OUR REVIEW

The End of the Warring States

ZhanGuo

Unification of Script, currency and law

ZhanGuo takes us into the period of the Warring States, to the years between 230 and 221 B.C. A young emperor has conquered the warring states and wants to unify them into a big realm. Opposing such a status of communal feeling or sense of belonging are the different traditions and laws of the various realms. Players assist the emperor to propagate uniform writing, currency and law in all the realms and thus raise in the esteem of the emperor. As an additional task you need to propagate one of the most ambitious construction projects of mankind, the building of the Chinese Wall.

You play five rounds. At the start of each round players are dealt six cards, comprising two of each in the “Unification Aspects” of Writing, Currency and Law. Besides its unification aspect each cards has two additional characteristics: The activation number and the ability.

In turn, players have to play one of their cards until all six cards have been played and the end of the round is triggered. Playing a card results in one of two actions: A Unification Action or a Court Action.

Unification Action

Each player has a tableau showing the five regions of the future empire. With a unification action you assign a card to one of those regions. There can be a maximum of three cards assigned to each region. The population of the region, though, is not too happy about having to go against their traditions, so that unrest rises in the region. When regional unrest exceeds certain threshold values you can no longer use certain abilities of the region and cannot build palaces in the region; consequences of this are described later.

As reward for propagating unification a player receives octagons (octagonal wooden tiles) in the color of the unification aspect of the card. In addition, the region acquires the ability depicted on the card. Such an ability always comes with a condition and an effect. The condition always demands that a certain Court action is implemented. The effect of the card can be very different, for instance an official might arrive in the region or unrest is reduced in a certain specified region.

Court Action

If you do a court action, you place one card from your hand onto the discard pile and choose one of six action options. You also compare the activation number of the card you play/discard with the previous card placed on the discard pile: If you choose the action options of Building Wall, Building Palace or Hire Worker, you must play a card with a higher activation number to accrue a bonus. If you choose the action options of Recruiting Officials or Installing Governor, you must choose a card with a lower activation number to accrue a bonus. For the sixth option, Re-Assigning Officials, there is no bonus to earn.

If you earn a bonus you can – after the chosen main action – activate all your unification cards that you played into regions, provided the unrest in the region is not too high and whose action condition corresponds to your chosen action.

The six action options you can choose, in detail:

Recruit one official:

There are three different types of officials, represented by small wooden cubes in three different colors. When choosing the action you can place one official of your choice into any region of your choice.

Re-assign officials:

The action can be used to make up to three movements with a player’s own official, usually moving them into adjacent regions.

Install Governor:

If you have installed all three different types of official in a region, you can remove them in order to install a governor in this region. Governors are placed on the central board. Each region is assigned a track with three different bonus cases. The first three governors installed in a region can be placed on one of the bonus cases to earn the bonus (additional official or re-assigning up to four officials or four esteem points = victory points (VP). When the track is complete, you can still install more governors. Installing of a governor has the effect that unrest in the region is reduced to 0. Furthermore, there is a majority scoring in each region at the end of the game. The player with most governors earns VPs.

Hire Worker:

With this action option you choose a region to delegate one or two officials to hiring workers by placing them in worker areas. For each delegated official you place one worker tile into the region. Unfortunately, this results in a raise in unrest in the respective region.

Construct Palace:

With this action option you construct a new palace in a region, thereby earning esteem points = VPs. To construct a palace you must discard two worker tiles from this region plus one worker tile from a region of your choice, provided the unrest in the chosen region is not too high and that there are fewer palaces in the regions than there are players participating in the game.

Construct Wall:

The Chinese Wall has 18 construction segments. With this action options you can discard between one and three worker tiles from different regions of your choice in order to construct a segment. Fur this you earn different and unique amounts of VPs, depending on the individual segment and the number of workers you discarded. Each segment that has been constructed therefore reduces the available segment options.

End of Round

When the six cards on hand of all players have been played, each unification aspect is checked as regards to who did collect most octagons in the respective colors. This player earns a small bonus, but must discard all octagons of this color. You can pass on the bonus to avoid discarding octagons and the player with the second-most octagons is then asked if he wants it. At the end of the round you also determine the new turn order of players.

End of Game

After five rounds the game ends with a grand final scoring; describing the details oft he scoring here would exceed the scope of this review. The winner of the game is the player who accrued most VPs.

My Opinion

ZhanGuo is published by What’s Your Game?, a publisher who has made a reputation over the last few years for publishing very good but very complex games. ZhanGuo fits perfectly into this portfolio. In my opinion, ZhanGuo is more easily accessible than, for instance, Vinhos or Madeira, but is also definitely to be sorted into the top range of the complexity scale. The numerous different action options and abilities and especially their interactions take some time and effort to process and understand. I strongly advise to use a first play of the game as an introductory game to familiarize yourself with it.

The Italian designer duo of Marco Canetta and Stefania Niccolini was an unknown quantity for me so far, but in game databases you find The Doge Ship and African Park, two games published by giochix.it and designed by this duo. In ZhanGuo they did not invent the world anew from the beginning. The game does not surprise you with grand new mechanisms, but is an excellently designed composition of well-known standard mechanisms.

The game components and graphic design by Mariano Iannelli are of excellent quality, functional, clear and nice to look at. The rules, too, which are – as is usual for the genre of complex games – somewhat longish, are very well laid out and leave no question unanswered.

I like complex games! For me they can never be complex enough, at least within the frame in which current modern board games are appearing. So ZhanGuo, too, seems to be made for me. I love how the different mechanisms, actions and abilities interact with each other. I like that I can already plan, when laying out the unification cards, how the abilities will work together and interact, despite depending on drawing suitable cards. I also like the small aspect of managing my card hand, because you want to be able to play the right card at the right moment in order to implement important action options without having to renounce the bonus. And, all the time, you need to keep at least one eye open for the construction options to avoid having them snapped up by your fellow players.

I made a small deduction in the overall rating and did not award the full number of points, because ZhanGuo did not present me with a world changing new mechanism (and this is the least that I expect from a game that I would award full marks) and also because it is difficult to keep track of the combinations that are laid out by my fellow players. This results in a slight feeling of multi-player solitaire game, albeit a very very slight feeling of that dreaded multi-player solitaire game, because allover ZhanGuo offers too much interaction with its race for esteem points, for instance in the construction of Wall segments or earning the Governor bonuses.

Markus Wawra

Players: 2-4

Age: 12+

Time: 90+

Designer: Marco Canetta, Stefania Niccolini

Artist: Mariano Iannelli

Price: ca. 47 Euro

Publisher: What’s Your Game? 2014

Web: www.whatsyourgame.eu

Genre: Development

Users: For experts

Version: de

Rules: de en it pl

In-game text: no

Comments:

Complex composition of standard mechanisms

Very good graphic design and components

Well-structured, albeit longish rules

Compares to:

Race for the Galaxy, Vinhos, Madeira

Other editions:

Ghenos Games, Hobbity.eu

My rating: 6

Markus Wawra:

The game does not surprise one with grand new mechanisms, but it is an excellent and well-composed mix of standard mechanisms.

Chance (pink): 1

Tactic (turquoise): 2

Strategy (blue): 3

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 1

Communication (red): 0

Interaction (brown): 1

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0