You know what I love, yep, you guessed it, dragons! I had a lot of fun with Wingspan but eventually let it go. I let it go for its slightly heavier, dragon-ier cousin, Wyrmspan. Dragons are so much more interesting and mysterious. I reviewed Wyrmspan a while ago and the lovely people at Stonemaier Games have now sent me the first expansion. Welcome to Wyrmspan: Dragon Academy.
My Type of Expansion
Dragon Academy is my kind of expansion. It does a great job of expanding the main game without straying away from what made it entertaining. It adds more content, without adding rules or complication and I will never play without it. More dragons, more guilds and a few new wrinkles, what's not to like?
Easy to Add
Another thing I look for in an expansion is how easy it is to integrate it into the base game. Dragon Academy is fantastic in this regard; the setup is not added to or changed at all. There is a bit of pre-setup when you first get it by replacing a few cards here and there with updated versions and changing the round tracker board but this only needs to be done once and is very minimal.
A New Type of Dragon
Dragon Academy comes with a new dragon type for you to entice. The fledglings are teenage dragons that require a little effort to train and use effectively. Once placed, when you explore their cave, you can train them by first paying their training cost and then placing a cube on their card. After you have fully trained them by fulfilling all their training requirements, you unlock their ability for future exploration bonuses. Not only that, but they score differently too; they score the number of points equal to the number of fledglings you have. So it’s one of those things you want to lean heavily into to maximise their points.
Guilds and Objectives
I think my favourite part of this expansion is definitely the new Dragon Guilds and round objectives. Adding these into your game can really change the course of each game and introduce a lot of variety for future games. Some of these guilds really do make you think too, offering you boons and bonuses and sometimes really making you think about your turn. Which I really enjoyed. The last one I played made you sacrifice cards and resources for its bonuses, which created a massive balancing act across the whole game. It really made it feel different indeed.
The double-sided objectives really add something too, making each round unique and different, making all players aim for new and wonderful strategies and hopefully scooping up those vital points. These new tiles really widen the gamespace and make players think and therefore play differently every time. It's just what you want from an expansion and follows the theme of Drago Academy, adding choice and variability, without adding additional rules overhead. Super.
Components
As with all Stonemaier products, everything screams quality. Linen finish cards and rulebooks, lovely artwork and gametrays to hold it all. Not only that, it all integrates and fits in the base box beautifully. I hate adding additional boxes to games.
Everything is well explained, the rulebook is easy to understand and the whole package is simple to add, easy to play and just adds a dragonload of variability to Wyrmspan. Excellent work all round.
Final Thoughts
As you can tell, I love this expansion. It has everything I want and love in an expansion to a base game. It adds more of everything, lots of replayability and adds little to no rules overhead. It all fits in the base box, integrates flawlessly and adds nothing to setup time.
The new dragons, guilds and objectives are great and adding the training system adds something new. I just wish all expansions were like this one, too many stray away from what made the base game special but luckily this one just adds to it and strengthens what we all love. Brilliant!
