Zero to Hero

• Designer:  Martin Wallace
• Publisher:  Wallace Designs
• Players: 3-5
• Age: 14+
• Time: 30-45 minutes
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

Zero to Hero is a tile-based trick-taking game for 3-5 players. The twists in the game are that you can either win or lose points for winning a trick. You can also win or lose points if you are second in a trick. Who wins or comes second is not always the player who plays the highest value tile; it’s actually determined by summing the values of each played suit, then seeing who played the highest tile of the strongest suit.

To add some fun to the mix, you can win a trick with a 2 if you are the only player to play a tile of that suit. Finally, if the game is going really badly for you and you end a hand with exactly zero points, then you can win the game outright if in the next hand, you win five or more points — from zero to hero!

To start, each player takes 5 points worth of scoring chips.  The 52 tiles are placed in the bag and each player draws 7 tiles from the bag.  They are placed on the table so that you can see the values of your tiles and your opponents can only see the colors of your tiles.  The 12 Score tiles are shuffled face down on the table and 7 are drawn and placed in a line face up on the table.  Each of these tiles will correspond to one of the seven tricks in this hand (going from left to right).

The lead player plays any tile, and then each player clockwise adds a tile to the trick.  It is not mandatory to follow suit.  When all players have played a tile, you then see which suit(s) has/have the highest total value.  The player who played the highest tile of the winning suit gets the top reward/penalty from the current Score Tile.  The player who played the second tile of the winning suit gets the bottom reward/penalty.  If there is no second highest player, then the highest value off-suit tile takes the bottom score.  As a final exception, if a player plays a “2” tile and it is the only color of that suit played, then that “2” wins the trick.  

Players take/give points chips from/to the supply.  If a player ever reaches zero, any negative penalties become positive points instead.  When the trick has been fully scored, flip over the Score tile and use the next one for the next trick.  When all 7 tiles have been scored, the hand is over.

Pass the start player marker and play another hand.  You can rotate the start player marker to show which hand you are playing. The game lasts no longer than 4 hands.  At the start of the 2nd, 3rd and 4th hands, players should announce their point total – players will get extra tiles for each position they are away from the leader.  As each hand begins, any player with exactly zero points should also announce this and take the “Zero to Hero” marker.  If they are able to score five or more points in the next hand, they automatically win!  Otherwise, the player with the most points at the end of four hands is the winner. There is no tiebreaker.

My thoughts on the game

Zero to Hero is a game that I did not expect from Martin Wallace (who I think of more for complex board games such as Age of Steam and Brass…).  It’s a trick taking game of a sort, but non-traditional as the lead suit is not set from the first card but rather the suit with the highest total value of cards.  I’ve seen this trick done before in trick taking games, but it’s definitely not a common thing, and this may end up being the first time that many have seen it in action.

This change leads to a totally different way of looking at the gameplay – as you don’t need to follow suit, worrying about voids and things like that are not an issue.  In fact, based on the scoring tiles that are drawn for a particular round, you actually might not want to win many tricks – or at least there will definitely be times where you’d rather be able to avoid being first or second in a trick.

When the hand starts, you do need to look around and try to plot your path through the round – figuring out which tricks you might want to compete for (and which tricks you want to avoid).  I sometimes even look at tricks where I don’t want to have the lead for the next one…  Massaging a trick to get in the last playing position for a big bonus/malus is always nice – at least you’ll have the best chance to make things go your way when you play last.

The scores can swing wildly, and the Zero to Hero power should add a bit of interest to the game – should anyone actually be able to implement it.  In my groups, scoring 5 points in a hand is not uncommon, and therefore as a defense, people often go out of their way to keep someone from ending a round exactly at zero.  It’s actually harder than you think to be at exactly zero as any points that would drive you negative turn out to become positive.  If you’re at zero, you’ll also draw the most tiles from the bag for the next hand which also increases your chances of being able to get 5 points in the next one.

The components are nice, and I should note that I was given a set of tiles with my copy at Spiel to replace some misprints in the box.  Weirdly, the layout of the new tiles doesn’t exactly match the tiles I replaced, so I’m trying to figure out what the author actually wanted as the scoring tiles (email to Martin pending).  Also, I had to doctor up my tiles with a sharpie.  The use of white printing on a yellow background makes those particular numbers almost invisible to my eye.  I tried to take a picture to show you guys, but my super smart smartphone keeps adjusting the exposure of the image to improve the clarity- trust me, the scoring tiles are nowhere as easy to read as the pictures here would suggest.  

The decision to use tiles instead of cards is interesting.  The tiles are a bit harder to hold (and harder to keep secret as you draw them), but in the end, they work just fine.  I would have preferred cards (as in a Scan deck) as I find them easier to deal with, and less likely to tip over on the table and show everyone what you have – though at the same time, the little wooden triangles are pleasing to fiddle with in your hand.

Trick Taking games are still apparently in the ascendancy, and the number of releases coming out these days is astonishing.  Each of them do something a little bit different, and if you’re inclined to play these sorts of games, the unique scoring system in Zero to Hero could be for you.

Until your next appointment

The Gaming Doctor