I love the original game of Drakon but I'm being nice by giving two stars to the expansion. It's bad enough that I had to purchase another edition of Drakon so that I could use the expansion. (The backs of the tiles in the expansion aren't compatible with first edition Drakon.) But once I saw how little I got for my money I wished I had had just stuck with my first edition.

The new tiles add little in the way of excitement or strategy. Out of 14 new tiles I'd say about 5 are even useful or interesting. Drakon chases you around and steals your money now and then but all that serves to do is off-set the double coin chamber which is a stupid idea to begin with. I won't go on except to say FFG bombed on this one. Save your money and buy a game that comes with expansion sets worth their weight in gold like Carcassone.

First, let me preface this review by stating that I am a fan of the basic game. Although it has some flaws, it is all in all a good 'Beer and pretzels' game.

Putting aside the fact this expansion is not really compatible with the First Edition (a gripe that is rampant on the newsgroups), doesn't come in a box so you have to fit the tiles in your original box, and is a whopping 75% the cost of the original game, I was still willing to plop down my hard earned cash in the hopes of this expansion expanding my enjoyment of the game. The idea of having the Dragon move around the Dungeon appealed to me.

After all is said and done, this expansion disappoints. The Dragon adds to fun and strategy to the game, but the rest of the tiles are completely superfluous. The new tiles are just more of the same and add no further enjoyment nor any real strategy to the game. As a matter of fact one of the tiles only magnifies one of the weaknesses of the game.

The two double gold tiles give whatever player is able to place it an unfair advantage and this is magnified even more in a two or three player game. One of the drawbacks of the original game was the difficulty of a player to effectly block another player from building a loop of gold. The two gold piece makes this situation worse. I highly recomment removing the two gold tiles from play.

Since none of the new tiles, except the Dragon tile, really alters the strategy of the game I would also recommend raising the necessary number of gold to win from 5 to 7, especially in a 2 or 3 player game.

TJ and FFG should be ashamed to put out an expansion of this quality in light of the the cost and compatibility of the first edition.

Half the cost and half the tiles should have been the answer, especially since this expansion is labeled as 'number one' implying that there are more to come.

4 Stars for the original game, 2 stars for the expansion and that's only because of the Dragon.