Is it true? I dunno - I doubt it, frankly. But it's certainly plausible. There are quite a few parallels between "Hera and Zeus" and Stratego - so many that I'd find it hard to believe that Borg wasn't at least influenced by the latter. You've got your Flag, you've got your Spy, you've got your Bombs, you've got your Scouts - in fact you have everything Stratego has to offer and quite a bit more.
The premise of the game is that Hera and Zeus are having a routine row, battling each other with all their might. I'll be the first to admit that a game based on a marital spat doesn't sound terribly interesting, but when the Olympians quarrel, fierce warriors, winged horses and snake-headed ladies join in the fray. The source of the strife was a couple of kidnapings: Hera swiped Io (Zeus' mistress), and, in return, Zeus nabbed Argus (Hera's - well, I'm not sure what Argus was to Hera, given that he had 100 eyes ...). Now each is endeavoring to free their spouse's captive, or, at the very least, to wipe out their forces.
Players have decks that are functionally identical (although they feature different artwork and different names for the various characters). Most of the cards have a ranking from 0 to 7; other cards simply have a Mythology Symbol, signifying that a player may discard them and take a special action; a few cards feature both a rank and a Symbol. The numbered cards are placed on the table to form the battlefield. A player may have up to three columns of cards, and up to four cards in each column. The first row of a player's cards will be directly across from his opponent's first row; this is the battleline, where all the fighting will take place.
On a turn, a player receives a number of actions equal to the number of columns he has. Actions can be used to draw cards from the deck, play cards or attack. Each player starts with one card in each of the three columns to start, and therefore begins with three actions. When drawing a card, a player takes the topmost card from his own draw deck (as long as he does not already have 12 cards in his hand); when playing a card, a player either puts the card on the battlefield (if it has a ranking from 0-7) or discards a card with a Mythological sign for it's special effect. When placing a card on the battlefield, the card may be put anywhere - behind the last card in a column, in front of all the cards in a column (in which case all the original cards shift backwards), or in between two existing cards. Cards are initially placed on the battlefield face down.
To attack, a player simply taps one of his cards in his first row (and flips it face-up, in necessary). His opponent then reveals his own card directly across from the attacking card. Generally the higher ranked card wins, although there are plenty of exceptions to this rule. The losing card heads to the discard pile, and the losing player shifts forward any other cards in the column that was just attacked. In this way, a player may attack several cards in a single column on a turn - perhaps with the intention of wiping the column out and reducing the number of action points his opponent will receive on his upcoming turn.
The Mythological cards allow for a whole host of special effects. Pegasus cards can be used as scouts, forcing an opponent to reveal facedown cards. Pythia cards allow you to look at your opponent's hand - and perhaps discard card from it. Sirens let you take the top card off your opponent's discard pile and keep it as your own. There are so many special cards, in fact, that the game comes complete with cheat sheets, which you will certainly be using in your first few games.
A player can lose in one of three ways, the first of which is if, for whatever reason, his hostage card is sent to the discard pile. Secondly, a player loses if, at the start of his turn, he has no cards on his side of the battlefield. Finally, a player who cannot use all of his actions hands the game to his opponent.
By now you've probably realized that Hera and Zeus has a remarkably steep learning curve: there's simply a lot to keep track of during a game. The first match between newcomers crawls as players check their reference cards, check the rulebook, and strive to remember all the ways to lose. That's the bad news. The good news is that once you've figured out all the cards, you're set. This isn't "Cosmic Encounter" where every game introduces new and unforeseen interactions; the varied effects in Hera and Zeus, while sometimes complicated and counterintuitive, are at least constant. And here's the even better news: Hera and Zeus, although a bit daunting, is a game well worth the time and effort to learn.
The key element in the game is Pegasus, which allows you to flip over your opponent's face down cards. Since all cards are initially played face down to the battlefield, the game would be one of blind guesswork if not for these, and the judicious use of them can reveal a lot about your opponent's strategy. But they can't reveal everything -- they are limited in number, and each use of a Pegasus card costs an Action. Revealing each of your opponent's cards before attacking them would be ideal, but sooner or later you'll have to bite the bullet and attack a facedown card or two, praying that they're not Medusas.
Until a player draws his hostage card he is relatively safe -- it's difficult to defeat a player by wiping out their forces entirely. But once Io or Argus shows up in a player's hand, some tough decisions arise. Holding the card in the hand is an option, but some special cards allow an opponent to look at and even attack such cards directly, so the hostage will not necessarily be safe there. Placing the hostage on the battlefield is another option -- presumably behind a few high-ranking cards, or sequestered behind bombs (er, "Medusas"
. But once an opponent figures out which card on the battlefield is your Hostage, he may throw everything has has at it.The final way to lose -- not being able to use all of the actions you accumulate on your turn -- actually comes into play quite frequently as players exhaust their draw decks. At first I thought this was a "hack" rule -- something Borg had thrown in there just to prevent stalemate. The more I play, though, the more I realize just how clever this rule is. Remember that an action can be used to do three things: draw a card, play a card or attack. But there are a finite number of cards in a player's draw deck, and a limited number of spots on the battlefield to place them. To avoid running out of actions, therefore, a player must avail himself of the third option -- attacking. The "run out of actions, lose the game" rule very subtly rewards the player who attacks often, which in turn keeps H&Z an exciting, taut game.
Hera and Zeus is similar to two other recent card games: Caesar and Cleopatra and Corruption. In all three, there is a mix of faceup and facedown cards, and winning is as much a matter of bluffing and nerve as it is strategic card management. But Borg seems to have hit upon the perfect mix of hidden and revealed information, which makes every game tense. There is also quite a bit of ebb and flow to the course of a game, as players oscillate between aggression and defense. Since losing a column (and therefore an Action point) is costly (and losing all columns costs the game), a player must strive to spread his forces out, all the while probing his opponent's forces for holes.
My biggest complaint about H&Z is that it's hard to teach to newcomers -- and I like it so much I want to cultivate as many opponents as I can. Others have criticized the game as being too derivative of Stratego, but I don't think this argument holds water. If anything, it is a vast improvement over the original it's allegedly based on. And there is one huge difference between the two games: I haven't played Stratego in years, but I'll be playing Hera and Zeus for a long time to come.
Posted Wed Sep 17, 2003 2:35 pm