Do you win by backstabbing and betrayal? What is the new Dracula game like? Risk? Diplomacy? It comes from these roots but it has some very key differences.
-Not player elimination. If you get whacked by Dracula, you just go raise a new army.
-Cooperative. You work as a team to take down Dracula.
-Asymmetric. A real player actually is Dracula. It is a pretty extreme situation. Dracula is outnumbered 6:1. Both sides have very different armies and must adapt very different tactics.
-Epic player interaction. In most games like this, the best path to victory is to betray some other player. In Dracula, you can have some form of backstabbing and betrayal but player interaction is much more subtle and interesting.
You have to work as a team. Dracula can easily trash 1 player but there are 6 of you. Nobody wants to go first but somebody has to. You have to start wearing him down.
The fun thing is that you can’t ‘communicate’ unless you are in the same area. So you have to make a plan before the game and execute it without talking. So in a way, you can ‘betray’ the team by not following the agreed upon plan and running off to do your own thing. Does that help bring down Dracula or hurt?
You can also kind of mess with other players by taking their troops! So let’s say your army gets whacked by Dracula. You have to go all the way back to Rumelia to recruit a new army. OR you just wait until other player’s troops flee from Impalements. Then you can go round up their stragglers and form a new army. This is much quicker but your team mates won’t appreciate it. 🙂