Dragon Storm CCG

Dragon Storm is Black Dragon Press's other 1990s CCG (alongside Towers in Time), a high-fantasy dragon-rider duel built around a simpler ruleset aimed at entry-level players.

The game

Published in 1996 by Black Dragon Press, Dragon Storm CCG is a two-player duel where each player builds around a Dragonrider hero and their dragon, then fights across an Aerie battlefield. Combat uses a Storm-ladder system where atmospheric conditions shift each turn and affect which cards can be played. The learning curve was deliberately shallow.

The context

Black Dragon Press used Dragon Storm to reach an audience that Towers in Time's complex time-travel mechanics had not captured. The publisher's distribution was regional, with stronger presence in the Pacific Northwest and California than elsewhere, which affected where survivor card pools concentrate today.

The collector angle

Only the base set released before the publisher pivoted back to Towers in Time expansions. Foil Elder Dragon chase cards are the primary collector items, and a limited-run promotional Dragon Egg card distributed at the 1996 Seattle OrcaCon is among the rarest items. The illustrations by a largely regional-Pacific-Northwest artist roster make the game a minor historical document for that illustration community.