Then time for the quick and supposedly light auction game, Zoosim. This game has been accused of being somewhat repetitive, though I did not really get that impression. The premise of the game is constructing zoos. Throughout the game, there are auctions for tiles which are added to the zoos. You can think of these tiles as dominos – each half of the tile has an exhibit for one of 5 color coded types of animals. Further, each of these animal exhibits has a “wow” rating of 1 to 3 stars. Also, the tiles may or may not have trees depicted on them. The tiles finally have differing paths on them (very much like the tiles in Carcassone have differing road patterns on them).

Each round (of which there are 5) consists of bidding for 5 zoo tiles. Bidding in the typical Cwali in the fist method. At least it is somewhat easier to pick up than Titicaca since you use simple mono-valued wood blocks to bid with rather than those awful confusing weapons chits… Anyways, bidding is done in the fist and the winner gets to place the tile into his zoo. If there is a tie for winning bids, it is broken using the zoo flagpole. Each player has a banner placed on a flagpole. Whomever is closer to the top of the flagpole will win ties with another player. The catch is, whenever you break a tie, your flag goes all the way to the bottom of the pole.

The only constraint in tile placement is that the new tile must be placed next to an existing tile and that all the roads must match up. Once the tile is placed, you go to assess the new zoos. First, if you make a closed loop of paths, you get a visitor to your zoo to walk around in circles. This visitor can never leave. Next, you look at the two types of exhibits you just added to your zoo and trees as well if they were on the tile (remember that each tile is basically like a domino). In Zoosim, there are three visitors that are available to look at each type of exhibit. Whichever zoo has the best exhibit of a particular type gets two visitors (of the three) and whichever has the second best exhibit of that type gets one visitor. These visitors, unlike those for circular paths, can move about between zoos as more tiles get played. The “best” exhibit is calculated by adding together all of the rating stars of that type of exhibit that are adjacent (in domino fashion). Finally, you count trees - two visitors to the zoo with the most trees and one visitor to the second most trees.

Each round has five of these auctions and tile placings. Each time a tile is placed, all of the things on that tile are recalculated. At the end of each of the five rounds, there is scoring. Scoring is pretty simple – each visitor is worth one point multiplied by the number of the round (1 pt for the first round, 2 pts for the second round, etc.). Whoever has the most points wins.

OK, so now I’ve told you everything about an auction game except for the money part. You start the game with 8 betting tokens. You use these to bid in the auctions, and only the winner of the auction loses his money. At the end of each round, you get more money. You get a number of tokens equal to the number of tiles you have in your zoo. Thus, the only way to make more money is to spend some of it winning tiles for your zoo (even if you don’t want those tiles in particular).

This may be the big problem to the game. Andi and I won two auctions in the first round and didn’t need to spend that much money. Matt H on the other hand won none. This sort of put Andi and myself in a slightly better position because even though we had less money at the start of the 2nd round, we had a much better potential income source. Additionally, by having more tiles down early, there were more tiles of possible value to us each round. This also caused a few problems as the auctions near the end of the game have differing values for each player. As such, I could get away with paying 2 or 3 tokens for a tile which scored me 20 points in the end because no one else would have even wanted the tile I got because it wouldn’t match up to the roads and exhibits they already had in the zoo. (This is the same beef I have with Medici).

So, as far as our game went, I took an early lead in points and tiles and never looked back. It helped that I was able to form many loops early (I think 3 by the end of the 2nd round) – as these loops give you visitors that will never leave – thus, they are guaranteed points. A loop created in the 2nd round would then guarantee you 14 points each (2+3+4+5) and this proved to the be the killer difference in the game. Final scores were Me 133, Andi 94, Matt H 85, John P 75.

Overall, this is a cute game with nice looking components and plenty of good ideas. I still hate the Cwali oatmeal canister boxes because they don’t really stack well with the other games on my shelf, but this is merely a cosmetic issue. I have bigger problems with the potential leader runaway issue. But like Medici, I think strategies will change as we get more experience and more emphasis (and money expenditures) will accompany the early auctions as their importance becomes clearer. This is a 6/10 for me – partially because of the problems noted above and partially because there are so many other auction games that I would likely play before this one.