Zhanguo: The First Empire

• Designers: Marco Canetta, Stefania Niccolini
• Publisher: Sorry We Are French (dist. By Hachette)
• Players: 1-4
• Age: 14+
• Time: 60-120 minutes
• Played with review copy provided by Hachette Boardgames USA

The original version of Zhanguo “Old Zhanguo” is a game that has always been on the periphery of my gaming world. Having enjoyed several games from the publisher What’s Your Game, Old Zhanguo resided near the bottom of my BGG wishlist for years. A flicker of interest always existed, but never one that burned bright enough to seek the game out. When Sorry We Are French announced Zhanguo: The First Empire (“Zhanguo TFE”), that was the spark that lit my fire. I eagerly wanted to try the original to see: should this new version be on my radar for Essen? I asked a friend who owned Old Zhanguo if we could move it to the top of our playlist, so a big thank you to him for learning the game and teaching it to me. My takeaway from that play: that euphoric feeling when you know you are playing a winner, wondering just how high you will end on it. I may have even audibly said mid-game “wow, yeah this is really good so far.” After that, both the original and this new version went to #1 on the wishlist – I wanted to try both to see which version would be in my collection, knowing full well one would be bought. So now that I’ve had the opportunity to try Zhanguo TFE, which one would I be adding to my collection?

How to Play

In Zhanguo TFE, each round you will receive 6 cards (2 green / 2 black / 2 white). You have 2 options with a card: 1. You can tuck the card under your board to add to your engine 2. you can discard the card to the central board to take any court action. Tuck the card, or discard the card – everyone does that 6 times around, which completes the action phase. You will then resolve the unification phase to award some area majority elements, but more on this phase later. After resolving the unification phase, you do some clean up and the round is over. Do that 5 times, and the game ends. Let’s break down the mechanisms behind each of these game elements.

Option 1: Tuck a Card (Unification Action)

This is the much quicker option on a given turn in Zhanguo TFE. Your player board has 5 regions, which mirrors the 5 regions on the main board. You can tuck a card into any of the 5 regions, max 3 cards per region. Your 1st/2nd/3rd card in a region, will cost 0/1/2 unrest in that region, and instantly reward 1/2/3 unification markers matching the color of the card played. Unrest is tracked for each region that limits what you can do there – if an action needs to take unrest and you cannot push the track further, you cannot take that action. When unrest is at level 3, it also prevents your cards in that region from activating, so controlling that unrest cube is a key part of the card play in Zhanguo TFE. Tucking a card provides 2 major benefits overall: 1. Unification markers are the area majority element – having the most of a color rewards a massive benefit in the unification phase. 2. Every tucked card provides an ability – the left side of the card relates to 1 of the 6 court actions, and the right is the reward you might receive when taking that action in the future.

Option 2: Discard a Card (Court Action)

If you don’t tuck, you discard your card to the top of the public discard pile, and take any of the 6 court actions – any card can take any action. But wait! Every card in Zhanguo TFE has a unique number, 1-120. White is 1-40, Black is 41-80, and Green is 81-120, so you can tell from card backs what range of numbers your opponents may have. Half of the court actions want you to play a higher number; the other half want you to go lower. Follow the high/low rules, and after you take the action, you can activate all of your tucked cards related to that action, in any order you want! Sometimes it’s not a big deal to follow the high/low rule – for instance one game I had 0 palace cards played, so I really didn’t care what direction I went when I took that action. But other times, your game can implode if you aren’t getting the benefits for that one action where you have gone all-in. So let’s talk about those actions that you can bolster with tucked cards and good card play timing.

Court Actions – In Order of Escalating Complexity

Recruit 1 Official – There are 3 types of officials, each having a unique court action that you can take in their region: Architects, Generals, and Alchemists. While the action is incredibly simple – add one official to any one region – this simple resolution is the genesis of loads of complexity in Zhanguo TFE. This action produces so few officials, that you often need more elsewhere or need to move the ones you have. There is no court action to move officials, so you have to find movement in this game. During the discard a card action, if after you take your court action you receive NO card abilities, you can move only one official and only one space. It is incredibly important to be sure what official you want to recruit, and in what region, as you can waste several turns just correcting mistakes to get people in the positions you need to take other actions.

Hire 2 Workers – Generals are the only officials who can hire workers. As an action, you add 2 worker tokens to a region of your choice with a general, and you increase the unrest in that region by one. Again, if you cannot increase the unrest, you cannot add workers there. Workers are required for other actions, both of which need them to be spread out a bit. So moving your generals or getting multiple generals can be very important if you want to use your workers efficiently.

Build 1 Wall – This action allows you to spend 1/2/3 workers from different regions to place a wall on an endgame objective. The twist: the more workers you spend, the higher the multiplier you will receive at game end. You can take time to get a lot of workers in a lot of regions in order to get a huge multiplier, or you can sneak in with a simple 1 worker anywhere for a low payout. There is also incentive to be first to build a specific wall section – first build will receive an Emperor token that can adjust a previously tucked card. Instead of 1 specific court action, that card will now activate on 2 court actions, making that card more likely to trigger if you follow the high/low rules in the game. An elegant balance to committing early to a late game goal.

Search for the Elixir – For those familiar with Old Zhanguo, this is the totally new court action that has been added to Zhanguo TFE. This action moves your ship 3 times, down a one way track. As you hit certain milestones, you can play a Blue card in a region with an Alchemist official. Blue Cards are unique from the other colors in several ways: 1. They do not require you to take unrest 2. They do not reward unification markers 3. You start the game with all 5 available to you, and you can pick any one to play when you earn the right to play one. Blue cards are a tricky play, because they are strong and flexible, but they need an Alchemist official in the region and limit your ability to compete for the strong unification rewards. The elixir track also has milestones that increase your score multiplier at game end, for every blue card you have played, so it pays to move as far as you can.

Build 1 Palace – This action allows you to play a Palace in a region where you have an Architect official. It costs 2 workers in that region, and 1 extra worker from another region, so it’s very pricey and hard to set up. The rewards: 6 points, an unclaimed 2 strength unification marker, and an unclaimed Palace tile in that region. The palace tiles all score for cards in that region – for instance when you build a Palace in Qi you may receive a tile that scores 3 points for every green card you have tucked in Qi. It’s important to emphasize at the start of the game, that players review the palace tile setup, as they give immense strategy as to what regions you may want to play specific card colors. It’s also interesting to note, that often these palace tiles contradict wall objectives – walls want color cards in different regions, and palaces prefer you hammer one color in a region.

Install 1 Governor – To perform this action, you must have all 3 officials in a region, and remove them permanently. This explains why recruiting officials and moving them around can be so tough – without any benefits or workarounds, you would have to take the recruit action 3 times just to afford the ability to take this action once. The pain can be worth the gain: 1. You immediately reset the unrest in that region to 0, allowing for more actions in that region that increase unrest, and unlocking card abilities in that region if they were locked 2. You pick an available benefit in that region. Every region will have the pre-printed choice to receive one official back as pseudo-rebate. 3. At game end, each region rewards 15 points to the player who has the most governors.

Unification Rewards

After all players have tucked/discarded their 6 cards, unification will be rewarded. The player who has the most unification markers of each of the colors, as earned from cards tucked, palaces built, and possibly some card abilities, will be offered a reward. They must turn in ALL of their markers of that color to claim that round’s benefit. However, they do not have to accept – if they wish to hold onto their markers, the player with the 2nd most markers will be offered the reward, and so on. These one time benefits increase in power round to round, and unification markers are a limited supply. As the stakes increase, so does the temptation to hold out for a guarantee of a massive benefit next round. But, at the end of a round, you can only hold onto 5 total markers, so you often take what you can. Because if you don’t cash out, your opponent could get that same benefit you passed on, for peanuts!

The Mausoleum

That leaves one major aspect of Zhanguo TFE, which is the Mausoleum. The Mausoleum is made up of a 3×3 grid of 9 objectives: 1 Elixir Track, 3 Wall, 5 Regions with Palace/Governor combinations. At the end of your turn, if you have completed one of the printed objectives, you can score it, assuming you have a Terracotta Soldier available to place. Soldiers are not free – you can earn some on the elixir track in lieu of playing blue cards, and you can earn some in the unification phase in lieu of winning the area majorities. You’ll need to balance how many soldiers you have available, with how often you can complete these incredibly difficult tasks. As if this wasn’t difficult already, there is one more twist: At game end, you will score 10 points for every row/column you complete in the Mausoleum. Players are constantly evaluating and re-evaluating what objectives they may go for to try and obtain that hard earned line bonus. The mausoleum gives a real sense of push and pull to the game, as you can see exactly what region you want to build in and what you want to build for Mausoleum points, but that doesn’t mean those builds will be beneficial in the other avenues of the game. Example: I could build both purple walls for 7 pts, completing the left row for another 10 pts. But what if those wall objectives are not good for me? What if I have to build small multipliers with the workers I have, when what I really want is 1 huge orange wall multiplier? Tension, thy name is Mausoleum.

Thoughts on Production

Production is not usually what draws me to a game; I’m happy with a beige cube pusher if the mechanisms have me hooked. That said, Zhanguo TFE is so nice, it felt a crime not to commend the publisher for the work they did here. The game has excellent screen-printed wood components everywhere, and really nice player boards for storing all your pieces. The graphic design of the board overall is a huge step up as well; I appreciate how they clearly delineated walls and the elixir track from the unrelated regions. The player aid covers the 6 court actions very well, and the costs for playing wood are reiterated on your player board as a reinforcement. The player cards are brightly colored, so it’s easy to see what your opponents are holding. As a fan of euro style productions over minis and plastics, I am a massive fan of the Sorry We are French production choices that I’ve seen this year.
There are some things that hold it back from A+ however, which stem from Zhanguo TFE being language independent. First, the player aids leave out turn structure. Players had questions on when they could trigger card abilities (after fully resolving their court action, and in any order), and when they could claim a mausoleum objective (at turn end or when they receive a unification reward that triggers its completion). These rules should be on the player aid. Second, Zhanguo TFE relies on black arrows a lot. For example in the picture below, these mean from left to right:

1. Anytime you take the hire 2 workers action anywhere (ignore the arrow, it’s a part of the court action not the card itself)
2. Add a worker in this region and take an unrest in this region
3. Reduce 1 unrest anywhere and 1 unrest in this region
4. Take 1 unrest in this region to score white cards in every region
5. Take 1 unrest in this region, to score for every card in this region

When isolating them like this or after repeat plays it’s easier to see how the icon and arrow placements convey their meaning, but in the heat of the moment it’s a lot to parse at glances and too much overlap. That first icon tripped up 2 players I played with; a lot of the issues at my table could have been cleaned up with a different icon for the hire 2 workers action. Fortunately, the rulebook is very well written and there is an appendix with icons in the back, so it’s easy to find fast answers to any questions that arise. But still, mistakes can arise on assumptions or misreads.

Differences from Old Zhanguo

If you were a fan of Old Zhanguo and hoping to skip to this section for a quick recap on the changes, too bad – this was a trap section. You have to start from the top if you want your answers, because there is way too much change for one blurb. When this edition was announced I was expecting some small updates to variability and a fresh coat of paint, but there is not a SINGLE action that remains the same from Old Zhanguo. Only the bones of card play seem to remain.

There is one topic I want to discuss in depth though. In Old Zhanguo, there was a variant where at the start of a round, you could deal 3 cards of each color and pick 2 to keep – this variant did not make it into the rules in this version. Was it just not considered, or was it intentionally not here for balance reasons? Unfortunately it’s so early in the game’s release that I don’t have an answer, and I’m betting fans of the original will be wondering. If I ventured a guess, it would be because of the engine build vs. area majority tension in the game. In Old Zhanguo, you could hold as many unification markers as you wanted if you didn’t cash in, and there were no blue cards taking up precious card slots. So in this version, you have to be more mindful of not tucking too many cards too early, which would be undermined by the 3 card variant. Or maybe they just didn’t want to add variants, what do I know? In the end, it does mean this version is more tactical and less card combo focused than the 3 card variant. I could see opinions going either way on this variant. In every other aspect – which maybe you guessed from my shorthand “Old Zhanguo” – I believe this edition has fully usurped the throne. Moving forward, my bet is everyone will view this as the standard Zhanguo.

Thoughts on the Game

If you super sleuths followed the trail, you surely surmised that I think Zhanguo TFE is an absolute killer game. The decision space just grows and grows as your brain tries to jump from mechanism to mechanism, juggling all the considerations. Be warned, this game can be quite lengthy, especially first plays. Yet I personally felt engaged the entire time, even in my longest game, because the game is constantly bombarding you with strategy, tactics, and tension that keeps your attention working overtime.

Even at setup, the amount of strategies presented are bountiful: 1. Each region has palace tiles that show what color cards it wants 2. Each wall shows objectives you can aim for this game 3. The Mausoleum shows NINE objectives that you can aim for, and how they’ve combined to make rows/columns. And yet, as soon as you are dealt your first 6 cards, your focus shifts immediately! You’ll pleasantly be distracted by the tactical nature of cards you get that maybe have some strong abilities for your game setup, or maybe some synergies that would be nice to tuck together – the engine building comes to the forefront early. Now combine the two: how do those chosen cards fit in with the objectives of the game and in what regions would you like to play them?

There is an immense amount of delicious angst from your opponents turns as well. As players around you start to tuck cards and collect unification markers, you have to decide how hard you want to fight and if that card is worth tucking anymore. You are watching their hands to see if they can steal a unification reward from you, but also if they discard, how that will affect your ability to play high/low later in the round. There are a ton of rewards for players to race to obtain; solid play will require watching your opponents intently and anticipating if they are going to take that item you are working towards. It has a surprisingly large amount of heads-up play for a euro with no conflict elements.
My favorite type of heavier games are ones that find crunch in tightness. I don’t want a game that is dense because it’s opaque or a large ruleset – I want to struggle with solving the puzzle, not finding it. Zhanguo TFE has that in spades, most of which comes from officials, unrest, and worker limitations. But if you can find the margins to produce or move more for free, and do it efficiently, you can find the edges you need to achieve victory, and I love that tight resource economy in a game.

The spiciest decision space in the game for me, is how fast you tuck cards. You see, the sooner you get cards down, the quicker you improve your actions and the quicker you can score palaces for big points (and before your opponent takes it). But by overcommitting to your engine or palaces or blue cards, you limit your capabilities to compete in the unification phases in later rounds, and that is when you want to win them the most! The benefits for later round unifications are so massive, that you have to stop and consider: maybe you leave that 3rd slot open and keep unrest down, just so you can tuck the hammer later. It’s all so engaging.

I know a lot of this hobby is iterative and I don’t mind that, but Zhanguo actually bucks that trend. I struggle to point to another game to compare. I checked BGG threads to see what others thought, and to my surprise I have played all 11 games that were mentioned as possible similar games by users. And…..the answers were all truly awful suggestions in my opinion. The way that the area majority is determined by what card you tuck and in what spot, is a novel twist. I normally don’t like area majority/control games, but the way this plays with those elements off board, is refreshing. The high/low card play, but with the twist of being able to see what color cards are in the hands of your opponents is nerve racking fun. I didn’t mention earlier, but of course they paired the low abilities with the low numbers and vice versa, just to add even more tension to that tuck/discard decision point! Also, I don’t know that I’ve ever seen an objective field that scores extra points for making a pattern?!? Yo dawg, I heard you like objectives. So now you have an objective to score a row by finishing this specific objective, which is done by claiming that objective on the wall. It is mind-meltingly devilish.
I’m not sure how Zhanguo snuck past me for all these years, but now it has my full attention. This was a perfect pick for a game to get a modern update and a stunning fresh coat of paint. They went even further with the improvements than my pea brain figured was possible. I’m excited for the hobby to get a second chance to pay proper respect to Zhanguo, myself included. Zhanguo: The First Empire is my frontrunner for Game of The Year 2023 – it would take a titanic effort to knock it from this spot. Essen is the time of the year when some of my favorite games come out so anything is possible, but I wouldn’t bet on it.

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it! Ryan P
• I like it.
• Neutral.
• Not for me…