Three Dragon Ante - rules

In Three-Dragon Ante (3DA for short), you and the other players play gambits in which you ante gold into the stakes and then take turns playing one card at a time from your hands. After you play a card, leave it faceup in front of you. If the  number on your card (strength) is equal to or lower than that of the card just played by the person on your right, or if you  play first in a round, you get to use your card’s special power. Otherwise, ignore the power. Once each player has played three cards, check to see whose three cards have the highest total strength. That player wins the gold in the stakes. Keep  playing gambits of three cards each until someone runs out of gold at the end of a gambit, ending the game.   

Setup

 

1. Multiply the number of players by 10. Give each player that much gold. For example, in a three-player game, give each player 30 gold; in a six-player game, each player starts with 60 gold. These form each player’s starting hoard.
2. Create the 80-card deck for this game by adding the 70 standard Dragon cards to 10 random cards chosen from the 15 Mortal and 15 Legendary Dragon cards. Set the 20 unused Mortal and Legendary Dragon cards aside, facedown, so that no one knows which cards are out of the game.
3. Shuffle the deck. Each player draws a starting hand of six cards. Keep the cards in your hand hidden from the other players. 
4. Later in the game, you’ll need either a few extra coins, dice, or pen and paper for keeping track of how deep a player goes into the hole in the middle of a gambit when they can’t pay all the gold they owe.

Gambit sequence

A Three-Dragon Ante game is played in a series of gambits. Each gambit is usually three rounds. A gambit consists of five steps. Steps 1, 2, 3, and 5 happen every gambit. Step 4 only comes up when players have started running out of gold and the game is close to ending. The game ends when one or more players have no gold at the end of a gambit.

1. Each player antes a card
2. Play cards
3. Determine gambit winner
4. Players running out of gold pay into the hole and check for game end
5. Draw 2 cards apiece

Step 1: Ante

Each player chooses one card from their hand and puts it facedown in the center of the table. These are the ante cards. Once all players have chosen ante cards, reveal them.  Rare corner case: If all the ante cards are tied with at least one other ante card, discard them all without paying gold to the stakes. Then each player draws a card from the deck and chooses a new ante card from their hand.  The usual ante when not all cards are tied: Check to see which ante card or cards have the highest strength. Each player takes a number of gold coins from their hoard equal to the highest strength card or cards and pays that gold to the stakes in the center of the table. Ante cards remain faceup in the center of the table for the rest of the gambit. They’re not part of the stakes.

Step 2: Play Cards

The player who revealed the strongest ante card is usually the leader in the first round of the gambit. Do not count any ante cards that are tied for strongest; in other words, the player who anted the strongest untied card is the leader. The leader takes the first turn, then the other players take turns clockwise around the table until each has taken a turn. On your turn, play one card from your hand faceup onto the table in front of you and check to see if the card’s power triggers.   Your faceup cards make up your flight. When you play a card, add it to the right of the last card you played. Flights stay faceup on the table until the end of the gambit. You can receive extra benefits by completing a special flight. Once each player has taken a turn, the player who played the strongest card that round becomes the leader in the next round. Do not count any cards that are tied for strongest. If all cards played in a round are tied with at least one other card, the previous round’s leader also leads the next round. After three rounds of play, you score the gambit. Check to see which player’s flight has the highest total strength at the end of the third round. If only one player has the strongest flight, go to step 3. If two or more players are tied for the strongest flight, all players play another round.  

Strongest and Weakest Flights

Some cards refer to the “strongest” or “weakest” flight or opponent. The flight of cards with the highest total strength is the strongest flight. The flight with the lowest total strength is the weakest flight. (Flights can be tied as strongest or weakest.) If a card instructs you to choose the opponent with the strongest flight and two or more opponents’ flights are tied as the strongest opposing flights, you choose one of those tied players. The same is true for weakest.   Triggering Powers A card’s power doesn’t do anything unless it triggers. When a card triggers, follow its instructions. A power triggers in the following two situations:

• The leader plays it as the first card of the round. (In other words, the first card played each round triggers its power no matter its strength; that’s the advantage of being the leader.)
• When you play a card, the strength of the card is equal to or lower than the strength of the card just played by the person to your right. (For example, if you play a strength 5 card, its power triggers if the player to your right played a card of strength 5 or higher.)

Dragon God Abilities   Dragon god abilities have the word “Dragon god” preceding their text. (Some dragon gods, like Bahamut, also have powers that trigger normally.) Dragon god abilities are not powers; they are always in effect regardless of the card’s strength. Cards that copy other cards’ powers can’t copy dragon god abilities.   

Special Flights

You can earn extra rewards by having three or more similar cards in a flight. A color flight has three dragons of the same color, or three Mortals. A strength flight has any three cards of the same strength. You complete a special flight on the turn you play the third matching card. Also, if the effect of a power changes the cards already in your flight so that they create a special flight, you complete that special flight. When you complete a special flight, follow the instructions of all powers that trigger on that turn, and then collect the special flight’s reward. Sometimes gambits go on for more than three rounds. In a gambit that lasts more than three rounds, it’s possible to complete both a color flight and a strength flight— even at the same time! If you complete both a color flight and a strength flight during the same turn, collect gold for completing the color flight first. No player can complete more than one of a given color flight and more than one of a given strength flight in a gambit. In other words, there’s no reward for playing your fourth dragon of a color or fourth card with the same strength.   Color Flight: Each opponent pays you gold equal to the strength of the secondstrongest card in the flight, counting down from the strongest card. If it helps, you can usually think of the color flight value as the middle value. (For example, if you have three Gold Dragons of strengths 9, 4, and 13, each other player would pay you 9 gold. For a more complicated example, if you have two Green Dragons of strengths 2 and 5 and the 5-strength Wyrmpriest whose power has triggered to let him count as any color dragon, you’d count down from one of the 5s; the second-strongest card in the fight, counting down, is 5, so each other player would pay you 5 gold.)   Strength Flight: You steal gold from the stakes equal to the strength of one of the cards in your strength flight. You also take two ante cards and add them to your hand. (For example, if you have three strength 5 cards in your flight, you steal 5 gold from the stakes and add any two of the remaining ante cards to your hand.)  

Legendary Dragons & Color Flights

Ten of the Legendary Dragons are dragons that match the color of one of the normal dragons. The Black Raider, Blue Overlord, Green Schemer, Red Destroyer and White Hunter can make color flights with other evil dragons of their color. The same is true of the good Legendary Dragons: the Brass Sultan, Copper Trickster, Bronze Warlord, Silver Seer, and Gold Monarch. Tiamat, of course, can make a color flight with two other black, blue, green, red, or white dragons of the same color.  

Buying Cards

You must buy new cards in the following two situations.

• At the start of your turn, if you have only one card in your hand.
• During any turn, if the effect of triggered powers is complete, and you find yourself with no cards in your hand.

To buy new cards, reveal and discard the top card of the deck. Pay gold equal to that card’s strength to the stakes, then draw cards until your hand contains four cards. Note: You cannot buy cards in any other situation: you can’t buy cards just because you want to!  

Losing Your Hoard

Whenever you have to pay more gold than the amount remaining in your hoard, pay as much as you can. Track any remaining gold you cannot pay as gold that will have to go “into the hole” at the end of the gambit. It does not matter who the gold would have gone to - this isn’t a debt - it’s an accounting of how much gold you were unable to pay during the  gambit. At the end of the gambit, if you managed to acquire any gold, you’ll pay what you owe into the hole.   

No Gold in the Stakes

If, at any time, no gold remains in the stakes, the gambit ends immediately. Go to Step 3.  

Step 3: Determine Gambit Winner

The player with the strongest flight wins the gambit (the flight of cards with the highest total strength). The winner of the gambit takes all the gold in the stakes and adds it to their hoard. Then discard all the cards in the ante and in all player’s flights.  Important: Don’t discard the cards that players have in hand—a big part of the game is saving cards for the future.  

Step 4: Pay Into the Hole and Check for Game End

After determining the winner of the gambit, any player who owes gold must take an amount of gold from their hoard equal to how deep they went into the hole, or all the gold they have, if they cannot meet what they owe, and set it aside out of the game, next to the deck. The resulting stack of coins is known as the hole and sits out of the game until the game ends. Then, if at least one player has no gold in their hoard, the game ends. See “Winning the Game” below.   

Step 5: Draw Cards

If the game has not ended, each player draws two cards, starting with the player who won the gambit that was just scored and going clockwise around the table. Then start the next gambit.  

Maximum Hand Size

You can’t have more than ten cards in your hand at any time. As soon as you have ten cards in your hand, you can no longer draw cards from the deck or take them from the ante or from other players. If a card power instructs you to draw or take cards, ignore that part of the power once you reach ten cards in hand. (For example, if you have nine cards in your hand and a power lets you draw three cards, you can draw only one.)

No Cards in Deck

Whenever the deck runs out of cards, shužffle the discard pile to form a new deck.   

WINNING THE GAME

When the game ends, the player with the most gold wins! As a bonus that matters more to D&D® characters, that winner then also receives all the gold that was paid into the hole.   In the extremely rare case in which players tie as winners, they share the victory and split the gold from the hole as evenly as possible. If they can’t agree on which of them gets the odd coin from the hole, they’re encouraged to give it to the player who ran out of gold and can least afford it.