Draconis 8 (2026)

Overview

Draconis 8, where the thrill of a trading card game meets the balance and strategy of a tile-laying board game. Each pack includes a terrain card and a complete, balanced eight-card deck for one player — featuring one powerful dragon and seven champions ready for battle. With millions of possible stat combinations, every card is individually generated to provide endless possibilities. No two cards are alike, yet all are designed to be fair and balanced. The Starter Set has 4 different decks.

Each turn, both players draw a card, giving them a two card hand. Then both players choose one of their two cards to play, and reveal them simultaneously. The player who played the card with the higher initiative (the number in the circle in the upper left) claims a yellow bead (worth 1 victory point). They play their card onto the table next to (orthogonally or diagonally adjacent to) any card in play. Then the player with the lower initiative card plays it onto the table. If at any time, a card's challenge strength number (in the shield) is next to a smaller combat number on an opposing (or terrain) card, then the owner places a bead of their color on that combat number to show they will get a victory point at the end of the game. Note that some abilities may cause cards in play to shift. If a card moves, remove all beads from fights it was involved in and recalculate, placing beads based on its new position.

Over the 7 turns of the game, cards will form a 4x4 grid. Once there are 4 cards in a row or column, the edges of the grid on that side are locked and cards can't be played beyond those edges. At the end of the 7th turn, players add up their score summing their beads in play plus the yellow initiative beads they won. The player with the higher score wins!

—description from the publisher