Wyrmspan: Dragon Academy — How to Play

Goal of the Game

In this Wyrmspan: Dragon Academy expansion, you take on the role of a novice dracologist who has opened an academy for young dragons to reach their full potential! The goal is to manage your academy to attract and train dragons, accumulating the highest possible score at the end of the game.

Setup

To integrate this expansion into the base game, follow these steps:

• Permanently replace the round tracker board with the updated round tracker board.
• Replace the following 5 dragon cards with their updated versions: Chameleon Coatyl, Mosaic Guardian, Titanic Coatyl, Lilliputian Fae, and Customary Grazer.
• Permanently replace cave card 50 and cave card 51 with their updated versions.
• Add the 45 training tokens to the game and place them within reach of all players.
• Add all other expansion components (80 dragon cards, 25 cave cards, 5 dragon guild tiles, and 7 objective tiles) to their respective component types.
• Perform all other base game setup steps as per the original manual.

Game Flow

The game progresses in rounds. The turn and phase structure follows these specific expansion rules:

Passing and End of Round

In rounds 1, 2, and 3, when you decide to pass to the next round, you must place your adventurer on a space on the updated round tracker board corresponding to the current round (you do not receive the income benefit immediately). Once placed, no other player may occupy the same space during that round.

If you choose to pass (because you lack coins or wish to save them), this is your complete turn; you cannot perform an additional action.

When all players have passed, follow this order on the round tracker board:

1. Activate all "once per round" dragon abilities.
2. Score the round objective.
3. Update the cave card and dragon card displays.
4. Rotate the starting player marker clockwise.
5. All players collect the income shown on the space they selected and recover their adventurer. If a cave card or dragon card was recruited, the display is immediately replenished.

Note: After round 4, players pass as usual, but do not select an income space.

Actions and How to Play

In addition to the standard base game actions, the expansion introduces new elements:

Fledgling Dragons

There is a new dragon size: fledgling. They are adolescent dragons that may require resources from hatchlings (milk or eggs) or adults (meat, gold, or crystal). Unlike hatchlings, they are distributed equally among all three caves.

Fledgling Training: Whenever your adventurer passes a fledgling, you may (optionally) train it once.
To train, pay the cost shown in the box to the left of the fledgling and place a training token in that box. You must always train sequentially, from left to right. When all boxes are filled, the fledgling is fully trained and its purple ability (bottom) is activated.

Dragons with Conditional Cost

Some dragons have a blue star symbol. If you meet the condition printed at the bottom of the card, you may ignore the dragon's normal gameplay cost (but you must still perform the attraction process).

Dragon Guild Powers

The expansion introduces 5 new dragon guilds. Some guild mechanics include:

• King’s Guild: All abilities require a tithe, which can be any item (resource, dragon card, cave card, or egg).
• Veterinary Guild: Allows you to choose between placing resources/cards into dragons or gaining a specific resource.
• Guild of Magicians: Allows you to swap a dragon or a cave card from your cave for a new one from your hand, ignoring normal cave requirements and placement costs.

End of Game and Scoring

The game ends after round 4. Scoring is calculated as follows:

• Dragons: Score according to the printed value.
• Cave Cards: Score according to the printed value.
• Fledglings: Each fledgling on your player board scores 11 points for every fledgling you possess (including itself). Example: if you have 2 fledglings, each is worth 22 points (total of 44). This occurs regardless of whether they are fully trained or not.
• Objectives: Victory points from completed public objectives.
• Dragon Guilds: Fixed victory points on the guild tiles.
• Automa (Solo): If playing with the Automa, it scores 77 points per dragon, 22 per cave card, 11 for each step beyond the last visited brown space, public objective points, and 11 points for every 2 cache tokens.

Tips for Winning

Consult the manual for details regarding this section.