Miami Dice #184: Fury of Dracula

welcome to the dice tower a series of video reviews about board and card games here are your hosts tom vessel and Sam Healy hey everybody I'm Tom vassal Zhi Garcia how are you folks Sam Healy what's up y'all and today we're taking a look at fury of Dracula which also has the it not mentioned title that this is the third edition the first edition came out almost two decades ago I think an old sprawling game and then they revamped it majorly with the second edition this is more of a minor revamping I would say extreme lighting yeah streamlining of the second edition but if you've never played it before that's fine this review will tell you how to play it and well let's do that now the game is played on a map of Europe and there are very there are different cities scattered throughout there Dracula is going to be moving secretly around the board the hunters are going to be moving much more openly each of them has different figures that they'll be using to move around the board one player is going to be playing Dracula and then the other players are going to split the different hunters dr. John Seward van Helsing Mina Harker and Lord Godalming so if only one person's playing he's going to be playing all of the hunters and if two people playing each play two etc now I said Dracula's going to be moving secretly he'll be looking at this board there's a smaller board which you can see is a duplication of this one it so he can look at it without giving away his position with his eyes and Dracula has a set of cards here these cards are alphabetical and they're numbered at the bottom to keep them in order so let's say Dracula wants to move to Milan then he will put this card here in this on his track and as the game goes by each time he moves so let's say he goes from Milan to Geneva so look for the Geneva card in here and he'll take that card out and place it here facedown on the track so players don't know exactly where he is but they see these cards and if he ever moves into the sea the back of the card is blue so players will know that Dracula has moved at the sea although they don't necessarily know which sea Dracula will also be placing surprise cards different encounter cards he'll have a handful of these and placing them down sometimes these are vampires that if they get to the end of the track will give Dracula influence points sometimes they're just negative things to hunters who find them because whenever a hunter goes into one of the spots that Dracula has been in he will reveal that spot so if they go to Geneva for example he'll reveal they're in Geneva he'll also reveal whatever's there which if it's like one of this small vampires off to fight it and if a hunter ever moves into a spot where Dracula is they have to fight him too the game revolves around this mechanism up here this is the influence track if Dracula ever gets 13 influence then he wins the game he gets influenced by killing hunter by getting his vampires in at the track and after a while after a certain amount of time he's just getting it every day there's a time thing here Jackie was going to move and then there's a morning and a night - each day so Dracula moves and eat China does an action in the morning when they do an action at night and so on and so forth as this moves around the spare tokens start showing up in it and to spare tokens do a couple things when they're all completed Dracula is going to be able to get influenced a lot quicker but also when there's a fight Dracula has to stay in combat a little bit longer depending on how many of these are here some of the actions are different depending on the night or during the day now combat is going to happen when a hunter finds a one of the small vampires or if they run across Dracula himself each hunter starts with these three cards punch dodge and escape and as the game goes by they might get other things they might get things like holy bullets or a rifle a crucifix a pistol a heavenly host garlic and each of these cards is going to give them things let's say this character also has garlic and they also have a pistol now when they come into combat with Dracula they're going to pick one of these cards secretly Dracula on the other hand has a deck of cards and he'll be drawing cards from this day they're the same cards they never get better or worse so he has fangs and plotting escape as bat escape as a mist these two cards are used to escape and run from the battle but they can't be played always at the beginning of battle depending on how many despair tokens there are claws and strength so each character Dracula and the hunter and if there's multiple hunters they're going to be all playing cards and Dracula's only going to face up against one of them so let's say Dracula plays this card and the character plays punch so we turn these over the first thing we do is we look at the symbol here that Dracula played which is a punch symbol or a fist symbol is that simple here it's not so we read Dracula's thing here it says you engage hunter takes two damage if you played punch crucifix or weapons card cancel their card so this card is canceled and that's the end of that round if however Dracula had played punch and the other person played Dodge then this symbols here so this card is immediately canceled and we just do whatever the card says here which is nothing basically he just dodged a punch maybe played punch and the hunter played garlic again this card's canceled and it says if you are the ngage hunter and fangs or claws was played the vampire takes 2 damage well it was it fangs or claws but he did manage to dodge the the vampire strength so it's kind of a game of basically rock-paper-scissors although the Dracula is going to be stymied by whatever cards he happens to have he'll have five cards and he'll draw a card each round after he plays one now the combat will end after six rounds or and then there's an automatic disengagement or Dracula escapes earlier than that or the hunters escape the hunters are trying to kill Dracula which will make them win the game and each character has a certain number of hit points on them you can see here that they have a certain number hit points he has 11 and 9 the hunters can also be killed by being bit by Dracula if they're bit twice except for Mina Harker who automatically starts with a bite but they also have other special abilities to make up for that Dracula's elf has 15 hit points and also a few special abilities so players each have one action that they can do on their turn and one of these actions can just be moving from an adjacent location to another or moving out into the sea themselves they can't catch Dracula at sea but it is one way to move they can also get tickets there are a lot of different tickets that they will draw from a pile these tickets are going to show different numbers based on which railroad system they're using so you'll see there's this is a - 101 102 - and so later on they can use these railroad lines that are on the board and they're a way to get around the board faster Dracula cannot use railroad lines there's two different colors the yellow and the white and some tickets will work better on the one color than the other players can also rest on their turn to recover one damage they can search which if there is a encounter card in their area they can you know search for that encounter card they can also use an action that they have they can supply now supply is a big deal for Hunter's just supplies a way to get these other cards like this you'll be drawing these from a deck of cards but whenever you supply you're also going to be drawing an event card now the event deck is very intriguing because it is full of both cards that are good for the hunters and cards that are good for Dracula their shuffle together now the hunters do this during the day they draw the top card so they know what the you know what cards can be if they do it at night they draw the bottom card which again could be good or bad most of the cards in this deck are good for the hunters but not all of them are these cards will give them all sorts of actions that they can play sometimes as an ally which can be played there's even a spot up here on the board to put ally it gives them a bit of special ability Dracula can have allies come from these special cards so players are taking a chance and they can only get these supplies anyway in large cities sometimes they can just throw an event card if they want to and then hunters can also trade items and that's basically the whole game there's smaller different rules going on but essentially the hunters are trying to make a net to find Dracula to find his trail to get rid of those small vampires so they don't get to the end of the line Jackie was trying to just cause trouble and keep away from the hunters so they need to find him and kill him and then they win or if he gets enough influence on the influence track then Dracula wins alright well would you guys think of the look of the game the box the the map the cards the artwork I like most of it I thought the only thing that was a little bit lacking for me was the board itself is a little more muted than I'd like I do like the look of the the 2.0 version the board anyway more than I like this the rest is fine the rest is uh is well done it's it's interesting it's it's well painted and I like it I like it I I too liked the Victorian feel I guess you could call it of the second edition that's the one I guess you could say I fell in love with with the look can and how the map looked like an old vintage map and how it just really kind of popped that way um I was underwhelmed with with the look of this one but it is what it is you know I'm not a graphic designer I'm not an artist so he kind of got to go with what other people put out there sometimes but when I saw the box cover I was like yeah because they went with that kind of 50s horror movie IQ little high bar types even cover not thinking about Sesame Street ha ha ha he looks like a mean version of the Sesame Street Dracula good but I do like the cover I just think of that I like the artwork I'll mention with Z that the board is a bit muted for me too I wouldn't mind it if they made the colors of the regions a little bit more defined especially since one of the characters has a power which essentially lets her figure out if someone's in a region or not good power by the way is that Mina yeah yeah Mina has a brand new power for this version is it yes it is that's not in the oval and um because I have to I played this for the first time I specifically went and looked at the second one compared some things and since was might as well launch into mechanisms now I think that they did a really great job taking what 2.0 was which was a good game very solid game and then sort of speeding everybody's turns up adding some interest just mainly streamlining everything pretty much in a positive way through and through now he mentions that they speeded up the turns but the game itself is not that much faster it's 2 to 3 hours it says and that's pretty accurate I think you could play a 2 hour game yeah if and could you play 2 hours of the part 2 I guess now this might be a little bit shorter than coz I think that I want to lean more towards 3 usually it might be 30 minutes shorter ultimately right but but it feels faster right digital in words because you are doing less in every turn which means your turns are shorter and your turns come around quicker which gives the whole game sort of eight makes you feel like you're playing more but you're actually not right now beats that theme of always being on the hunt versus oh it's my turn okay let me think for a bit here I'm going to do this then I'm going to do that and it just sort of slowed everything down I think the the streamlining of this game the turn to turned is a solid improvement now this is a one verse all game and in that regard many people have mentioned that they think it plays best with five because each person controls one hunter and it probably does although I do like I mean it's not that hard to control a couple hunters and such if you want to uh the game my biggest complaint about the second addition if you're a Dracula was I felt that Dracula himself was maybe the game was a little bit tilted towards him especially if the person playing Dracula is like I'm just going to hide the whole time and they would run and then they would show up and beat the snot out of you every once in a while well that still happens here Jackie O's running and hiding and shows up to beat the snot out of you but I think the hunters can beat the snot out of Dracula especially if they're equipped properly yeah which I feel somatic Dracula during the daytime being thought should be easier to beat especially if there's multiple hunters and I think this game did a great job at making it more of an even game now it I think it's even tilted towards the hunters a little bit if you play just the basic game but then if you play the advanced game Dracula can do things like double back go to two locations in a row has a wolf form and things like that but even then I still think it's balanced much more than the previous I don't think the priests one was like unbalanced but I always thought Dracula had the edge well here's the thing in the old one the idea was at night he could he could wail on you but during the day which where he could still hold his own it was very easy to eventually find Dracula and for him to he's gone and you okay we got to go look for him again and that was very it was very easy for Dracula to to called the fight off so to speak right away and in this game it's a little harder for that disengaged state to happen which I like that means when you get into a fight it's slightly longer and there will be the ratio shifts a little bit from just looking for Dracula to more combat and I like that and that mean a power you guys are talking about helps you find Dracula right considerably faster sometimes yeah because before you really had to just go looking through the map start dividing it maybe you come across his path but in this one that power she has of tell me if you're in this whole area that's pretty cool and that's very interesting if nothing even if nothing else he says yes he's there and then he's gone you can still go through those cities and come upon his path at least yeah it almost helps you almost like divide the map in half if you place her in the right spot and you have her moving in the right areas you can actually divide the board in half and you can basically say with a level of confidence he's over here right right and he's not over here which is a huge help yeah and leads to more fighting right was that great if you like games like Scotland Yard or where you try to hide from people this one is really good in fact I was thinking about this is going through Scotland Yard is hunting down mr. X then there's the other game of letters from Whitechapel which is fine the trail of the bad guy here you're doing both you're hunting Dracula and finding the trail but this also adds another level with combat what did you think about combat in this addition combat in em I don't know it kind of felt more you know me I love Roland Dyson there's not any of that right it's it's pretty much deterministic combat this beats this this beats that and and so forth and so on and you can kind of um I'd like to fact it that dragon is saying it was bugging you wasn't it it was bugging oh I know it was bugging yeah you know it was bugging you I didn't say anything um but so the deterministic comeback is pretty cool I like the fact that Dracula has to discard his cards though um and it might not get escaped as a mist and it's for his hand right he may not get it so that again just promotes this whole idea was he was talking about more combat more duking it out more action than just the sleuthy part of the game that's always been there right so um deterministic combat is the combat is usually a pass for me but as a as a total package for fury of Dracula I think it works very well I think it says this is an overall improvement through and through for from the original fight well from the version 2.0 fighting system which was clunkier was luckier somehow because you would yes pick a card and then roll a die and then compare who goes first and if it was a tie then go to this other secondary number on the card you pick and if nothing happened and you got that token which had like a an arrow that meant nothing if you got three of those combat so it was clunkier this is simple this is pick a card simultaneously reveal them what just went down yeah do it again and the Dracula does not have all their cards at once means that they like you said Tom they just might not get what they're hoping for they might not be able to escape it might not be able to have access to something powerful as they're hoping to draw and that's interesting that means there we caught them we caught him at on a weakened moment and you know that that that can lead to some amazing very cinematic moments in the game I think the combat system they did an amazing job with it yeah yeah I really like just a somatic flare to it like Dracula's trying to mesmerize person they punch him in the face look into my all my or they're trying to dodge him and they can't because he's mesmerized and they just it works really well and it new players will have a tougher time of it because you got to know kind of what the Dracula cards are but they're really not there's not that many of them either he's escaping he's trying to bite you to call you whatever and so you got to pick the right time to dodge and this game also is a good job that when there's multiple hunters up against Dracula he's in trouble yeah which is the way it is always in every movie if you go face face to Dracula you're in trouble but if you bring a bunch of people he's gonna try to run good of these overton foods Forks so what are your overall thoughts on this one I think this is I've always liked like Sam said I enjoyed drop your dracula 2.0 yep the game i've i've liked the game that is one of the few games that is that long two and a half hours or so and I do enjoy because it is thematic it's engaging and I think 3.0 here takes that game and elevates it even more has a better combat system it makes for better player turns it has more action all of those things lead to a better game ultimately I was on the fence when I first saw the package really was when I saw the board I was even more on the fence but gameplay altogether just like both of these have already said really elevates the game to a higher echelon of game it's it's a better game than 2.0 is I wish it still had the look allergic I wish you still had the look at cheap oil garlic I wish you still had the look of 2.0 but the gameplay allows me to overlook the the package and really enjoy the new game that's they're still very similar to this 2.0 but better nothing we didn't do thumbs I'm going to give it to sharp all that stays up Tuesdays I'm going to give it to pointy teeth up ah all right why are we both doing Easter Egg why not alright so anyhow I really enjoy it also I like the whole hidden aspect of everything I'm not as big of a fan as these guys are of it but I do think that this one is the best version of it I like the the tickets how they work I like the combat love the event deck where there's good and bad and that's you pull from the top or the bottom that's another thing that we didn't even talk about I'll say very briefly the traveling with the trains much better in this game so overall I thought it was a good balanced game so I'll give it one and a half um thumbs with really long fingernails up ah ah do a cure to a no cures ha ha anyhow check it out that's fury of Dracula from Fantasy Flight thanks so much for watching the dice our videos find more great videos and reviews as well as our top rated audio podcast at dice tower calm you can also find other great shows at diced our network calm I'm Erik summer and you've been watching the dice tower the dice tower is sponsored by cool stuff Inc where you can find great games for great prices cool stuff in stock check them out at cool stuff Inc calm

Channel: The Dice Tower

Views: 79,288

Keywords: board game, board, game, dice, card game, cards, catan, monopoly, tower, dice tower, vasel, review, tom vasel, vassel, settlers, gaming, Zee Garcia, Sam Healey, Fantasy Flight Games (Game Designer), hidden movement, deduction, conflict, Fury Of Dracula (Game), Dracula (Book)

Id: wZLedjN1m-U

Length: 21min 56sec (1316 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 25 2015