Flame & Forge

Flame & Forge is a brand new and completely independent game for 1 to 4 players. It's a worker placement, deck-building, push-your-luck game full of interesting choices and really fun meeples! This time we are dwarves marching toward a burning city to plunder resources, forge powerful weapons, and challenge monsters, perhaps convincing them to join our side in the fight.

Will you save the city or rule it? In Flame & Forge you choose your path before the game begins—cooperate or compete, the forge is ready for both. You can join forces to defeat the mighty red dragon before your city goes up in flames, or, if your friends are feeling brave (and perhaps a bit greedy), assault the castle to see who kills the beast and becomes the new King of Dwarves.

On your turn, choose one of your dwarf meeples from your campfire and place it on the outer tiles of the city, in the first space to the left of the chosen tile, and execute all the actions visible on that tile and take damage to remove fire tokens; if another player places their dwarf on the same tile, they can execute fewer actions than you. On your next turn your options decrease: the next tile must be one row closer to the dragon's castle and adjacent to the tile where you placed your dwarf previously. Once all your dwarves are out, you retrieve them all and start again from the bottom.

The possible actions a tile can have (usually about 2-3 actions): gain a gem, spend gems to forge a weapon card, spend gems to advance on the knowledge trail, perform a ranged attack, fight a monster on the same tile, guarantee a hit in an attack, draw a card from your deck, heal 1 damage.

On the knowledge trail you can also power up your worker dwarves by transforming them into special meeples that give you actions, as well as special abilities to use when they all return to you after they've all been used.

An important element of the game is the combat system that allows you to attack cards (in a push-your-luck) where the damage you inflict and the damage you take come from your own deck. The weapons you forge and the monsters you defeat also end up in your deck along with cards that allow the most varied actions (as long as you survive the encounter), so often you'll have to decide whether to flee and execute actions or risk everything to try to defeat the monster.

There are some arcade elements like boss battles: the dragon responds by setting the city on fire and, if a tile accumulates 3 fire tokens, it is destroyed; players lose the game if 7 city tiles are destroyed.

The game ends when the dragon is defeated by one of the players. If you play cooperatively you win together; if before the start of the game you chose competitive mode, you count points to decide the new king.