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The swish of the rapier, the gasp of the crowd, the iconic ‘Z’ carved into the scruffy period garments of a bandit. There’s a plume of dust and the masked acrobatic avenger is away, atop his trusty steed Tornado. Zorro has struck again!
The Zorro Dice Game is a fast-playing dice rolling and set collection game from Pull the Pin Games (formerly Overworld Games). Players compete to become Zorro’s successor by showcasing their heroic skills and proficiency in battle. This entails performing heroic feats, gathering equipment, battling scoundrels, and defeating villains. As someone who is partial to a cool and well-implemented theme, this one immediately caught my eye, as Zorro is a surprisingly underused theme in tabletop gaming. The game’s Kickstarter, which goes live on 15th October 2019, ties in nicely with Zorro’s 100-year anniversary (he first appeared in Johnston McCulley’s The Curse of Capistrano in 1919!). But do Pull the Pin Games do this timeless character justice?
Gameplay
Setup is super straightforward and will only take a few minutes. Give each player a Hero token, sort and shuffle the Common Equipment, Premium Equipment, and Heroic Feat decks, lay out the Scoundrels and Villains according to their colour and place the corresponding Hero dice on top of them. The 4 colours of the cards refer to the 4 different locations in the game: Market, Tavern, Farm, Plaza.
To get the landscape laid out, draw 4 Common Equipment cards and place them face-up in row. Next, draw 4 Heroic Feat cards and place them face-up on top of the Equipment cards. And you’re ready to roll!
On your turn you perform the following 3 steps in order:
1) Travel – Place your Hero Token on 1 of the 4 face-up Heroic Feats. You may take 1 player with you or attempt it solo.
2) Attempt – Roll the 6 Zorro dice, plus any Hero dice you have gathered, and try to get the symbols stated on the card. Each Zorro dice features 6 symbols: 1 Leap, 1 Thrust, 1 Charm, 1 Grab, 1 Dash, 1 Taunt. As in Yahtzee, Age of War, and many other dice games, you get 3 rolls to get what you need, saving whichever dice you want after each roll and rolling the rest again.
Any Equipment you have will help you in your attempt, with each piece of Common Equipment either giving you a bonus symbol or allowing you to re-roll a particular symbol. If another player joined you on the attempt, you can use their Equipment as if it were your own, and they get to do a 4th roll after you have finished your 3 rolls.
3) Collect – If you met the requirements stated on the card, you place the completed Heroic Feat card in front of you and either collect the Common Equipment card underneath it or draw a random Common Equipment card from the deck. (Each player can have a maximum of 3 Equipment cards, including a max of 1 Premium Equipment card). If another player helped you, they get the same choice. You then draw a new Heroic Feat card and a Common Equipment card to replace the ones you just took. If you did not meet the requirements on the card, your turn ends.
As soon as a player gets 2 Heroic Feat cards of the same colour/location, they trigger the Scoundrel from that location and get the Hero dice that’s on top of that card. Starting with the next clockwise player, each player attempts to defeat the Scoundrel by rolling the symbols required on the card. These cards have special rules on them that make it harder to get what you need (e.g. when battling the Caribbean Marauders ‘You may not use Hero dice’). If you fail, you get nothing, but if you succeed, you draw a Premium Equipment card from the corresponding deck. These are much more powerful than the Common Equipment, giving abilities such as an extra roll each turn and being able to turn a die to any symbol before rolling.
As soon as a player gets 3 Heroic Feat cards of the same colour/location, they claim the second Hero dice from that location, and a dastardly Villain is triggered! This works the same way as the Scoundrel but with harder requirements and higher stakes. If a player doesn’t slay the villain, they are out of the game. If only 1 player defeats the villain, they are crowned as the new Zorro!
If multiple players defeat the villain, they must duel to see who will become the next masked crusader. This entails each remaining player having one final turn, and using all their Equipment and Hero dice, they must get as many Thrust symbols as possible. Whoever gains the most Thrusts on their turn is the winner!
My Thoughts
I always have fun playing The Zorro Dice Game; it has a pleasant flow to it once the rules have been learnt (which doesn’t take long at all) and the theme is woven into the mechanics surprisingly well for a quick dice game. I found that the game really shines at the 3 or 4 player count, where the co-op aspect of helping each other out in Heroic Feats comes to the fore. While still very much enjoyable at the 2-player count, the games can be over quite quickly if someone decides to double-down on a specific colour/location. Inversely, at the 5 or 6-player count, the games can go on too long, with a substantial wait in between turns if you are not called upon to assist someone in an attempted Feat. At the 3 or 4-player count, the length and depth of The Zorro Dice Game find a happy medium that really makes the game’s mechanisms sing. The duel at the end is particularly engaging when it occurs, and the sudden death aspect always gets the people at my gaming table pumped.
The card illustrations by Loic Billiau are fantastic, playfully evoking the swashbuckling atmosphere of Zorro’s world. The cards themselves are of high quality and of a big enough size to allow you to fully appreciate Billiau’s artwork in all its cartoon glory. The dice are of decent quality and feature the cool colour-coded thematic symbols. However, the dice are little too small for my liking, being around two-thirds the size of a standard D6. In general, I find that the smaller dice are, the less fun they are to roll, and sadly that applies to The Zorro Dice Game. While this doesn’t infringe on the fun factor too much, with it being a dice game the ‘feel’ of the dice does have an impact on the overall experience.
Considering the game’s small size and low complexity, there is a lot of component management in The Zorro Dice Game. While this is a symptom of the game having a lot going on for its size (undoubtedly one of its strengths), it also ensures that the game rarely transitions from 'being fun' to 'being exciting', as you have to constantly draw and rearrange cards and dice. All of the Heroic Feats feature 4 symbols in the same distribution (2 of one type, 2 of another). While this is no doubt essential in keeping the game balanced, it does feel mechanically repetitive after a few playthroughs. However, if you are invested in the theme and as such are excited by the relation between the fun artwork, the Feats themselves (e.g. Save the Farmer’s Daughter, Unmask an Impostor), and the actions (symbols) required to perform them, then this mechanical limitation can easily be forgotten.
There is an unexpected touch of engine building going on in The Zorro Dice Game, as once you get a couple of Equipment cards and a Hero die, you can get a sick engine going that yields more victories in battle and a greater chance of winning the endgame. However, with it being a dice game, luck inevitably plays a decisive role. As such, there have been a handful of times where, due to unfortunate rolls, I have been left way behind while other players are rolling on with their engines.
If you are looking for a family-friendly game or a gateway game, then The Zorro Dice Game is a strong choice. I have played this game with my 8 year old niece and my 78 year old Father, and it has gone down well with both. The publisher says the game is suitable for ages 14+, but I would take this much lower, possibly around 8+ considering the theme and complexity. While not without its flaws, The Zorro Dice Game is an enjoyable and engaging dice game with more going on under the hood than most filler games.
Cthulhu Reviews: 5 out of 8 tentacles 🐙🐙🐙🐙🐙
Designers: Brian Henk, Clayton Skancke
Publisher: Pull the Pin Games
Players: 2-6
Age: 14+
Play Time: 15-35 minutes
Thank you to Pull the Pin Games for providing a review copy of this game.
NOTE: As part of the Kickstarter campaign, there will an expansion called Heroes and Villains, which adds more replayability with more Scoundrels, Villains, Equipment, and an 8-player count. There is also a whole heap of other bonuses coming through the Kickstarter, such as custom sleeves, a player mat, and custom metal Zorro dice.
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