Z3bra

• Designers: Dirk Hanneforth and Uwe Moelter
• Publisher: Amigo
• Players: 2-5
• Age: 8+
• Time: 15 minutes
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

In the card game Z3BRA, all good things come in threes — because then you move closer to victory!

To set up the game, deal each player fifteen cards from the deck – it is made up of 7 suits, each with a single 0-9 and 2 copies of 10-12). Without looking at the cards, they lay out nine cards in a 3×3 grid, then place the remaining six in a personal stack.  When dealing, all cards are face down, and then once the 9 card grid is made, the player can flip any 2 cards over.   A communal discard pile is started by flipping over the top card of the deck.

On a turn, draw a card from the deck or the discard pile, then exchange it with a card in your grid, discarding that card face up; alternatively, you can discard the drawn card and then you must reveal a face-down card in your grid. With the right card in hand, you can even steal a card from another player’s grid.  If someone else has a card you need to make a trio, and you draw a card that has the same number or color as that card, you can take the card you need from their grid and give your drawn card to that player as a replacement.  One other option is that you can swap the position of any two cards in your grip instead of drawing – if you do this you must also reveal a face-down card as a cost.

As soon as you have three cards of the same color or number in a row, whether vertically, horizontally or diagonally, you discard those cards, then replace them with face-down cards from your personal stack. If a player has discarded all 15 of their cards or all cards in all grids are face up, the game ends, and players tally their remaining cards. Whoever has the lowest score wins.

My thoughts on the game

As you can see from the short description of rules above, the game is pretty simple.  You can teach it with an example on the table in about 3 minutes, and then everyone is ready to go.  The game is a nice combination of both luck and skill.  Obviously, it helps to draw the right cards when you need them; that’s essentially the best strategy.

But, you have options of where to put cards and which cards you choose to reveal that can make a big difference.  The cost of revealing cards is that other players can then choose to take them to make their own sets.  The more cards you have face up, the more options your opponents have to find the card they need.  Of course, you also need to have the cards faece up in order to group them in sets of 3.

Early on, players seems to just make whatever matches they can; but as the game moves on (i.e. the personal draw piles get low), there is sometimes a movement away from the higher ranked cards – because they will have the most negative effect on your score when you tabulate the remaining cards at the end of the game. But… the designers are smart, and they entice you to collect those high numbers by providing more of them in the deck; thus, you are more likely to draw or find those high numbers if you risk putting them in your area.

Z3bra is a fast moving game with most turns only taking seconds, and the overall length is quite short as well.  This is a great game for a filler or opener as it’s not too complicated.  The game can be a bit of a race, and that maybe makes it a bit more exciting as the game draws to a close…  

Until your next appointment

The Gaming Doctor