Quick Overview
Death. Domination. Revenge. Victory.
These are but 4 of the many fortunes that await you in the game of Dread Draw. A strategy card game of press your luck competitive fortune telling by designer Ryan Miller and publisher Upper Deck.
The future is grim it seems. A large deck of cards will deliver these fortunes–some hellish and some not–to the table round after round. The winner is the one who can survive the longest.
Everyone begins the game on equal footing. Each player receives a deck of 10 cards that represent their life. The rest are shuffled and the game begins. It’s fitting that a game of fortune telling begins with reliance on fate. One by one, players draw a card off the top of the deck hoping that each drawn card is a higher value than the ones they’ve previously drawn. If so, it’s placed to the right of previously summoned cards.
Turn by turn, the stakes escalate. You must draw a card of higher value than one on the rightmost position of your display. If not, you’re out of the round. This continues until there is one player left. They win the round and deal damage to everyone at the table based on which morbid monsters have come out of the deck.
That seems simple, but many of the 100 cards include special abilities. Some will activate when the card is Summoned-played to the table-but others activate only when a player loses. In a system that immediately makes me think of a blood sacrifice, players get to keep one of the cards they discard when they take damage. This card enters the reserve. Again there is potential for an ability, but more importantly cards in the reserve can be summoned to the table in lieu of relying on fortune to smile on that draw deck.
It seems that players who pay with their Life points gain strategic benefits. Cards like The Oracle allow that player to see what’s coming up in the deck. Others allow you to rearrange your display or even take cards into your reserve. Your opponents may be opening wounds in you but they’re also opening your strategy. Clever selection and manipulation of the cards you’re forced to discard will hopefully allow you to bend fortune to your favor.
100 Cards
1 Rulebook
Setting Up a Game:
At the beginning of the game each player is dealt 10 cards face down. These cards form each player’s Life Deck. Players can never look at the cards in their Life Deck unless the game or a card effect allows them to.
Playing the Game:
The game is played in a series of rounds. During each round, players take turns in trying to summon cards. A round ends when only one player remains, making that player the winner of that round. A new round then begins.
At the end of the round, each eliminated player will take damage, which is represented by discarding cards from their Life Deck. If you are eliminated and have no cards in your Life Deck, then you are defeated and are out of the game. The last player remaining in the game wins!