Dragon Wars

Dragon Wars is a card game included in the RPG aid, Dragonlance Saga Fate Deck. While the main purpose of the Fate Deck is to play an RPG using the Saga system, the deck includes rules for a stand-alone card game, Dragon Wars. The RPG rules included in the game are credited to Steven Brown, Steve Miller, and Ed Stark, but no designer is mentioned for Dragon Wars.

The deck consists of 82 cards: eight suits numbered 1-9 and one suit (dragons) numbered 1-10. To play, the dragons are removed from the deck and shuffled. Every player gets one dragon. The remaining 72 cards are shuffled and six are dealt to each player.

Three of the suits are attacking suits, three are defending suits, and two suits may be used for either. On your turn, you attack a dragon of your choice (but not your own!) by playing attack cards. The owner responds by playing defense cards. The attacker may continue the attack if he has more of the same suit he started with. If he does, the defender may defend with any defensive suit. Once the attacker calls a halt, subtract defense cards from attack cards. If the number is positive, the dragon takes that many hits. (Each dragon has a number of hit points equal to the number on the card.) Dead dragons are placed in the attacking player's victory point pile, and the defender draws a new dragon to defend, if there are any left.

Rules are provided for "despoilers" - players whose last dragon is removed after the dragon deck has run out. (In a ten-player game, that's always!) The game ends one round after there is only one dragon left in play: everyone else has one turn to try to defeat it. The numbers on the dragon cards are VP.