Recently Played: TZAAR

[ellyssian]

TZAAR - 2 players ages 8 and up

As I mentioned in my review of TAMSK, it's a bit like Pluto being stripped of its planethood, the way TAMSK was pulled out of
Project GIPF. Except, well, really, there are the possibility of legitimate reasosns in this case.

Anyway, I have a soft spot for ol' Pluto, and no less of one for TAMSK. Maybe more, on account of Pluto being too far away to stop by and play a game or two once in awhile. Or even to give me a call...

Any anyway, I had some brief feelings of annoyance at this whippitysnapper upstart of a game, jumping into the second slot of the Project well after all was allegedly said and done. These feelings were somewhat tempered by the known fact that Kris Brum designs a damn good abstract strategy game, and if he really wants to keep the Project capped at six games, who am I to tell him "Stop!" when a new game, that's sure to be great, is slid into the mix as an old one is put out to pasture.

I already wrote the lament for TAMSK, so we'll just get right on with it: this is a perfect fit with the other games in the project I have played, and it seems like it will be a good fit with the three I haven't yet played as well. It's as engaging as GIPF, the rules are easy enough to pick up, and I can see some strategic challenges arising.

In TZAAR, each player has thirt pieces that are, at the start of the game, laid out on the intersecting points of a hexagonal playing field. It's GIPF-like, but bigger, with a central non-playing area.

There are three types of playing pieces, and each player has six Tzaars, nine Tzarras, and fifteen Totts. You must have at least one piece of each type on the board, or else you will lose.

For all but the first player's first turn, there are two moves you can make each time. The first is a capture ~ simply land on top of an adjoining opposing piece, or one that is on an open straight line from your piece. Any of the three types may capture any other type ~ there is no weight to the individual types of playing pieces. The second move can be another capture, or you can choose to strengthen one of your own pieces.

You strengthen your piece by landing on top of another of your own pieces ~ using the same movement rules as a capture ~ and stack the two together. The top piece is the only piece in a stack that counts, so if you stack on top of your last remaining Tzarras, you'll end the game immediately in your opponent's favor.

You can stack as many pieces together as you want. Each stack can capture any piece or stack of the same or less height. A stack of four pieces can not take a stake of five pieces, for instance, but it can trounce on a single piece, or three piece stack.

Each turn, for that second move, you need to decide whether to make your opponent weaker with a second capture or to strengthen your pieces by stacking ~ it's a bit of an arms race, really.

In my first game with aequitaslevitas, we had that arms race coming up pretty quickly. Originally, I was content to stop at a small stack and just continue to try to get rid of his Tzaars. The race began when he made his last Tzaar a triple decker, and then higher. Before it got too out of hand, I had him, with his last two Tzarras, both single pieces, right in my sights, each threatened, by both a stack of two and a stack of four.

If he had made either one or the other larger, it still would have been within range of capture of those two pieces, and his monster stack of five or six was all the way across the board. That's definitely a time where two capture moves are called for, and it put him out of business.

All in all, a very fun game, and I look forward to learning more about the strategies that can be brought to bear.

Because this is a newer game, and because YouTube was invented, there's a video of the game's designer explaining how to play this, so you can see it for yourself: