So far I have played this game four times. Every time whoever brought the big dragon scroll on the first round (total of 24 pt) and played the book strategy seems to win every time. Is this game tilted?

I saw the same thing, first two plays. This was even done to the extreme of ignoring everything except what was required to keep the geishas alive, and getting money for more dragon tiles.

I was wondering if there is a way to compete with this.

I don't think there is a way to compete against this strategy. This is the narrow path to victory, and, against competent opponents, the game revolves around who does this the sooner and the better.

Which leads to an uninteresting game.

I will try next game the following house rule, that could cap the power of privileges as VP engines, making them worthy without being uber-powerful:
During each scoring phase, you cannot score more VPs. from the dragons of the privileges, than the number of palaces you have.

More discussion please! It's such a significant VP strategy; I'd have thought playtesting would have revealed a foil.

I think the problem is: except for the privileges, all the other elements that generate VPs need planning for maintenance. They need your hard work. A privilege, on the other hand, is a "buy and forget" thing. There is no risk of losing it no matter what you do during the game.

This will lead, naturally, to the kind of game described in the earlier posts.

A shame, because this game could be sooo good and different from the crop...

After playing once, looking at the results in another play in our group and reading session reports here, I think that it is premature to declare the "buy a 2-dragon privilege" move a guaranteed win.

What I think is that case is that it is the easiest move when inexperienced with the game and is likely to result in a win when the players are thrashing around trying to figure out what to do. This is because the privilege gives a guaranteed 24 points without having to do anything else, which is a significant amount in an early game.

This game seems to have a very significant learning curve. It rewards planning and efficiency. If you waste a move or miscalculate, you will pay. In my only game so far (4 players), it was also a case of a 2-dragon player winning with 90 points. I was in second place with 82. I knwo, though, that I made some blunders. I never used my builder and so lost the potential points from extra palaces/workers that could have been saved.

Spending all initial cash on the 2-dragon privilege gives a guaranteed payout, but leaves the player vulnerable. Options are limited if other players get ahead on the person track. On the other hand, staying in the lead on the person track limits options in other ways.

These limits are not as important in early games when the players are getting their bearings and not paying as much attention to what others are doing. Once there is more experience my guess is that the early points gained from the dragons will be given back later in the form of wasted workers, palaces, bonuses, etc. that the 2-dragon player will get aced out of. There is a lot going on here and too much to become effective at in a few plays.

In other words, this strategy will probably always make a player competitive, but as opponents get more experienced will get to be more of a guaranteed close loss than a lock for winning.

When you first play this game it certainly looks like the winning move. In my group there has been many wins from on both sides of the Yuan; Getting the priviledge first is only one of the ways to victory, and there are many others. I'm not saying it is not a good one - but it's not guaranteed. The more you play, you will notice other strategies based on the event order that will work as well unfold. I would not go selling this game short. You'll see. If you read one of the recent reviews - the one with 30 responses - we also discuss strategy there as well and I encourage you to read it. Enjoy!

I won my first game against somebody using this strategy so it's possible. I won both fireworks events and got the book action twice at the end with three book dudes (I forget what they're called now). I had been efficient in my other actions so I was able to save a wild card to recruit another book dude towards the end. I think it's pretty premature to declare the game broken.

The "2-dragon privilege at start" is not a guaranteed winning strategy. However, an early "privileges+ladies" setup is, not only extremely powerful, but also relatively easier to administer and maintain. Probably easier than any other thing you can try to achieve in the game. For example, no particular action required each turn to score VPs; has less elements to be screwed up by events or other players, etc.

Probably, a novice playing this strategy will be decimated by veterans who opt for other paths. But once you know the nuances of it (including, of course, screwing other players actions when the expected yield is high), I think it is more effective and less risky than any other I can think of.

Which will leads to a kind of game that revolves too much around that main strategy. A boring thing. Specially because the game's design has such a succulent framework for allowing multiple paths to victory.

One thing that should eliminate the boredom you fear is the variation of the events.

Even if someone tries to pull off this strategy in every game there will be a couple of things that will prevent play from becoming scripted. First, the order of the tiles themselves will make the strategy more or less effective and will require different maintenance to try to make it work. Buy a 2-dragon privilege on the first turn of different games and your point totals will be different based on the sequence of events. This provides different challenges to the player attempting it. Even with the same basic strategy, different paths will need to be taken to maximize its efficiency.

Second, this will lead to a different game for the opponents of the player trying this strategy. While the dragon/lady player is trying to find his best path, his opponents will also be looking for the best counters, put in context of how to put together their best game.

With the number of combinations possible with 10 varying events, there should be plenty of exploration in this game before it gets stale.

Even if it ends up that someone will probably always try a "dragon/lady" path, and it might work, I don't see this as any more of an inherent problem than the fact that someone is probably going to try a shipping strategy in Puerto Rico, and that also can win. There are other ways to win with this game, just as a building strategy can win Puerto Rico.

I have played around 10 games and the game has been amazingly balanced so far in my view. Granted, I haven't tried any extreme strategies (every time I tried, I got caught up in the events and veered away). I think I have won and I have came in the middle of the pack with buying a double dragon in the first turn.

I think buying a double dragon on the first turn is a viable strategy, but I don't see it as a dominant strategy. I see the drawbacks of the double dragon purchase as you are being at the mercy of the other players for a few rounds, and you might take heavy losses--which you might not recover.

I see three possibilities why the double dragon seems dominant:

1. It is actually dominant and our group hasn't discovered it yet.
2. Somehow your group is letting the double dragon purchaser "off the hook" easily by allowing him to easily get money, and that more efficient scoring methods have not been discovered.
3. You are playing some rule wrong which makes this a dominant strategy.

It would be interesting to know your winning scores. Our winning scores in the last few games have been in the high 90s and the low 100s. If your winning scores are much less, than perhaps #2 above (or #3) is the reason why.

Paul, I agree with you to some extent. The thing is, you don't really stick with the dragon/lady, in the sense of trying to grow it during all the game. If this would be the case, other paths should beat it.

No, you try first to setup a maintainable dragon/lady as soon as you can (if you, by luck, go first, you are at advantage). Around fourth turn, maybe up to 2 players had achieved this (the first with some advantage in VPs already). Then, you spend the next turns trying to recover a little, growing a little your setup (if you can), placing cannon fodder for the close events, and begin to prepare your secondary path for the last 5/6 turns. This secondary path should be, if possible, the one used by other player that seems to have a high expected value by the end of the game, in order to screw up him a little. As I said, this is not always possible, as it depends of the remaining resources and the remaining sequence of events.

Anyway, most of the time, none of the players who early followed other paths (specially your secondary one), will be able to beat you or the other player who also managed to set up a dragon/lady scheme early.

So, in our 4 players games, we know by the middle game. the half of the party that is already doomed. And tell me if this is not boring...

And this is because of the "stream-like" nature, and lack of maintenance requirements of the privileges. Between a dragon/ladies-then-X strategy, and a X-then-dragon/ladies strategy, the first win, almost always.

This is a game of risk management. There should not exist an element with such a high yield and low risk as the privilege.