Publisher: Fireside Games
Designer: Justin De Witt
Artist: Jeff Porter
Year: 2016
Genre: Steampunk themed game of set collecting and hand management
Players: Two to five players
Ages: 8+
Playing Time: 60 minutes (In reality about 30 to 40 minutes)
MSRP: $19.95
Fireside Games latest release is one firmly aimed at the family gaming crowd who don’t mind a bit of competition and players casting monkey wrenches – or spanners – into plans. In Dastardly Dirigibles, two to five players compete to prove their mettle as dirigible engineers in order to take the newly vacated helm of the Hornswoggle airship empire. You see Professor Phineas Edmund Hornswoggle has decided to retire and only the greatest designer in the land can replace him.
Upon first opening the box you’ll notice the artwork provides a first rate steampunk vibe and is nicely done throughout. The rules are well presented and laid out clearly to avoid much confusion. The card deck is made up of two sorts of cards: parts and specials. Unfortunately, the card stock is a rather thin so you’ll certainly want to sleeve the cards if this makes it to your table often; you’ll be shuffling the deck quite a bit each game. I should note I even found some light chipping on the backs of some cards right after unwrapping them. Also the guide sheets (which are used by the players to place sections of their dirigibles) are a coated paper and just feel really chintzy. These sheets are also folded in the box and it’s impossible to get them to lay flat without screwing around bending them against the folds – and they still won’t be completely flat – which also puts undue wear and tear on them.
The gist of Dastardly Dirigibles is to play through three rounds of airship building. Players begin by placing a guide sheet in front of them and receiving five cards facedown. The remaining cards make the draw deck as each player then draws an additional card from this deck to create the Emporium; the Emporium contains cards all players have access to during their turn. Whichever player drew the part card closest to the front of an airship, as the Emporium is built, becomes the first player.
During a turn each player draws up to a hand size of five cards and then may perform three actions: play an airship or special card, discard one card, swap a card from their hand for one in the Emporium, replace the entire Emporium, or pass. A player may perform any of these actions – in any order – and repeat the same action up to three times.
The airship part cards consist of nine suits (of which two are actually wild and can’t really be considered suits) and players are trying to include as many parts of a single suit in order to score the most points possible. You can also angle to build an airship composed of a single part from each of the seven suits for a rare Muddle. The trick here is when a player places a part card on their guide sheet all the other players have to replace that same part, if they have an available card to do so. Obviously, if another player doesn’t have that part then they’re off the hook.
There are also special cards as well which could force another player to discard a part from their ship, give you an extra action, allow you to pick a card from the discard pile, and so on. Outside of forcing other players to replace parts to their airships, playing specials is the only way one player can target another for a bit of “take that!” Dastardly Dirigibles isn’t an overly confrontational game although overly sensitive gamers might get peeved.
I found reviewing Dastardly Dirigibles to be a little tougher than most games. Personally, I like Fireside Games and Anne-Marie and Justin De Witt are two of the nicest people you’ll ever find in the industry; they’ve brought their company a long way in a relatively short period of time too. Sadly, Dastardly Dirigibles just isn’t some of their best work. Granted, I know there are plenty of gamers out there who are looking for a light family game they can pull off the shelf which can entertain an all ages crowd during an evening of play. This title should into that niche for the most part.
Yet, I found winning Dastardly Dirigibles relies far too heavily on luck. I certainly have no problems with a lot of randomness is games as long as there are ways built into the design to overcome a stretch of bad luck (or at least provide the appearance of a chance to turn things around) to compete. Unfortunately, here you’re at the mercy of the cards you draw, or the cards you don’t, or what your opponents end up with so if the cards aren’t falling your way you’ll never sniff the win. Too many things are changing about the design of your airship every time you blink as well so it’s nearly impossible to come up with any sort of strategy or approach to winning from turn to turn. One almost has a sense they’re playing some sort of Airship Fluxx.
Of course, tons of folks love Fluxx and I’d say Dastardly Dirigibles is the type of game those people will enjoy. I just prefer games you can gameplan a turn or two ahead as opposed to winging it as you play. In the end it isn’t as if I think Dastardly Dirigibles is a bad game by any stretch; I really wanted to like the title a lot more but only found it (and the somewhat lackluster components) to simply be okay.
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