Red Dragon Inn 4 review

Okay I know I’ve posted quite a bit about Red Dragon Inn, but there is one more expansion I need to talk about: Red Dragon Inn 4. This is an expansion that was Kickstarted a while ago. I missed out on the campaign but picked up the expansion in store. As with the previous editions this follows the same rules as the first edition so no need to rehash that part of the review.

Red Dragon Inn 4 departs a little from the main series in that it takes place on a ship. I felt like it missed the boat on a better title (pun intended.) Red Dragon Boat would have been a better title. It would have been just a touch more creativity… which this expansion really lacked. I love the high seas idea which made my disappointment in this expansion just a little greater.

One of the biggest additions to this game is the sea event deck. Random events happen periodically. At the end of each players turn a counter is removed from the deck, if there are no counters left flip the event card and it takes effect immediately. It can be used with any of the previous edition characters and you do not need characters from this set to use the sea event deck. This deck is actually hit and miss with players. I found that it really didn’t bring much more to the game. Even the extreme events like Kraken Attack really didn’t have as much punch as I had imagined they would. And remembering to advance the sea deck seems to get forgotten a lot. This could just be personal taste but this deck just doesn’t feel like it adds all that much to the fun.

As for the characters most fell flat for me. Let me explain with each.

Captain Whitehawk: She is the stalwart Captain of the ship. Her play style seems geared to denying attacks or negating card effects. It can get rather boring for the other players to play great cards only to see them negated time and again. Eventually other players just gang up on the captain in a huge mutiny in the hopes that one of their cards gets through. Playing as the Captain you get too few cards that directly affect other players, ultimately you feel like you didn’t do much in the game. Although she does have interesting cards that work in gambling that aren’t cheat cards so they cannot be negated. She's an okay character on most factors. I could play as the Captain on occasion but she is far from my first choice.

First Mate Remy: This guy is a dark elf swashbuckler. His main mechanic is to “mark” players. Certain cards allow Remy to play “mark” tokens on players. If a player is marked certain cards from Remy’s hand have a stronger effect. In theory this is interesting but in practice the marks aren’t really used effectively. Cards that lay marks and cards that are affected by marks are too few and far between. His mechanic is very underutilized. I also find the “dark elf” archetype dull so I may be biased here.

Bryn the Boatswain: Big, tough and deals a lot of damage. If that seems familiar just look at Gog the Half Ogre. She plays pretty much the same only without the fun role play. A lot of wasted potential for this mediocre rehash of a better character. She just needs something.... more... something to define her character a little more. I had high hopes for Bryn to break the mold but she barely fills it. Although I must admit the artwork is great and there is *some* decent humour on her cards. But that really doesn't make up for the lack of creativity in character design.

Tara the Navigator: For me she is the only truly interesting character in the box. Tara actually has the feel of the Red Dragon Inn character style I’m used to. This character makes so much fun of the “Blind Seer” trope with jokes about her playing darts and other nonsense. She is packed full of humour and is a blast to play. I like her flair for gambling, especially her “How about another round” card. Once a round of gambling is over she restarts a new round but with the first round pot left in. A great card to play when you know other players have exhausted their gambling cards. If this character type interests you then she makes purchasing this expansion worth while.

To sum up while I love the Red Dragon Inn series of games Red Dragon Inn 4 just doesn’t live up to my expectations of the series. The Sea Event deck is rather hit and miss with players. It doesn’t add a lot to the game but could be fun if you want to change things up a little. Of the four characters the only one I liked was Tara. I didn’t feel like the rest measured up to the humour or quality of the rest of the series. As for my recommendations I don’t really feel like this is a necessary addition to the game. I would only recommend getting this expansion if you really want to complete your collection or if your group plays often enough to want more character variety. I would grab other editions or allies first. In the future I think I would like the company to move back to focusing on more humorous characters of the RPG game tropes and less on the gimics.