Red Dragon Inn: Allies - Piper vs. Ripsnarl

Piper and Ripsnarl. I love these two characters. Their gimmicks are fun to use and add new ways to hurt the other bar patrons. How? Let's talk about that.Included are the 2 character decks needed to play the characters (keep in mind that Piper's character deck has only thirty-five as opposed to the standard forty), Piper's quiver deck (fourteen cards in total), fifteen boss cards for Ripsnarl, Ripsnarl's form markers (both a normal variant and a boss variant), fury markers (for Ripsnarl, more on them later), character-themed player mats, a "Bag Of Holding" prize card (more on that later), and all the other tokens needed to play the game (like coins, markers, etc.).No drink deck is included.For Piper, her gimmick is her arrows.During her "Discard & Draw" phase of her turn, her first draw comes from her quiver; the rest of the drawn cards come from her character deck. Her arrow cards count toward her hand size; for example, she could have 2 arrow cards and 5 character cards, assuming she doesn't have anything affecting her hand size; there are cards out there that can affect hand size.Her arrows are mostly action cards, but there are some sometimes cards. Piper, however, can play as many action arrow cards as she can, which can lead to lethal combos. The catch, however, is that each arrow is a one-time use; once Piper uses them, they're gone. Her character deck has one card that allows her to recover one discarded arrow card, but that's it.For Ripsnarl, he can be a human or a werewolf. He changes forms based on the cards he plays.For example on turning into a werewolf, Ripsnarl plays "Who's a good boy? This guy," That card adds one alcohol content to a drink he's about to consume, but each other player pays him one gold. Under all that text, in bold, it says "Turn Wolf." At that point, he flips his form marker to the werewolf side and uses his fury tokens. What are fury tokens? Read on!When he's a human, he can have a total of three fury tokens. One Fury translates into one fortitude damage that he can distribute among targets that are treated like a "Sometimes" card. Three fury does not mean a werewolf transformation, by the way.When he's a werewolf, he is a force to be reckoned with. His action cards are powered up. He's all about dishing out the damage.When Ripsnarl is played as a boss character, he always starts with one fury token attached to his human form. His boss cards are mostly about dealing fortitude loss that can't be ignored or negated. A third of his boss cards are about ignoring other cards, whether they are drinks, fortitude loss, and everything in between.I would recommend at least one defensive character if you're going to challenge him.The bag of holding prize card is a little something to spice up gambling. When a round of gambling starts, the player that started it can/must pick a prize card in addition to anteing. Whoever wins the gambling round gets the gold along with the prize card that was picked. The prize card can then be used appropriately based on what the card text says. In the case of "the bag of holding," it can be played immediately.The bag of holding basically functions as a card bank for your current hand, but keep in mind that if you bank your whole hand, you'll be vulnerable to attacks from other players.Fun Fact: This is not the first time Piper and Ripsnarl appeared in a game. They actually debuted in a Red Dragon Inn spin-off game called "Battle For Greyport."But because I don't have that game nor do I have any interest in that game, I don't know their involvement with it...even if it does include a character pack for Red Dragon Inn.Closing Thoughts: A great addition to your Red Dragon Inn collection. Highly recommended. A must-have.I mostly bought this character pack mostly for Piper; I saw how she plays and I liked it. I, however, haven't gotten a chance to play her yet (outside of testing) because my best friend has been hogging her. Piper is, obviously, his new favorite character and he usually sticks with playing Deirdre before I got this character pack.Going up against Boss Ripsnarl was tough. My defense, as Flower from the Munchkin character pack, wasn't enough. He kept outplaying me and my teammate, who was playing Piper. Throughout the game, our fortitude and alcohol content were somewhat evenly matched, but Ripsnarl still ended up winning. We did end up with more coins by the end of the game though.

Great characters and everything arrived in new condition! Only complaint is that the coins and board are smaller than the ones that come with the base game - doesn't affect the gameplay at all but it's a bit annoying to have different sized coins that mean the same thing. The character boards are also decorated for the characters on box, not that you CAN'T use them for other characters but it feels less like an expansion pack.

This set has a boss character so I recommend for the person buying have the 6th set, or know the rules about them first. (The set is still great for other full sets as well ;) )I wanted to buy this one cause of Piper, and boy, is she resilient. Her quiver deck (her second deck) have some pretty strong AOE actions, but I wish she has more sometimes and at least one anytime arrow cards. (but then she will be to strong) Her main strength is to ignore any fortitude change, and to mitigate and heal her fortitude.I don't see a immediate weakness with Piper, but when you run out of arrows in your 2nd deck, you only have two cards to refresh one arrow back. Since most of her arrows are actions, you might have a hand with a lot of action cards, and not a lot of sometimes or anytime cards to interact with the other players. On one v. one, she is weaker.Ripsnarl is the new villain/boss and he's quite tiring to play. His pros is that he can do constant damage, not a lot mind you but it can happen constantly by flipping his form marker.His weakness is actually his strength and gimmick; many of his cards change his form marker and getting fury to do damage is easy. But since he is transforming quite often, it hard to manage and keep track of his form and sometimes you want his human form or the other, but you can't since you can play a card and then he transform, but you want him in the previous form to have the maximum benefit for the next card you playing. However, I feel that Ripsnarl is a better Pooky and is a good character to play as if the person playing it can time his transformation right. Don't one v. one him.

I personally have yet to play either character yet, but my girlfriend has said that Ripsnarl is her instant favorite character to play in RDI. She said he is simple enough to learn, yet adds a nice variation of play that also packs a fun punch when a werewolf or when human and gathering up those rage tolkens (Sorry, they are not called rage points, but I can't recall what they are called). The only thing of note, regarding the amazon specific purchase, would be that I bought it for just slightly over 20$ + change, which does make it a bit of a bargain. I now noticed it's running for around 24 to 25 USD on Amazon. That said, you may want to shop around on the Slugfest game direct website or Amazon site as I believe (I admit, I could be mistaken) but I do believe their MSRP is a bit less than that or about the same. If you are part of the RDI Kickstarter, then the KS present listed price as an add on is at 22$, a few dollars under MSRP.

now have all expansion sets

Super fun!