Publisher: Pull the Pin Games
Game Designer: Brian Henk, Clayton Skancke
Players: 2-6 (1-8 with the expansion)
Playing Time: 15-45 minutes
New Face of The Fox
It’s been a great many years since Don Diego de la Vega first donned his signature Cordovan hat, cape, and mask to hide his identity while battling to protect the people of Pueblo de los Ángeles from the corruption and dangers surrounding them. Throughout that time he has faced many dangers, performed numerous acts of heroism, and defeated deadly foes. His quest has taken a great toll, felt in his bones and in his warrior spirit; de la Vega knows that it’s time to retire. Retire he may, but El Zorro must live on!
Zorro is a symbol of hope and justice for the people of his city, and before he retires, he seeks out a new crusader to take his place. Are you fit to take up the mantle of The Fox? Whoever can defeat the dangerous scoundrels and villains that await, shall win his favor and cement their place in legend forever!
The Mark of Zorro
Such is the premise of The Zorro Dice Game, a new title from Pull the Pin Games, formerly Overworld Games, that launches on Kickstarter this Tuesday. This publisher already has a proven stable of interesting titles; Total Recall, Leaders of Euphoria: Choose a Better Oppressor, New Salem, and Good Cop, Bad Cop, among others. That same design duo of Brian Henk and Clayton Skancke now bring us their latest game based around tales of derring-do in old California.
I recently received a prototype copy of The Zorro Dice Game, it’s a simple and lite dice chucker suitable for all ages and experience levels. While simple and lite, making it solid fare for gaming with friends and family, there is still a decent bit of strategizing over which feats to attempt in order to build your dice pool, which keeps you engaged the entire game.
While some of the components were prototype bits, the card art and custom die were the same as you’ll find in the finished product and were all top notch. There are plans for a mask to also be included in the game once funded, so that you can take a fashionable and thematic selfie after your thrilling victory.
Setup is easy. Shuffle the Common and Premium Equipment, and Heroic Feat decks, placing four Common Equipment cards face up in the middle of the board. Draw and place four Heroic Feat cards, one on top of each equipment card but leaving the bottom half visible.
These Heroic Feat cards represent one of four different, color-coded locations that each budding Zorro will travel to, testing their mettle against specific challenges. The Common Equipment cards show you the potential reward that awaits you if you successfully complete your chosen Feat. These cards represent an either extra die that stays in your pool permanently, or a special power, each of which can be used on all of your turns for the remainder of the game.
Beginning with the first player, everyone on their turn will move their pawn to one of the four location cards and attempt to complete the Heroic Feat by rolling a set of six custom d6. You must match the icons on the card, committing those that match and re-rolling the remainder a total of three times, using the familiar Yahtzee mechanic. Pretty simple, easy peasy.
Now, if you’re like me, more often than not Lady Luck will laugh in my face and ignore my pleas for better rolls. In order to combat the wicked hand of fate not going your way, you may bring another player along on your endeavor. The player who joins you will add an extra roll, increasing your chances of success. If you succeed, both players can choose to either take the equipment card shown underneath the Heroic Feat card or draw one from the Common Equipment deck.
I like how this design choice adds a little bit of teamwork, while at the same time mitigating bad luck in a couple of ways at once. By allowing assistance, not only does it add an extra roll but the assisting player can also use their Hero dice along with their equipment! Your chances of success rapidly increase as players gain equipment and Hero dice. More on Hero dice shortly.
Alongside that, there is an added reward benefit for multiple players assisting at one time. Even if you fail an Heroic Feat on your turn, you get another chance to gain valuable equipment by helping another player during their turn. This can go a long way to making short work of the perils you face, while at the same time increasing each player’s equipment/dice pools. With some cooperation, everyone should be able to build their capabilities up in short order. Thematically, I see this as on the job training, earning skills and abilities as you work towards honing yourself to a razor’s edge to become El Zorro!
After successfully completing a Heroic Feat, the player will keep that Feat card in front of them. If that player can succeed in another Feat of the same location/color, that locations Scoundrel card is activated and awards its Hero dice to that player. The Scoundrel comes out and everyone gets a shot at taking them down, in turn order.
The difference with Scoundrels and Villains is that this is a one-on-one duel, without the benefit of player assistance. Scoundrels and Villains are more difficult than a standard Heroic Feat, requiring four to five dice icons to be matched before being defeated. This is where focusing on getting the correct matching Hero die and Equipment cards is key. The Hero Dice have the matching icon on four of their six sides, greatly improving your chances of success. Matching Equipment cards are a guaranteed match, proving their value as rewards from Heroic Feats.
To increase the Scoundrel/Villain challenge further, each has a unique ability to impede your chances of defeating them. They’re criminals after all and they never fight fair! These abilities will range from forcing you to use a limited number of dice you can roll or save on your first roll, to forcing you to fight without equipment cards and a host of other surprises I’ll let you discover on your own.
If no one can defeat them, the Scoundrel card is removed from the game. When a player is able to defeat a Scoundrel, they get the added benefit of drawing a Premium Equipment card, which are more powerful than Common Equipment cards. Each player can only have three equipment cards in their hand, and only one Premium card. These are very beneficial when taking on the Villain you are sure to face at the game end sequence. The end game triggers when either the last heroic fate card has been drawn or a villain is activated and fought.
Defeating the Scoundrel’s and Villain’s is tough but there is a pattern to follow, which can be either chosen by you or for you due to the arrival and availability of Heroic Feat cards on the table during your turn. This can give you an early strategy in building your dice pool but don’t become married to it, as the HF cards may be different when it comes to your turn.
Each Scoundrel/Villain pairing is color coded and bound to the matching color-coded symbols. Scoundrels require three of their related symbols, along with another unique one to defeat. The Villains require four matching symbols and an extra unique one. Looking at it this way you would expect that your eventual targets would be chosen solely by the Heroic Feat cards, since they are what unlock the Hero dice but that isn’t the sole impetus.
You can also get the equipment cards, which place symbols into your pool automatically, however they can be eliminated from use by a Scoundrel/Villain unique power. This is where those Hero dice make the difference. Either way, you have a couple of options and reasons for ending up targeting the evil pair that you do, and I like that mix of agency and challenge in what is a fairly lite game.
There is also expansion content planned for the Kickstarter, providing the capability to play with up to 8 players. These additional cards will increase the challenge with a wider assortment of equipment, both Common and Premium, Scoundrels, Villains, and new Heroic Feats. The new equipment cards bring a more varied assortment of powers to the players, not just simply guaranteed dice in hand but powers that can mitigate less beneficial rolls.
If you’re unable to sit with a group to play, the solo component will keep you in shape to take on the bad guys during your next group venture. The game plays the same as it does with opponents, with the change being that there are nine Heroic Feats to take on versus just four at a time. While you may play through the entire Heroic Feat deck in multiplayer, you only get nine tries in solo mode. This acts as both a timer and a variable challenge, since you never know which Heroic Feat and Equipment cards you’ll get each time.
If you fail your attempt with an Heroic Feat, the Feat and the Equipment cards go back to the bottoms of their respective decks. Your goal is to defeat the villain and to do so before you run out of Heroic Feats, which can be challenging depending on the draw you take.
The solo mode plays fast, averaging about 10-15 minutes of play time. I found it enjoyable enough to play multiple times but found it less engaging without the player interaction and table talk of multiplayer. You’re also missing the challenge of other players possibly taking equipment that you wanted, before you get the chance to attempt the Feat. That adds a nice bit of nervous excitement to the game. Despite that, I felt it was still a fun diversion, and I am pleased that there is a solitaire option in place for when the mood hits.
Overall, I think The Zorro Dice Game is a fun little dice game, with enough challenge to make it into your regular filler-game rotation and worth backing when it goes live on Kickstarter.
Dice Chucking Derring-do
I found The Zorro Dice Game to be an enjoyable and thematic filler that feeds my Zorro fix, while also providing an easy game to get to the table with any age group or player experience level. The art and components were top notch and imbue the game with an appropriate level of swashbuckling fun!
The game scales well, and supports from 1-8 players with the expansion. The included solo mode is a nice option to have when you are in the mood for a lite dice chucker but does lack the tension the multiplayer game provides. The nine Heroic Feat limit can make things tense, depending on the draw but without other player’s that could potentially steal away the piece of equipment you really want, the tension level drops.
I like how you need to adjust your strategy towards which Scoundrel/Villain combo’s you hunt, depending on the equipment and Heroic Feat combos on the table at the time. The addition of player’s assisting each other is a great balancing mechanism to mitigate a player’s bad luck on their own turn. Without this, some players will be at a disadvantage when taking on the Scoundrels/Villains, especially in the end game. This greatly increases the chances of a better dice pool for everyone, and in turn, elevates the enjoyment for all. A neat little dice game!
Company Website: https://pull-the-pin-games.com/
Company Twitter: https://twitter.com/pullthepingames
Note: A prototype copy of this game was provided to me for this preview.
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The post The Zorro Dice Game from Pull the Pin Games Kickstarter Preview appeared first on Moe's Game Table.
