Having known the Looney Labs games for a couple of years now, I still hadn’t been able to play Zarcana yet. My girlfriend, who’s not that fond of learning new games all the time, probably would have found it too difficult to learn. Then a couple of weeks ago, I met this guy who’s into learning new games and giving them a try. He hadn’t heard of the icehouse game system, so I figured that Zark City would be a light and fun way to introduce him. We played a couple of games and they were quite exciting.
As you can figure out Zark City does have something to do with Zarcana. They’re the same, but different. Zarcana is based on a tarot deck, while Zark City uses a regular deck of playing cards. This makes the game a lot lighter and a lot faster, since there are not that many cards to choose from.
The idea of growing, moving and attacking with your pyramids (nine pyramids in three sizes) to control the board is the same. The board is made up of the number cards; the face cards are used to attack (this will be explained later). Number cards are laid out in a weaving pattern: the short end of one card always touches the long end of the adjacent cards. The possible actions, contrary to Zarcana, are mainly disconnected from the cards that are in play or on your hand. On your turn you have seven choices: draw new cards (up to three with a hand limit of six); grow a pyramid (replace one with a larger one); spawn a pyramid (place a new small pyramid on the board); build (add a new card to the board on the table); move (to an adjacent card); attack another pyramid and finally hatch. This last action can only be done, when you have no pyramids (left) on the table. You add a new card to the board and place a small pyramid on it.
To win the game you (and you alone) have to control a series of three connected cards. This can either be a Three-of-a-Kind or a Suited Trio (a three-card Straight Flush). This means that by drawing and adding cards to the board on the table you will have to form one or more of these trio’s. Only when this is done, the game will make some sense. Of course you start to place and grow pyramids on the board, but only when a second card (and later on a third card) of a possible trio is placed, you will come into real action. This is the time when the struggle for control begins: moving, growing and spawning your pyramids to and on
the most important cards. Attacking the pyramids of your opponent and finding out who will be the luckiest player.
Yes, even though the seven choices lead to some kind of strategical play, we have found out that luck still plays a major element in this game: in the end all is coming down to the question who will draw the most face cards. As I have told before, attacking is done with the face cards (including the aces). To attack and remove a small pyramid, you discard one face card from your hand; two face cards are used for a medium-sized pyramid and three cards for a large pyramid. This means that it’s best to have as many pyramids in play as possible, preferably the larger ones. Secondly this means that you have to keep circulating the cards you don’t need. At a certain point the board is somehow finished: there’s enough trio’s and increasing the size of the board wouldn’t make any sense. At this stage, all you want is face cards. So you want to draw a lot of cards, hoping you’ll get the needed ammo.
The paragraph above is not really as negative as it may sound. I must admit that, even though it was very frustrating to keep drawing number cards for some time; it was also quite thrilling to find out who would be the first to be able to attack the last remaining pyramid of his opponent. This is another thing that we noticed: at first the struggle was concentrated in only one area. But as soon as a couple of trio’s were placed, decisions were made to move to another trio, or just to stay, because you already had the upper hand. I particularly found out that trying to control one certain area would be too expensive. There were just too many hostile pyramids around me.
This meant that both players had some control in one trio, but more control in another. You were struggling to stay alive in hostile land, making an effort to keep your opponent from winning, while desperately trying to kick him out of your own trio. It’s this stage that makes it an enjoyable, fast and exciting game to play. What I’m curious about, is how it will play with more than two players. Now we were just able to concentrate on each others pyramids. The more players there are, the more chaotic it will be, I guess. It could be one of those cases where two players are fighting for victory, whilst the third one can keep quiet and be the winner with a rush.
There’s one more thing I would like to add to this review. At first sight the rules make you believe, that this game is something like Fluxx. It says: “The ever-changing game board for Zark City…” I have to say that I strongly disagree with this phrase. First of all, it’s not ever-changing. This would mean that cards will appear and disappear during the course of play. They will appear when you are building new territory, but they never disappear. Okay, new cards are added to the board, so in a way I guess this means “changing”. The term “growing” would be better for this game, but even then it’s not ever-growing! As I’ve mentioned before: at a certain point in the game, it’s useless to keep adding more cards to the board. My word of advice for the maker (as tempting as it may seem): don’t use a term from another one of your games (which I like as well, btw.) that doesn’t fit this one! It can be very confusing and will raise false hopes.