Dragomino
Overall Rating: 10/10
Age: 5+
GLAM Age Range: 4-8
Number of Players: 2-4
Playing Time: 15 min
Publisher: Blue Orange Games
Complexity: Low
Available At: Amazon.com
Quick Take: My First Kingdomino delivers! Great prep for eventually playing "real" Kingdomino, excellent game in its own right. My kids love the dragon theme and even my 8 year old son who plays challenging games on a regular basis was thrilled to play this with me on repeat after we opened it up on Christmas. What I love is that the game rewards you for some good strategic decisions - matching dominoes well, understanding some basic probability of which terrains are more common and which are more likely to give you dragons - but it has a simple enough scoring system so kids can easily do their score on their own, while younger kids generally require assistance in standard Kingdomino. Full stars for this one, Dragomino joins Outfoxed and as my go-to 5 year old games.
How to Play: Your goal is to get the most points. You acquire points by collecting dragons. Each player starts with one of the two-sided desert/ice pieces that have a flag in the center. The youngest player is given the mommy dragon piece. Four new tiles are placed in the center of the board and the player with the mommy dragon gets to pick a piece first and play proceeds clockwise from this player. You can orient the tile however you like with your existing tile and for any matching landmark spots you get to place a dragon egg on the spot where they connect. Flip over the egg and see if there's a dragon inside or if it's an empty shell. If you collect an empty shell, you are handed the mommy dragon. Whoever ends up with the mommy dragon at the end of the round gets to go first the next round. Play until you run out of tiles. At this point tally up your points, one point for each dragon you have collected and a bonus point for whoever has the mommy dragon at the end of the game. Whoever has the most points wins!
Variations: I love this official game variant and highly recommend using it: on the pieces with a watering hole, you draw two dragon eggs for new connections to that spot and pick the one you want to keep and placing the other one facedown back with the rest of the dragon eggs.
Similar Games To Check Out: Outfoxed, Kingdomino, Ticket to Ride: My First Journey