The Red Dragon Inn series of games is a card game where the players are sitting around in an Inn drinking, gambling, and rough housing.  If you drink too much, lose too much gold, or get too beat up you’re out!  The last person standing wins.

Number four is pirate themed.  That’s an almost must buy for me.  I wanted something fun and easy to play with the kids.

There are four big box sets, each with four characters, and five single character expansions.  The box contains:

• a deck of cards for each player
• a nice board you can use to track your health and intoxication level
• a clear and red glass bead to use on the board
• a drink deck
• gold coins (cardboard punch out pieces)

Number four also includes some extra tokens for one of the players, a sea deck of ocean encounters, and ship tokens.

Game play is pretty simple.  On your turn you discard any cards from your hand you don’t like and draw up to seven cards, you play an action card, you buy someone else a drink, and you drink a drink from your pile.

Actions include things that typically hurt other players (loose cannon balls, playing darts and getting poked, having to pay gold, etc) or help you (reduce your intoxication level, heal — aka gain back fortitude, gain some gold, etc)  Another action allows you to start a round of gambling in an attempt to win gold away from other players.

After the action phase you buy a drink for another player.  You take a drink card off the top of the drink pile and drop it on whomever you like.

Then you take a card from your drink pile and resolve the effect.  Typically your intoxication level is going up.

Many of the cards have anytime or  sometime  keywords.  Anytime cards can be played at anytime.  Sometimes cards are played in response to something.  It’s important to read the cards carefully to see if you can avoid taking damage or drinking when you might have a card that prevents it.

The artwork is a little risque.   There’s nothing overtly sexual, but there are well endowed wenches with some cleavage showing on several cards.  Alcohol use is central to the game.  I play this with my middle school, high school, and college aged children. What better way to learn moderation than a game where if you over drink, you lose.

Apart from a more mature theme the cards have a lot of text on them and required strong reading skills.  This definitely isn’t a game for younger kids.  With the right group this is a blast.