Where Are You Going? (Fury of Dracula)

First impressions only. One play with Player Two.

Fury of Dracula (4th ed)

Designed by Stephen Hand, Kevin Wilson, Frank Brooks

Art by Chris Beck & Samuel Shimota

Published by WizKids (née Fantasy Flight Games) 

The Circle Game (Some Background Information)

Fantasy Flight Games has been a major player in the board game industry since its founding in 1995. It’s difficult to talk about well-designed, well-produced, and well-supported games without Fantasy Flight. Android: Netrunner (2012), Cosmic Encounter (2008), Arkham Horror (2005/2018), and X-Wing (2012) are among some of their most well-known games, and their creation of the Living Card Game (LCG) has made an impact on countless gamers, this one included.

While they are a remarkably impactful and influential publisher, to say nothing of prolific, Fantasy Flight is still a relatively small design studio. When you begin to look at their roster of games, you’ll see a lot of the same names among the design and development staff. I imagine it would provide you with a stronger, more reliable bullpen of designers and developers to cross-pollinate across multiple projects. That’s a good thing. On the flip side, it does also mean that you are often building using a lot of the same Legos, so to speak.

For example, X-Wing (2012), Warhammer 40k: Conquest (2014), Star Wars: The Card Game (2012), and Legend of the Five Rings (2017) all include a small dial as a main mechanism of gameplay. To be fair, in Star Wars it’s little more than a tracker, but in each of the others, the dial is a component used in either simultaneous action selection (X-Wing and Conquest), or bidding (Legend of the Five Rings). The feel of using the dial is very similar in each game, even though the games themselves are markedly different. Understandably, the use of the dial is probably due to the fact that it was an easily produceable component that had broad application. And what’s wrong with a little component or even mechanical crossover, you ask? Nothing. Writers, painters, directors, and game designers often re-implement similar mechanisms in game after game; it’s called style.

Okay, so what’s the point? Before I finally get to my first impressions of Fury of Dracula, let me play a short game of connect the dots. The Fury of Dracula (1987) is a hidden movement all-vs-one game published by Games Workshop and originally designed by Stephen Hand. It’s a game about a group of four hunters tracking down and killing Dracula before he meets his own win condition. It was a complicated dice chucker, and I can’t even find the rules for it online anymore. In 2005, Fantasy Flight republished a new 2nd edition of that old classic. The 2nd edition cleaned up some clunkier mechanisms, like player elimination and the second board hidden behind a player screen used to track Dracula’s movements. By all accounts, it was a better game, streamlined by new development work done by Kevin Wilson, a well-known and quietly prolific designer. In 2015, Fury of Dracula (2015) returned with an even more streamlined edition, removing all of those pesky dice and counters and rearranging the turn order. After Fantasy Flight lost the license to Fury of Dracula (2015) in 2018, WizKids brought the game back in its new reprint of the 3rd edition, christened the 4th edition despite having the exact same rules.

Okay, you mutter with your mouse preparing to close the tab, SO WHAT. Well, in 2013 Fantasy Flight released Eldritch Horror (2013), a game I already talked about here. Eldritch Horror (2013) is, by all accounts, a simplified version of Arkham Horror (2005), a complicated behemoth of a game about investigating a small New England town and fighting ancient evils. Eldritch Horror (2013) was designed by Nikki Valens, based on the Arkham Horror (2005) ruleset. Now, I love Eldritch Horror (2013). The turns are fast and interesting, the encounters lend an air of mystery and excitement to gameplay, and it offers a big, broad, satisfying globetrotting experience in 2-3 hours.

Why am I talking about connect the dots and Eldritch Horror (2013)? Because despite the games being fundamentally different, they actually share a lot, and that’s where the big reveal comes in. Eldritch Horror (2013) is based on Arkham Horror (2005), which is a 2nd edition to an older, even more complicated OG Arkham Horror (1987). When Fantasy Flight decided to updated that beast, they turned to one of their most seasoned hands: Kevin Wilson. Dots: connected. Arkham Horror (2005) and Fury of Dracula (2005) were both updated to streamlined new editions in the same year by the same person. And in 2013, Eldritch Horror was released, a further streamlined and expanded-to-global version of Arkham Horror (2005). Two years later, the most currently streamlined and simplified Fury of Dracula (2015) was released.

Dragula (Comparisons & Impressions)

I love Eldritch Horror. Like I’ve already said, it’s a big, mystery-filled, globe-spanning experience that is–if nothing else–satisfying. That’s what I wanted from Fury of Dracula (2015). Ultimately, Fury of Dracula felt like an incomplete version of Eldritch Horror.

Eldritch offers encounters at the end of your turn, automatically meaning you will investigate something. Why is nothing like this present in Fury of Dracula? Yes, I know you can search a location, but only if you are on the trail. Do you know how many turns there are in the game where you are not on the trail? That leaves you with these actions: rest (heal), supply (take a card), trade (swap goods with another hunter in your location), reserve a ticket (take a train ticket for movement via rails), or take a card action if you are lucky enough to have one. That’s not much. Most of the time, you’ll move and then either take a train ticket or randomly draw a supply card and event card. End of turn. Then Dracula shifts cards down and plays new location and encounter cards. Rinse, repeat.

I was underwhelmed by how little happens on each turn, and I could not remove myself from the similarities I felt between this and Eldritch Horror. Granted, Eldritch has no hidden movement, a core component of this game. But the games share the same basic turn structure (2 actions with a purposefully limited movement followed by the ‘villain phase’), the same geographic board layout (rails, roads, sea), and the same available actions to choose from. The train tickets felt the most immediately and obviously reminiscent of Eldritch, although Fury of Dracula (2015) probably cribbed this from Eldritch Horror (2013) rather than vice versa.

The ‘villain phase’ in Fury of Dracula involves Dracula playing two cards. That’s it. In Eldritch Horror, investigators explore their locations and go through a series of encounters, a chunk of gameplay that simply feels missing from Fury of Dracula. An hour into gameplay, I couldn’t help but wonder, Where’s the beef?

Without an encounter phase, the first hour of a game is a sludge-like crawl across the board, waiting for a break. When you finally get the break by crossing Dracula’s path, the chase is on! But, this is all luck-based for the hunters. There are portions of the board that naturally bottleneck, meaning that Dracula’s initial placement and the hunters’ first two or three turns will mean that the game either accelerates quickly or is going nowhere anytime soon. And if you miss Dracula, you might spend an hour meandering around the board collecting train tickets and items until you get a useful event that may point you in the right direction.

And the chase. Ah, the chase. This is the meat of the game, no? Well, sure. But it is literally going to be an OJ Simpson/Last Jedi slow-mo chase. Unlike Eldritch, Fury does not let you move and use a train ticket on the same turn. Coupled with the fact that tickets are drawn randomly and have different values, they seem almost worthless. So it will turn into Dracula moving one space away, then a hunter moving into that space and “discovering” Dracula anew.

What about combat? All right, combat is cool. It’s a souped up version of rock/paper/scissors played out with basic action cards augmented by those supply cards you’ve spent turn after turn accumulating. And while I generally don’t like the rock/paper/scissors mechanic for combat, this is souped up, remember? so it’s better than other rock/paper games (I’m looking at you, Grimslingers (2015)). The first few times combat occurred, I thought it was excellent. Fast and simple. But while it’s better than other rock/paper systems, it still doesn’t feel like enough to sustain a whole game. So in the event your game devolves into a hunter vs Dracula slugfest, be prepared for combat that becomes repetitive quickly.

See? Dragula. 

Death is Not the End (A Collection of Caveats)

This is my first impression, and it’s formed by only playing the game once. I was disappointed by Fury of Dracula, but it could be due to a number of factors:

1. This is our first playthrough, and perhaps each of us had awful strategies that exacerbated cracks in Fury’s otherwise [mostly] solid foundation

2. We played a game designed for five with only two people, and while it is agreed that it works with two, maybe it’s not ideal

3. We did something wrong? Hey, maybe we did something wrong!

I want to be clear again, this is just my first impression, and it’s very possible I’ll play it again and love it. I wanted to write up a first impression because I’ve been thinking about it since we played a few nights ago. It was a big experience, and when we block out hours to play a new game with a nigh legendary reputation, I expect a lot. Also, it took hours, so to be fair, I don’t know when we’ll get to schedule a second play.

Have you played Fury of Dracula and you think I’m sniffing glue? Let me know what I’m missing. Does it work with two? Should I just play Letters from Whitechapel (2011), Specter Ops (2015), or Whitehall Mysteries (2017) instead?

Fury of Dracula (3rd ed.)
by Stephen Hand, Kevin Wilson, and Frank Brooks

In all honesty, it’s very hard to recommend this as a two-player game. That being said, I can’t argue that it’s not a bona fide classic, just not a good fit for us.

Good for the right group… just not ours. Better have a third (or fourth) to make this really come alive.