Game Review

Concept:

Three players place and move pieces to their territory. The catch is that each player must place their opponents pieces first!

Gameplay:

Players choose which color is theirs (dark blue, green, or light blue). Each player then takes three pieces each of their opponents colors and three white pieces. These are in the player's pool. The only color that a player doesn't have is their own.

A player's turn goes as follows:

1. Place a piece from your pool

2. Use any power triangles (made of your color)

3. Slide 1 of your colored pieces or a white piece

Power triangles are made when three stones of one color (or white plus one color) are on the vertex of a triangle. When a player forms a Power triangle, and the triangle has colored dots in the center, the player has a choice: pick up a stone that matches the color of a dot (including white) or gain an extra slide of a stone. If no dots are in the center, the player only gets an extra slide.

Stones are allowed to slide from one vertex on a triangle to another vertex. There are few places on the board where pieces cannot be moved because there isn't a triangle formed from the stone's starting point. The rules illustrate the exceptions.

The game ends when one player runs out of pieces in his/her pool, or one player successfully moves at least two of his/her pieces into his/her territory without leaving any of their pieces in the opposing territories.

When the game ends, 1 point is awarded to each player for each piece of their color in their own territory. However, they lose 1 point for each piece of their color in their opponent's territories.

Winning Conditions:

• The player who has the most points at the end of the game wins.

Our Opinion:

The Zombies were pleasantly surprised by the way the game played. All three players enjoyed the strategy and style of the game. We were left with a few minor rules clarification questions, but overall the game was fun.

When we first read the rules, we felt a little overwhelmed. The rules are tough to understand unless you actually play as you read them. They aren't the worst rules we've seen, but as with some other games like Wiz-war, the rules can impact play significantly. In this case, the writer needed to better emphasize a small section about the order of the basic turn. As you play, the answer becomes apparent, but it isn't obvious about the order of each phase right away.

Our first rule question was here: According to the rules, first you place a stone, then if you activated a power triangle you "can" use it. The decision for the player with a power triangle activated is between an extra slide or picking up a stone. Our question was about timing -- Must a player make the decision right away, or delay until only the move using the power triangle is left? We opted to force the player to choose right away -- picking up a stone was a very serious strategy point, and the order of play is significant. This was not a common problem -- but it did make for a rules discussion that delayed our game for a few minutes. The scenario only occurred once in the 3 games we played.

Our second question was another rare case -- if a player managed to make a home territory triangle into a power triangle, are only the center most dots applicable for picking up stones or are ALL of the dots useable? Again, this was very rare.

Finally, with our tongues firmly planted in cheek, our last question was "How do you refold the game board properly to put it away?" We were tired at the end of the night and this was like folding a road map in the dark... we figured it out, but never try to refold it by committee -- that was a bad idea on our part. :-)

The game was very fun and the winning strategies became obvious after our first game. Our first game lasted over an hour due to reading the rules, but our next two games finished in under 15 minutes each. Once you know how to play, this is fast and fun. The strategy aspect to the game kept all of us entertained, but did not mentally tax us.

Our final thoughts on the game were that it was unique to require 3 players only -- and that with the cloth board and small package it would be ideal for camping trips. The biggest reservation against buying it was its price, the reviewers thought that the $25 price tag was too steep for it, however they might consider purchasing it for $10 to $12. It is good effort for a new company's first game to market, though.

Where to buy:

Pair-of-Dice Games' Web site is the easiest place to buy this game (unless you live in Massachusetts)-- As of August 2001, the game costs about $25.