the power of the cards played. Without this system, the game would be a simple matter of playing the most powerful cards players have, with no additional thought involved. Since the numbers on the cards determine order of play, and with most (but not all) action cards having higher numbers which makes them resolve last, the choices are less obvious and risks must be taken.

Bad Points:

* Skewed starting hands - The initial deck is randomly selected from the same set of cards, split up and given to both players. This often leads to imbalanced decks that give a decided advantage one way of the other. While none of the gamers the reviewer was involved in ever swayed too far towards a blowout victory, the potential remains and the influence of the initial card draw impacts the game more than other games within this vein of playing style.

To its credit, there are a couple variants recommended that mitigate this issue, such as letting players preview and order their decks, or playing two matches and switching decks with the opposing Drake in between the matches.

* Moderate Excitement - Despite the premise of invading an island and capturing territory, rum and treasure, and duking it out with enemy pirates, the pace of the game seems strangely more sedate than one would expect. Action cards are the lone way to introduce momentary hiccups of excitement in what is otherwise an experience that's often as subdued as checkers.

* Rum not included - Terrible omission.

Conclusion: With a light pirate theme, leisurely pace of play, occasional foul tricks, and quick play time, Drake and Drake is a decent addition for families and the casual board game crowd. It's not a game aspiring to be more than a joyful romp through a time lapsed photo of a pirate's life, and taken with that expectation it's a reasonable purchase.

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Capitaine Grappin — 2007-07-05T02:55:53+00:00

The pirates

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Mosse — 2007-04-29T08:20:11+00:00

Close-up of a game in progress

Thread: Re: variant - equitable action card distribution

TRINDEL — 2007-03-14T02:34:59+00:00

Like suggested in the rule, play a 2-game match where you split the pack in 2, and exchange the packs for the second game. This should help balance the game enough.

Personnaly, I like the chaos in a game so we just play with one pile, and both drawing from that one pile.
Do the best with what you got!

Thread: Re: User Review

pduff — 2006-02-01T05:03:17+00:00

The board is quite small, and has some gorgeous artwork on it. It’s covered with water, palm trees, mountains, and grass. Of course, all this is just aesthetic, but it’s still nice nonetheless. The artwork on the cards and the tokens invokes a pirate feeling, and is nicely done. The card are a decent stock, with full descriptions of what each card does written on them.

I selected this game partially because of the small board. I often play two-player games at a restaurant during lunch or dinner. Since table space is usually limited, a small board is nice.

However we had a problem with the cards. The artwork is nice, but the text is too small to read easily and the font doesn't help. The numbers on the cards are crucial to playing the game and are hard to read, particularly when your opponent's cards are across the table, upside down and in low restaurant lighting. If the publisher reads this, please use larger, easy-to-read numbers in the next printing.

Thread: Re: User Review

pduff — 2006-02-01T04:47:38+00:00

One of the potential problems in the game is that since the cards are distributed randomly, it is entirely possible for one player to receive more action cards than their opponents. I haven’t played enough to determine if this would skewer the game, but since action cards are fairly powerful and can drastically alter the board situation, it seems as though that if one player gets a substantial majority in action cards, he would have a decided advantage.

If you consult the rulebook, this is "dealt with" (pun) by letting each player review their half of the deck before shuffling it for the first game, and then trading half-decks with the other player for the second game. Winner is determined by totalling the scores for a pair of games, so there is no advantage for either player from how the deck is randomly split. But it does keep the game fresh across multiple plays.

Thread: Re: English rules

apotheos — 2005-11-20T20:10:56+00:00

I'm more than happy to send them to anyone who asks. Drop me a GeekMail if you're interested.

Thread: Re: English rules

lippo — 2005-11-20T15:54:59+00:00

Doesn't matter. Thank you all for your kind replies.

Marco

Thread: Re: English rules

Gomez — 2005-11-20T09:40:07+00:00

lippo wrote:
M. Cathala has consented the publication of the Molly & Lore game rules. Could anyone help me, please?

Unfortunately M. Cathala can't, I already asked. It seems that he wasn't given a copy of the translation

Thread: Re: English rules

apotheos — 2005-11-19T18:58:05+00:00

I've provided these rules before. Let me see if I still have those scans.

Unfortunatly I can't post them on the geek due to the rules about rules.

Thread: English rules

lippo — 2005-11-19T16:12:54+00:00

Just got the German version of the game via PlayMe (actually I also bought the others of this series (Tino & Tino, Atlas & Zeus, Molly & Lore). The latter is the only one that has an English scan of the rules while Atlas & Zeus has a translation thanks to Mr. Steve Cox. I'm trying to figure out the rules by reading the reviews posted here, but the actual rules would be better especially because of the special effects of the action cards.

M. Cathala has consented the publication of the Molly & Lore game rules. Could anyone help me, please? These games are surely fun, but I'd like to be sure I'm playing them right!

Thanks to everyboby

Marco

Thread: User Review

TomVasel — 2003-06-11T14:48:52+00:00

Yo ho! Yo ho! A pirate’s life for me. For some reason, a pirate theme is a common theme for a board game, yet very few games invoke that true “pirate” feeling. Drake & Drake is an example of the middle ground. It’s not dripping with pirate theme, but there is enough to satisfy theme-based folk. It’s a two-player tile laying game by Bruno Cathala, and is more about tile laying then it is about pirate wars.

So is the game worth buying? The short answer is that if you like two-player games, and already have the best of them (Lost Cities, Odin’s Ravens, Hera and Zeus) and still want more – then yes! If you are looking for your first two player games, I’d recommend one of the others first.

And now for the longer answer….

First, a short description of game play…

The small board has thirty-one spaces on it, in a semi-grid. Eight of the spaces have a keg of rum on them, while two of them bear treasure chests. The object is to control the most spaces by placing pirates on them, with 10 points being scored for a normal space, 30 for some rum, and 50 for the treasure chests. A player is also trying to get as many of his pirates next to one another, for a “territory” bonus. Each player chooses a color, green or purple. All the pirate counters are two sided, with purple on one side, and green on the other – so players draw from the same common pile.

There is a deck of forty-six cards, 10 orange, and 36 yellow. Each yellow card allows you to place a pirate on the board (of value 1, 2, or 3), Each orange card allows a special action, as follows:

Elimination: Lets you kill a pirate adjacent to one of yours. Kill, maim, and destroy!
Epidemic: Lets you kill one of your own pirates to kill the adjacent opponent’s pirates.
Falsification of orders: Cancels any orange card played by the opponent, and allows you to place his pirates this turn.
Shanghai: Lets you pull an Othello type move, where you capture all pirates between two of yours.
No Quarter: Lets you push pirates (maybe into the ocean!)

The deck is shuffled and split into two decks, one for each player. Players take the top 8 cards from their decks for their hands. On each turn, they can play 4 yellow cards, 2 yellow cards and one orange card, or 2 orange cards. Both players play cards at the same time. Each card is numbered from 1 to 46. The lowest numbered card is played first, etc. Each player refills their hand and continues. The game ends when a player can no longer play cards, or when all the spaces on the board are taken up. At this time, points are totaled up, with a bonus being given for amount of pirates of the same type next to each other. This ranges from 5 points for having two pirates adjacent, to 400 points for having twenty pirates adjacent! The higher point total is the winner!

Some comments on the game:
1). Components: I’m a huge fan of all Euro Games boxes, as they keep their sizes standard, and everything fits inside Their new two-player series is not exception. Drake & Drake’s box is small, compact, and sturdy. The inside of the box shows a picture of each card, so that you can look at all their text. The board is quite small, and has some gorgeous artwork on it. It’s covered with water, palm trees, mountains, and grass. Of course, all this is just aesthetic, but it’s still nice nonetheless. The artwork on the cards and the tokens invokes a pirate feeling, and is nicely done. The card are a decent stock, with full descriptions of what each card does written on them. A card comes with the game that shows the treasure map (board), so that when the pirate tokens are covering up the treasure chests and rum barrels, you can still know where they are. It’s a clever, and very nice touch. Another card lists all the orange cards and tells what number they are. The pirate tokens are nice and thick. My only negative reaction to them was that I wish they had picked different colors besides dark purple (red?) and dark green. Brighter colors would have been easier to tell apart, and would have gone well with the pirate theme. This is a game I am proud to pull out, as it’s components are top-notch!

2). Rules: There are three pages of rules that come with the game, including some optional rules for those who want more strategy. The rules are very, very clear, and two more pages are included that give examples with pictures. Pictures are very evident throughout the rulebook, and the font is easy to read. One problem with the rules, however – The Victory points for territory calculation are NOT in the rulebook. Rather, they are on a card that comes with the game. While that makes it easy to figure out scores, if you lose the card, you are in trouble. I don’t plan on losing my card, but I still think the point values should have been duplicated in the rulebook.

3). Strategy: This is my favorite of the three “Games for 2” games designed by Bruno Cathala because of the strategy involved. Yes, there is a good amount of luck involved in which cards you draw. But you have so many choices with those cards, that I think a better player will win a majority of the time. We found that while the treasure chests and rum barrels were nice (and you can’t ignore them) that it was crucial to get large amounts of territory to win. And orange cards cannot be ignored – they can really do some crucial damage to your opponent. Several times I have broken up my opponent’s large territory with a well-played orange card.

4). Fun Factor: While the theme is not very strong – it is there. You can make yourself feel the pirates as they slash and hack at one another. We find ourselves yelling “Arg Matey” and “Walk the plank!” The game is very simple to teach to beginners, and is easy to play. But more than that, it is a good bit of fun. The numbered card idea is a good one, and solves all timing rules, and game play runs very smooth.

5). Colors: As I said before, the game is awash in color. The rulebook, the board, the cards, the back of the cards, the tokens (kind of), the box – all are brightly colored and help invoke that pirate theme. It also stands out on my rather large game shelf. I have to admit that I like colorful games.

So in conclusion, I have to admit that I like this game. I’m not drawn to it like I am to Odin’s Ravens or Lord of the Rings: Confrontation, but it is a quick, simple game to pull out. The theme is not strong, but it is there, and that helps contribute to the fun. That, coupled with the fact that I can get a “non-gamer” to play this makes it a winner in my book. It’s not too expensive, so if you already have Lost Cities and the other great games of the Cosmos line, give this game a try!

Tom Vasel

Thread: Session Report

hinj — 2003-04-01T14:06:07+00:00

Two brothers have identical treasure maps and are trying to get
the treasure first. Interestingly, there was only one reference card
showing a map. To hold up with the theme's story, there should have
been two. At any rate, a deck of 46 cards is dealt evenly between the
two players. Each turn, they pick a "trick" out of their hand to play.
This trick must either be 4 landing cards (put four guys on the island),
2 landing cards and 1 action card (nasty stuff to do to your neighbor),
or 2 action cards. Game ends when one or both players cannot form a
valid trick. Score is determined by what type of island space your
pirates are on (vanilla plain & empty is 10 points, a rum barrel is 20
points, a treasure chest is 50 points), as well as how big a mob your
pirates are in. That is, large groups of adjacent pirates of the same
color score big points. I mean BIG points. I found this game to be
extremely frustrating. Because the deck of 46 cards is randomly dealt,
it is possible for one player to have all the powerful pirates, one
player to have all the action cards, one player to have all the
advantages. Our first game was more balanced with a fairly even
distribution. The second game, however, Andy got all the strong
pirates, I got all the action cards but didn't have a strong enough crew
to use any of them. It was very frustrating. There's an "optional
rule" which has players exchange decks and play a second game.that might
even it out a little, but still. Ick. I didn't like this one, though
it was interesting. The decisions were hard, though not agonizing. In
the case of the player with the rotten deck, the decisions were also
meaningless. Angela's rating after 2 plays: 4. Anyone interested in
trading for this one? I'll throw in War & Sheep, too.

Thread: Re:variant - equitable action card distribution

npetry — 2003-02-17T19:13:50+00:00

ljw74us (#4933),

Just a thought -- to preserve some uncertainty in the number of action cards each player recieves, a simple variant of this idea would be to give each player only 4 of the 10 action cards, and place the remaining 2 in the landing card deck before shuffling and distributing 19 of these to each player.

This will ensure that each player receives 4-6 action cards throughout the game, which should provide reasonable balance without giving players certain knowledge about the number of action cards they (and their opponent) may expect.

Obviously, for those wanting even more chaos, 4, 6, or 8 action cards could instead be returned to the landing card deck, with the remaining divided equally among the players.

Thread: variant - equitable action card distribution

ljw74us — 2002-12-20T16:56:38+00:00

This variant is to take care of the situation where one person gets all or most of the action cards in their deck. When this happens (and it has), the player without any action cards is at a serious disadvantage. It does mean, however, that with this variant you do know exactly how many action cards are possessed by each player.

1) Separate the 36 pirate landing cards and the 10 action cards.
2) Shuffle separately and deal separately to each player, giving each player 18 pirate landing cards and 5 action cards.
3) Each player then shuffles their 5 action cards with their 18 pirate landing cards, creating one 23 card draw deck, before dealing their starting hand.

The result is an even distribution of the action cards between players. The actual cards dealt and when they will show up in your hand is still random.

Thread: Session Report

gschloesser — 2002-12-14T16:32:25+00:00

This is part of the new 2-player line of games from EuroGames. The other two in the series are War & Sheep and Tony & Tino. These are becoming known as the ‘and’ games since they all have ‘&’ in their title! All are designed by Bruno Cathala, who is apparently an acquaintance of popular French designer Bruno Faidutti.

I had the opportunity to play all three games in the series with James Miller during our sight-seeing in Germany prior to the Essen convention. I found the games functional, but not very exciting. I’ve since played them again and my opinion really hasn’t changed. I do think, however, that they may be well suited for gaming with someone who is relatively new to gaming or perhaps a spouse who isn’t an enthusiastic gamer. They are all rather light and easy to learn.

Both Drake & Drake and Tony & Tino have a strong feel of Reiner Knizia’s Auf Heller und Pfennig, which was re-released by Fantasy Flight Games as Kingdoms. Several folks have aimed complaints at that game as being dry. The addition of event cards in all of Cathala’s games does add some spice to the proceedings, but for me, they don’t seem to measure up to Auf Heller und Pfennig in tenseness and enjoyment.

In Drake & Drake, each player assumes the role of a pirate competing to discover the buried treasures of another famous pirate. The small board depicts an island containing a 6x6 grid, with several spaces containing treasure chests, barrels of rum and a few lakes and inlets. The sequentially numbered card deck contains 36 pirate landing cards, which allow players to place pirate tokens onto the island, and 10 event cards. These are shuffled and 23 cards dealt to each player. Each player takes 8 of these into their hands.

Each turn, players must assemble a legal set of cards (called a ‘trick’ in the rules), which are then revealed simultaneously. A legal set consists of:

· Either 4 Pirate Landing cards; OR
· 2 Landing cards and 1 Action card; OR
· 2 Action cards.

If a player is unable to assemble a legal trick, the game ends immediately and points are tallied to determine the victor. Usually, though, this doesn’t happen until players only have a few cards remaining.
Cards are then executed in numerical order. Landing cards allow the player to place the a corresponding pirate token (valued 1, 2 or 3) onto an empty space on the board. The idea is to place these tokens onto the treasure chests or rum barrels, but building a contiguous line of pirate tokens is also important as this scores victory points, too.

Action cards allow the player to execute a specific action. These come in five varieties:

1) Elimination. Permits the removal of an enemy pirate located in a space adjacent to one of your own pirates.
2) No Quarter. Allows you to ‘push’ one or more enemy pirates one space in any direction.
3) Shanghai. Change an enemy pirate to your own pirate IF you surround that pirate (either horizontally or vertically) with your own pirates.
4) Epidemic. One of your pirates perishes and all adjacent enemy pirates (including diagonal) whose values are equal to or less than his value are removed from the board.
5) Falsification of Orders. You can cancel one action card played by an opponent and dictate where he may place his pirates this round. This is a very powerful card and there is only one in the deck.

One of the potential problems in the game is that since the cards are distributed randomly, it is entirely possible for one player to receive more action cards than their opponents. I haven’t played enough to determine if this would skewer the game, but since action cards are fairly powerful and can drastically alter the board situation, it seems as though that if one player gets a substantial majority in action cards, he would have a decided advantage.

Play continues until a player cannot form a legal set of cards, or until there are no more free spaces on the board. Points are then tallied for both players according to the following chart:

· 10 points for occupying a normal space
· 30 points for occupying a rum barrel
· 50 points for occupying a treasure chest
· 5 – 400 territory points for adjacent pirates

The final category is very significant. The more pirates a player is able to place adjacent, the more points he will score. For instance, if a player gets 5 pirates adjacent in a group, he scores 25 points. If he managed to get ten pirates adjacent, he will score 100 points. Each group is scored, so points can accumulate fast.

The game does play rather quickly – 30 minutes or so. That and it’s ease to learn and play are its strongest points. However, for me, the games in the series just don’t measure up to the brilliance of the game better games in the Kosmos 2-player game series. Still, these aren’t bad games. If you find yourself in a situation wherein you must play 2-player games on a regular basis – particularly with folks who aren’t as keen on gaming as you might be – then the games in the EuroGames series may well be a nice fit.
Jim seemed to have the upper hand through much of the game, but he misinterpreted one of his action cards, meaning that he had spent several turns placing pirates in positions that ultimately proved ineffective. I managed to grab a treasure chest and several rum kegs, as well as form several sizeable groups of pirates, earning enough points to grab the victory.

Finals: Greg 310, Jim 240

Ratings: Jim 6, Greg 5.5

Thread: User Review

gschloesser — 2002-12-14T15:33:43+00:00