Dragons Breath

Dragon's Breath

Surprise surprise another game on my list of favourites is a game by Haba! (For those of you already reading this blog you will not be surprised by this) Dragon's Breath is a great little dexterity game where each player gets to be a dragon that is trying to melt a large ice block full of gems. As the ice block melts the gems fall out and then are collected by players. However the best part of this game is the gem collection involves choices from the players, so it is great at teaching children to look at the pile of gems at the top of the ice block and try to guess what might fall in the next round.

I bought this game for my 3.5 year old and we will play it for years definitely. It is a 2-4 players game and nice at all those numbers.  The age says 5 but I mostly thing this is due to it being slightly more complex than say Space Planets and involving lots of small pieces.  As always do not leave children unattended to play games with small pieces - it is just too dangerous.  But I imagine you aren't looking at this blog for only games that kids play alone, Dragon's Breath is a great game that adults will enjoy too.

Game Play

Game set up is pretty easy (see photo above) and within a few months of owning this game my now 4 year old can set it up himself mostly.  He does struggle to pour the gems into the ice pillar but that works on his motor skills so I let him go to it, sometimes he makes a mess and other times it is perfect.

Starting with a player, usually we pick youngest but it doesn't matter, each person takes it in turns to be the red dragon. They do two things on their turn 1) pick a cardboard gem representation the pile of 5, this picking then goes round clockwise until all players have one gem colour in front of them then the start player does 2) blow dragon's breath onto the ice pillar and remove a ring of ice which usually drops some gems *although gems do not have to drop every time.  Then each player takes it in turns to collect the gems that have dropped of the colour they have chosen.  Any colours not chosen go into the holes in the middle of the board, and any that accidentally go into those holes get lost as well.  Players then take any gems they have gained and put them in a little hole behind their player dragon and this becomes their collection hoard. Finally the red dragon passes clockwise to the next player and the round start again. The gem picking then dragon breath happens over and over until all ice rings have been removed.

On the last round any gems left on the centre ice block (see photo on right) do not get collected by players, any other gems are collected as normal.  The board is then lifted to reveal a hidden compartment with the gems each player has collected (see photo on left) and each players gems are counted. Player with the most gems wins.

This is a really simple game with a few choices that the players can make. However if the kids aren't up to making great choices even random selection of coloured gems on their turn will yield some points at the end so it remains easy to play for over 3s. In a two player game each player selects two gem colours instead of one so that you collect more of the gems that fall, but this isn't necessary just more fun as you get higher numbers at the end.


Review

This one has to be one of my all time favourite Haba games for over 3s as it is such a good game.  I have played this with 4 adults and we all enjoyed ourselves nearly as much as a little kid would. I really like this game when I am playing with young and old children as it can be enjoyable and simple for everyone without too much complexity as to confuse the youngest players.

I love this game because it is so simple but really fun for kids. My son loves blowing the dragons breath to melt the ice and this has lead us to a lot of home science experiments about what actually does melt ice (p.s. breath melts it but it takes ages!).  He also loves slotting the little gems into the various holes either for the players or for the centre holes when gems are lost. Even when he is making random choices he gets gems and has even won (though rarely) when playing randomly.  He has learned a lot about looking at the gem pile before making decisions and while he still struggles with this I think by the time he was at the age the game recommends (5 years) he would do much better than he does now.  He even works on his counting as he likes counting all his gems himself. Additionally when we group the gems he has together we can work on other types of counting, for example counting by 2s or 5s etc.

The artwork on this game is lovely as with all the Haba stuff and the pieces are just beautiful as well. The red dragon has amazing detail for a wooden piece and my son has used it in play for attacking things like the car park he owns (as he was pretending it was a castle).  Even the inside of the box, which could have been left blank, has been decorated like a dragon's cave so that the gems actually feel like you are hoarding them. If you can't tell I am a huge dragon nerd and love details like this!  Definitely be aware this has very little pieces so is not suitable for the very young at all.

Anywhere that sells Haba stuff should have this game as it is relatively new (I think it came out in the UK in 2018).  I know this Friendly Local Game Store usually has it but ask if they don't have it online as they might be able to get it as well.  I think this game was in the £16-20 price range but I bought it at a convention where it was priced cheaper than normal, either way it would easily be worth every penny of £20 if you find it for that.  We have owned this since June 2018 and have easily played it over 30 times in those 6 months.