I always find it mildly annoying when people review my games after just one play, but I wanted to write a bit about Tzaar after finally getting in a game, so here goes.

As I've mentioned elsewhere, the past few years have been incredibly eye-opening for me in terms of the number of wonderful games out there. Previously I've been something of a one-game man...D&D as a kid, then chess, then Magic, each time devoting most of my free time to the game in question. Only when I began Your Move Games and started publishing games did I discover BGG. Sure, I'd played Settlers and Cosmic Encounter and still have my college copy of Titan but I'd never even heard of Essen.

This year I was able to attend the Spiel (as an exhibitor) and learned of the GIPF project. I've always loved abstract strategy games, so I went by the GIPF booth and picked up Tzaar -- what geek doesn't like prerelease limited editions?

The basic rules of Tzaar are both simple and elegant, making it very easy to start playing. On your turn you get two moves. The first must be to capture an enemy piece/stack and if you can't, you lose. Capturing involves moving one of your pieces/stacks along an unblocked straight line until it hits an enemy piece/stack of the same or lesser strength/height. You then remove the enemy piece/stack and put yours in its place.

The second move may be another capture, you may pass or you may make one of your pieces/stacks stronger by, in essence, capturing one of your own pieces. Stacking is done just like capturing -- you move along an unblocked straight line but this time you're bumping into your own piece/stack. Instead of removing it you put the piece/stack you moved on top of the other...and there are no height restrictions (a single piece may climb on top of a stack, or a small stack may climb on top of a bigger one).

You have three kinds of pieces: 6 Tzaars, 9 Tzarras and 15 Totts. The pieces function identically but the division forms the second possible way to win the game -- a player loses if s/he doesn't have at least one of each type of piece in play. A stack only counts as the type of piece at the top

At first glance it might seem that the obvious strategy would be to capture your opponent's scarce Tzaars while forming a Tzaar stack. While this is reasonable, it's not at all clear that it is the right way to go. After all, your opponent will likely protect one or more of his Tzaars and will be capturing his own non-Tzaar pieces (to make stacks), so it can quickly become the case that Tzarras or even Totts are more vulnerable to attack.

There is also a wonderful interplay between the choices of whether to capture an opposing piece or to stack on one of your own. The largest stack in an area simply radiates power, but at the same time you really are capturing your own piece, so choosing to stack rather than capture involves a -2 swing in your number of pieces relative to those of your opponent.

The game begins with every spot covered. Movement is thus limited in distance but each piece has multiple possible options. This gradually transitions to a state where you may be able to sweep across the board but where pieces run low on options and can become stranded. Since the only moves of the game are captures (either of your opponent's piece or of your own), there is no way to fill an empty space on the board. Concentrate too much power onto a single stack and your opponent may lure it into a stranded position where it is effectively dead.

My game was against BGG regular Andrew Gross. Andrew is a Go fanatic and a strong amateur. I'm a Chess fanatic with a 2100 rating (albeit out of date) so we both love our abstracts.

The early turns were fairly aggressive and chaotic. We captured pieces and took turns chasing the other's largest stack with our own whenever it was the bigger of the two. I suspect we played rather weakly at this point, since we were mostly getting a feel for the game. As we approached the endgame, however, we both enjoyed the tactical ability to calculate fairly deeply into the position, working out threats and possible responses.

We each had only one Tzaar left, but this were on large stacks of roughly equal size to each other. I was vulnerable on Totts but had launched a pretty successful counter-attack on Andrew's Tzarras. Eventually I responded to one of his threats with a move that at first I thought left him no way to defend his only remaining Tzarra (part of a stack). I was threatening to capture a Tott and then the Tzarra with my Tzaar stack. His Tzarra and Tott's only legal moves were to stack on the other, but either play seemed doomed. If the Tott jumped on top of the Tzarra he lost immediately, whereas stacking the Tzarra on top of his Tott would leave it in line with my stack, which would still be equally tall.

Except that it would actually be one smaller.

The play was still winning, however, since moving the Tzarra on top of the Tott would leave Andrew with only two Totts, both of which I could capture on my turn. I felt a bit silly having come up with what I felt was a very elegant winning maneuver that didn't win the way I thought it did.

Naturally my thoughts about Tzaar are highly preliminary at this point, but here they are:

Quick gameplay. Every turn you must capture one piece and you will usually capture two (again, I'm including stacking in the broader category of captures). With 30 pieces a player at the start, this puts a pretty reasonable cap on the number of turns.

Very nice decision tension. I spent the early part of our game menacing Andrew's Tzaar, shifted to an attack on his dwindling Tzarras and in the end won by capturing his last Tott. You can aggressively attack your opponent's pieces but you also want to employ jiu-jitsu to leave his powerful pieces stranded. You can even work to strand vulnerable pieces of your own (e.g. your last of a particular type -- maybe it can't move, but it can't be captured either).

Nice feeling pieces. I don't know if there is any difference in board quality for the prerelease edition. The board is just an average board; nothing terribly special. The pieces have a very nice weight and feel to them. As a publisher I admire their ability to create a very efficient product design -- one form factor with different painting and material forms all sixty game pieces.

Very accessible. The best abstracts, in my opinion, combine very high depth of play/strategy with rules that are simple and straightforward so a new player can get started right away. I'm not yet in a position to comment with confidence on play depth although it seems almost certainly to be quite high, but I can definitely say that the rules are simple and elegant -- you'll be playing almost immediately.

I'm definitely glad I picked up my copy.