Fury of Dracula

Outside, thunder crashes, and the relentless hunter Van Helsing flinches. In that instant, his quarry strikes!

Fantasy Flight Games wisely resurrected this undead classic in 2006, and the reprint still has the magic of the old Games Workshop classic. Several important changes have been made, but it still beautifully blends gameplay and theme.

Fury of Dracula lets you wield Dracula’s evil influence over Victorian Europe as you move from London to Transylvania and everywhere in between, laying traps, setting red herrings and delaying tactics, gathering and unleashing your human and animal minions—all to thwart Van Helsing, Mina Harker, Lord Godalming, and Dr. Seward as they follow hot on your heels. The Dracula player uses an ingenious system of cards to lay down his trail, but all his movement is done in secret. It’s that secret movement, and the fun of putting horrific obstacles in the path of the other co-operating players, that makes being the Dracula player in this game such a huge amount of fun. You’ll gloat, cackle and make mw ha haaa haaaaa noises as you set down each card, watching the other players desparately try and beat you to the next location to drive a stake through your heart.

Every gamer should have a copy of Fury of Dracula in their collection, and it’s my personal favourite for Halloween gaming.

Update Log

Date Version Changelog
Mar 2011 2.2 Some small clarifications and fixes throughout
Mar 2010 2.1 Clarification to playing cards in combat; lightened background; cleaned up encounter sheet
? 1 Original release

13 Comments

  • Stefan Kurek says:

    This is one of my favorite games. I do have a question about the summary and reference guide.

    On the encounters page, there is a note that escaping an assassin ends a player’s turn. This note is not listed for minions.

    Don’t minions and assassins perform in the exact same way? If you are attacked by them and combat ends prematurely or you escape, they are left on the board and your turn immediately ends. If you defeat them then you may continue to encounter encounters.

    Am I wrong on this?

    • Universal Head says:

      There may be multiple encounters in the same space; usually, escaping one means you still have to deal with the others (including Dracula himself, if he is there). The assassin is an exception to this.

  • Stefan Kurek says:

    See, there is a comment in the rules that states if you’re fighting an “agent” in the same space as dracula and you escape or combat ends without a kill, then you may not face dracula.

    There is another note about Van Helsing’s ability that if he escapes combat or it ends with an “agent”, then his turn immediately ends and he may not resupply,

    I was making assumptions with these notes, that fleeing combat with any agent (minion or assassin) would leave the encounter on the board and your turn immediately ends. Maybe I am wrong…

  • Stefan Kurek says:

    I am referencing page 18 “Battling to Reach Dracula.”

    I think I am reading the same rules a little differently than you. I read “Combat with an Agent ends immediately if the Agent is killed. If there is another encounter at that location…” as though the following sentences in that paragraph only pertain to if combat just ended because you killed an agent (not fled or escaped).

    I could have swore that there was a more definite rule about this, but I can’t seem to find it. Boardgamegeek it is.

    • Universal Head says:

      Oh sorry Stefan, you may have replied to a reply which I deleted – you’re very quick! You’re correct – see my reply above yours.

      • Stefan Kurek says:

        No problem. Happy to hear that cleared up. It just seemed weird to have that note on the assassin and not the minions even though it applies to both (although I know the rulebook does the same thing for these encounters)

  • Falko Jäger says:

    I wanted this game badly and finally got it via eBay maybe 6 months ago. I played it once with my usual group and got rather poor feedback. So it sat on the shelf until last weekend. I took it with me to a friend. He was interested, I re-learned the rules on the spot and played a fantastic game with him. It was so fun we played again the following day. We had a great time (First game: Dracula matured a vampire and won by killing Mina. Second game: Van Helsing mortally wounded Dracula and on his escape through Germany the count was overtaken and destroyed). The UH rules summary helped us a lot to get into the game that quickly. Thanks!

    • It’s a great game that I haven’t played for a long time. When playing with newbies, it’s good to mention if you have Dracula cornered and draw from the Event deck, you may draw a card that will let Dracula escape! (eg Newspaper Reports). This happened to me once and put off the new players I was playing with, as they got very discouraged.

  • Edge says:

    Is there going to be an update for the third edition?

Leave a Reply to Universal Head Cancel Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.