Das Zepter von Zavandor is Outpost. Not a new game in the style of Outpost, not a remake of Outpost, just Outpost. It's sort of a new scenario, but only a very minorly different one. The cards map clearly into Outpost cards...the blue gems are Water factories, the yellow gems are Ore factories, the green ones Titanium. Rubies are New Chemicals. There are Nodules, Labs, Heavy Equipment, Warehouses, pretty much all the things we are used to in Outpost. The basic strategy is the same: build up your income until you reach the end game, then convert over to victory point generation at the right time. Just in case this sounds like a complaint---it isn't. Outpost is one of my all time favorite games. It has a few problems, but it's a great game.

One of the big problems with Outpost is that there is a runaway leader problem. If all the players are capable that doesn't happen all that often, but it happens. Zavandor tries (and succeeds) at mitigating that a bit by making card purchase more expensive for the leaders and giving the losers discounts. The purchase penalties seem to work; they are quite large. In our game, we saw the leader hoard money and wait until he dropped into 3rd place, then make a big purchase. Repeatedly.

Another problem with Outpost is that it's "the game of endless counting." Because players have 200-300 credits in small bills and there's no change available, a lot of time is spent working out exactly how to spend one's money. That's a total tangent from the point of the game, but who can avoid optimizing the extra few bucks? DZvZ offers change, presumably to fix that problem, but the problem is still there. Hand size is very much an issue, so optimizing keeping more valuable cards has essentially the same role as the change problem in Outpost. And counting 18 cards averaging 7 bucks each is still endless counting. Did I mention that the game is Outpost?

The pricing in Zavandor is a little different from that of Outpost. To buy income costs roughly 4-6 turns' income in DZvZ. In Outpost, it's normally only 3 turns. That makes the economic growth curve substantially less drastic in DZvZ than it is in Outpost. In addition, that makes money a little hard to come by. The economics are a little tighter and the game moves a little faster, but it's essentially the Outpost economic system. Since the game is also shorter, flattening the economic growth curve keeps the players closer. In appearance. In fact, it just means that one can't afford to make foolish investments, because blowing a moderately small sum on something not worthwhile can be very big in a very short time. That's good---leaders can hamstring themselves and come back to the pack.

With the caveat that I've now played exactly once, I saw a few quirks that I'd fix if I were in charge of the world. The Fairy seems by far the best starting position. It has the opportunity to get a bonanza of 30ish cash around turn 4. That's an enormous amount. In practice, she should wait until turn 6 or so, but it's still huge. The other quirky card is the Tomcat Sentinal. It's always worth 17 VPs in the end as long as the purchaser knows to convert all his factories (umm, gems) to Ore factories on the last turn. This is not hard to do. So the first purchased sentinal is worth 17. Most other players can get 11-12 or so out of the best sentinal for them, but some may only be able to get 9 points. That's a big difference, typically given to the player who is already in the lead and who is most likely to get two sentinals. The third issue is that the Druid's starting position seems lame. He'll come back with a vengeance in the end game, but he rates to be near the back of the pack in the early game, and in an exponential economic game, that's a position from which it is very hard to recover. It's not impossible, but the position seems clearly at a disadvantage. Neither the Fairy's nor the Druid's start is so different from the rest that it's a killer, but they are not starting equal.

None of those issues seem awful. We enjoyed Outpost despite its flaws; we played easily several hundred games. DZvZ feels like Outpost. It's a fair bit shorter; the midgame is on you a little faster than you expect, and the endgame can sneak up pretty fast, too. Outpost could drag if the dice left few Colony Upgrade cards available for purchase.

DZvZ is a good game, to be sure. If Outpost never existed, it'd be a fantastic new game. As it is, if you are tired of Outpost, you'll only get a few plays more out of DZvZ. If you still play Outpost all the time, you might play half and half. Or more of one. Who knows? It's just a slightly different flavor. For those who have never had the opportunity to play the original, this is worth trying. For those of us who have, "yup, it's Outpost."

I too have had the chance to play one game of DZvZ. I'm a real Outpost fan, and DZvZ was enjoyable, but not as much (to me) as Outpost.

My feeling was that DZvZ is Outpost with a bunch of glue poured into the gears. I agree that a better Outpost would be a great thing, but I'm not convinced that DZvZ is it. Outpost is fairly clean at heart with some rough spots (especially the card addition you mention.) I don't mind the runaway leader problem at all because it's a problem that solves itself once the players are experienced. I don't mind a game that is unbalanced the first time because one player plays better (after all, you don't know who that's going to be until you play.)

I thought all the different tracks and special tokens and so forth cluttered up the game. I particularly didn't like the "take that" artifacts that allow the purchaser to kill a gem from each other player. Those seem out of place in a game like this.

For some people, the magical theme works better than the outer space theme of Outpost, and for those people DZvZ may be the better choice.

Good player will have the point booster by turn three: First turn upgrade to level 2, having avalaible for the following turn 2 blue and two green cards; Second turn upgrade to level three and buy a runestone to reach level four.
In my experience the fairy is no better than others. It start strong, and usually is the first to reach 10 vp. Anyway 30 production points are not enough to mount such a better production to compensate the malus for being first, so often the fairy will slow down. Furthermore other players could decide to go for the 9 mages big cards in better times, when masks, chalice and sentinels come out. In that time the booster is more useful.
The real fairie advantage is the possibility to choose almost unopposed (mage apart) the strategy. You can collect two, three artifacts, or start a second knowledge path.



In reality the Tomcat can give less than 17 VP. You have to sell gems to create room for opals. If you sell sapphire it means your production is quite low, then it will be a contested auction.
If you sell better gems, you lose 2VP for each one gaining just 1VP for the opal plus the bonus.
This means that if you have a character using just top gems, your sentinel net score will be 11 VP. 6 VP bonus is quite easy to reach with other sentinels as well.
Tomcat is very good if you have mixed gems, and even better if you can safely convert your gems to opal knowing that the game will end. If not, your last turn will be a nightmare. Tomcat is very risky for the leading player. It is a sentinel I like a lot for helps player in back position to come back in the game. IMO it is less useful for a leader.



Druid is the most difficult character to play, I try to never give him to newbies. It’s a sort of diesel, the more the game last, the stronger he is. Probably this is the role most influenced by other players strategy.
I have seen him have his fair share of victories, and as such is not disadvantaged. The downside it is that an optimal strategy means that for 7 turns you will enjoy less, as you could not use resources for nothing else than knowledge.
I've never played Outpost, and given your comments I'll try if I look somebody having it.

Actually, the Tomcat is only worth max 12 VPs. All of the sentinels except for Toad and Raven have caps on the number of bonus VPS you can get with them. Like the max on purchasing rubies, the bonus max limit is easily overlooked in the rules (someone else had to point out the bonus max limit to me during my first game even though I'd read the rules twice beforehand).

The Tomcat is worth a max of 17 - 12 bonus VP plus the five base points. With that said, I agree with Blackpope that the Tomcat is only really great if you can judge when the game will end. Of course, buying the Tomcat and getting no bonus until you're ready for it can help to keep your points low, which makes it easier to judge the game end...

Ah, you are correct. I forgot to add in those five base points.

DZvZ is real fun to play, but Outpost is a much better game.
I never bought the Orbital Rocket that kills one of each players factories.
DVvZ is more like Power Grid to me.