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| 1-5 | 13+ | 30 min | $39.99 |
Dresden Files Cooperative Card Game
Play Harry Dresden and his friends as they take on the cases from the bestselling Dresden Files novels in the ultimate what-if scenario—what if Harry was on the scene with allies who weren’t there in the original story? The core game includes Harry, Murphy, Susan, Michael, and the Alphas and plays through the first five novels as well as Side Jobs, a random scenario generator based on the short story collection of the same name. Designs are already well underway for expansions featuring more series characters and more novels.
Game Information
Number of players: 1-5
Age of players: 13+
Length: 30 minutes
Type of Game: Cooperative
Languages: English
Product Number: EHP0022
Suggested Retail: $39.99 (USD)
Availability: Check here
Game Designers: Eric B. Vogel
Release date: June 2017
Just got my Kickstarter copy and hope to do a review for my podcast coming soon. Dear Lord does it look good!
I had a customer bring the kickstarter version, oh man was it hard, fun, but hard. We lost.
Got my game in today. Played it 4 times, on the easiest setting, and lost every time. Hope I am doing something wrong, but reviewing the rules and watching the video says everything is correct.
The game is not particularly forgiving, just like Jim isn’t particularly forgiving when Harry gets on the job. 😉 You gotta play efficiently or the odds will stack against ya. Easy mistake to make is to focus too much on single targets. In Storm Front, for example, forget Kalshazzak entirely, and make sure to select a win-possible set of reachable targets (you’ll need to clear a combination of 5 cases and foes total for a win) and keep those clues and hits well distributed amongst them to give you solid odds in the Showdown. Figure out a strategy for the overall puzzle of the board, then start your plays.
Confused about Range
Infinite= 1-6
>1= 2-6
>2= 3-6
Is that right?
Infinate is correct, range 1-6. I can’t think of any cards that have range greater than a number. Can you give an example?
Yeah, there’s no case where we have cards that indicate a “>1” or “>2” range in the game. (There is an unreleased deck in development that might have something like this, but that’s not how we’d express it.)
My husband and I played for the first time today. We loved it! We lost but we had fun doing it. Those damn Nickelheads got us. We already decided to play again tomorrow. I can’t wait to explore the remaining books and how they play out.
Sounds great Maggie. Keep working at it. That noose can’t save Nicodemus forever!
I’ve just seen this game on Noble Knight Games’ website, but when I check here, it says that the game is in pre-order status.
So, is it available now (for others than Kickstarters) or will it be available in June?
I’m almost drooling at the mere idea of this game!
Thanks for any info
Hi Wayne,
Some retailers were Kickstarter backers and so they got a few copies last month. DFCO won’t go into full retail though until June. If you happy to spy a retailer that still has a copy in stock, nab it! Otherwise, there will be plenty of copies available in a couple months.
Thanks, Sean. I think I will wait until my FLGS can get it. I always prefer to support them whenever possible by purchasing thru them.
I have the Kickstarter release and I am curious about mouse’s talent. When you have a player discard and draw do you get the date points from that discard as well as being able to draw a card or just the card draw? Thank you.
When a card instructs you (or another player) to discard, that discard is not equivalent to that player taking their entire turn action to do the “discard for Fate” option. Fate only gets generated by a player on their turn selecting that action. All other discards triggered by the game don’t do that.
I just finished a 1-player version of the Storm Front deck and as Bob as my witness, I really had to work at it to pull out a win. I’m excited to share the game with some friends, but before I wanted to get a bit of clarification regarding the Showdown Phase. In my solo game, I spent chose to spend 4 FP to try and add more hits to a foe, but I found the wording in the rule book a little ambiguous; for 4 Fate I get 2 [5] on my chosen target. My question is, does that mean I get to add 2 hits automatically, plus however many additional I roll, or do I added those 2 into the sum of my roll and then add hits accordingly? And in either case, do I get penalized if the result of my roll is negative?
Hi Will, glad you pulled it off!
In showdown, based on the amount of fate paid your roll off gives you a number of hits (or clues) equal to the first number plus the results from rolling the bracketed number of dice. That does mean you can get negative results. So, if you are rolling 2[5] your results range from -3 (Yikes!) to +7 (Huzzah!).
The total is what’s added to the target card, so 2[5] does not mean you automatically add 2, it means you add 2 plus the result of 5 Fate Dice (as with any other situation in the game where you have a number followed by a boxed number).
Whether or not you’re penalized is somewhat irrelevant, because if your resulting total doesn’t represent enough tokens to complete the card, then the card has nothing else that will be done with it. An undefeated Foe will remain a point in the game’s favor. An unsolved Case will not earn a point for the players.
Great game! Thank you!
As a board gamer (both group and solo), I found the game system very easy to learn and challenging enough to play. The fact that each game is <30 minutes is great.
The game system could easily be used for other themes. I hope that there will be other games using this system.
As a fan of the book series, the artwork and card titles reminds me of the stories. The Showdown mechanism gives you that "last few chapter" feeling when Dresden and his crew has a very small chance of winning.
The Side Job option is also great. I played Harry with Michael and Sanya. Then I rolled two "+"…it was a slugfest. 🙂
Thank you for a great game. I'm so happy that I Kickstarted this game.
So glad to hear that you’ve enjoyed it Milo. And yes, we are looking at other Powered by DFCO games we could make from the engine now!
My friends and I broke out my Kickstarter copy yesterday and gave it it’s first run through. All but one of us was familiar with the novels. The one person only knew Dresden from the short lived SciFi TV show.
First time through we played with five of us. We found the game difficult to beat (as expected) but relatively easy to learn and play. Second time through it was only three of us playing but we managed to actually win the game. Both times this was, admittedly, in the “easiest” mode of the game but we felt genuinely accomplished and can see how getting further along at harder levels will be a real challenge, but not a challenge beyond reach.
Our first time through took us about half an hour to play as we were learning the rules. On the second play it took maybe 15 minutes, but that included me running back and forth to the BBQ to make sure our dinner wasn’t getting burned. *smile*
All in all we had a damn good time playing this and I’m sure it’s going to be a regular in our game rotation.
During the showdown phase, when you spend x fate points for (ex) 2 points + 5 dice, are the 2 guaranteed points?
IE if you roll 2- and 3 blanks, are u gaining 0?
We loved the game, but man was it hard to get a win, played 3 on standard and 1 on easy and are 0-4.
Great times!
I’m having so much fun, it’s ridiculous. Thomas is definitely my favorite – all obstacles in a row, yessss! I enjoyed using him for White Night, had a good laugh when he rescued himself. Definitely worth my kickstarter money and more! New favorite board game A++
I do wish my cat would stop chewing on my fate points when I’m not looking. Could I borrow Mister so he could sit on her?
I am so upset that I missed the kickstarter for this! I would have loved to support this during it’s development! Now I have to wait for my local store to eventually get a copy and upsell it to me for 70 million dollars 🙁
Hi Jared, the MSRP should be the same as the Kickstarter price was ($40 for the base set, $10 for expansions) and coming to stores soon. Where are you located?
I’m located in Yakima, WA. I saw in the list Bremerton, WA but I moved away 2 years ago.
Jaren, then yeah. there should be plenty of FLGS locations that will carry DFCO once it’s out. Or you can pre-order it from the webstore now.
But I missed out on the kickstarter exclusives :'( all because of timing, story of my life!
No worries, you can order them all on the webstore for the same price (and free shipping if you order more that $75) https://www.evilhat.com/store/index.php?main_page=advanced_search_result&search_in_description=1&keyword=Dresden+Files+Cooperative+Card
The game and all of the expansions are 69.99 all together though, 5 bucks shy of free shipping
Hey I didn’t know there were variants and that crossover thing. $77.96 for everything +free shipping
We must be doing something wrong. We found it fun but ridiculously easy.
I found a Flaw playing Side Jobs. Any randomly rolled setup that has 1:1 ratio (equal) number of foes to cases can be solved by solving only one case. It makes setting up the side job anti-climactic and not worth the effort. On the table of side-jobs, half have this issue.
That’s not true. In order to win by solving just one case, you’d need to defeat all the foes, in order to have a winning score of 1-0.
Karrin Murphys’ stunt lets you gain one fate point for every case/foe that has a hit/clue on it. Do defeated foes or cases that have been solved count as having hits/clues for the purposes of this card?
They do not. Most stunts have a timing element to them that determines when is the best time to use them; for Karrin, it’s in the middle of the game, when tokens have been spread around but Foes & Cases haven’t been cleared yet.
Any word on more expansions? They have enough books to do 2 more and maybe a staright character pack, not to netion the new collection due out next year.
I’m wondering about Mouse’s ability. Can you have a player discard a card if they have no cards in hand? Then letting you draw a ‘free’ card. I know this is an exploit but so far I’m 0 to 2 against the game and Mouse does have awesome mystic powers! Plus I can’t see any thing in the rules to clarify this point.
The second half of his stunt reads “If that player discards a card…” So if you choose someone with no cards to discard a card, and they discard nothing, then they have not satisfied the “If” on that second half, so nobody gets to draw a card.
How is Mouse able to be played since he does not have character cards?
P.S. – PLEASE COME OUT WITH MORE EXPANSIONS SOON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
We’re looking to have new expansions next summer.
As for Mouse — you can buy that promotional deck from our webstore (it’s best if you pick up other items at the same time tho, as our minimum postage vs. that item’s price is not favorable) at evilhat.com/store
i’m already buying parts of the game now.
okay not sure if my prev post made it, so I’ll ask this.
one: can we get alternative versions of most of the chars?
(mild spoilers ahead)
like most chars after Changes, I can see at least Butters, Harry, and Karrin.
Can we mebbe get a baddie side game too? Play as Marcone w/Hendricks, or Lea?
I know that there’s a lot of tertiary characters out there that don’t really need their own decks, but the idea of some additional support cards from say Sgt Rawlings, other members of the Alphas, or Vadderung w/Monoc Securities out there, they could be added to any deck really.
I also think a ‘best of Side Jobs’ free pdf or such would be cool to tell secondary stories.
Anyway, from what I hear, its been a great game, very themely, and tough too. So it sounds like well done on your part, I’ll repost here when I get my copy finally.
Please make a cooperative app version for Android and ios…
Please!!!!!!