Each move of that Elephant pawn is also setting up the turn for the next player in line, so you’ll find yourself trying to calculate which tiles are within their reach and which ones are most likely to help them the least. Do you move the Elephant just enough to keep them from snatching up a tile that would fit into their board perfectly even though it means choosing something suboptimal for yourself or do you leap ahead and grab the thing you really want? Will moving the Elephant trigger a breeding? If so, will you be able to capitalize on it? If not, do you really want to risk triggering a breeding when it may help someone else more than you? These kinds of mental gymnastics become even more pronounced in the 2-player game. If there’s a piece coming up that you want, then you can move the Elephant in such a way to guarantee that your opponent won’t be able to get to it but that regardless of what they choose to do on their turn, they’ll put you within striking distance of the tile on your next one. Gameplay is straightforward as you have only two options on your turn: build a new enclosure in your zoo, or populate your zoo with more animals. But be sure to time your actions well since you want your zoo to participate in as many animal breedings as possible. On your turn, you must move the Elephant around the board as your main action. The minimum spaces it must move is 1 and the maximum it can move is based on the player count (4 spaces, for instance, in a game with 2 players). If you stop the Elephant next to one of the Enclosure tile spaces, you will take the top Enclosure tile and add it to your player board. Or if you stop the Elephant on one of the animal acquisition spaces, you will receive the 2 animals shown and add them to your player board. Once you’ve performed your main action, if you crossed one of the breeding lines printed on the main board, the animal depicted on the breeding line will breed. I will discuss the rules for Enclosure tile placement, animal acquisition, and breeding in their own sections. Enclosure Tiles All in all, the game works. And it’s nice to have some games that don’t feel like the world ended when you lose!

NEW YORK ZOO - Capstone Games NEW YORK ZOO - Capstone Games

The win condition is simple and only requires you to completely fill your zoo with enclosures and attractions, the first player to do this wins. However, if the game ends after a breeding action there is a chance the game can end as a tie. If so then the player with the most animals in their zoo wins. Fast Game for 2 Players New York Zoo is a fantastic game which blends his Uwe Rosenberg's well-known animal breeding mechanics with his polyomino puzzle system for a wonderful gameplay experience.

This game has great table presence, with colourful tiles and animal pieces combining for sensory delight. The Best Sitcoms on Netflix Right Now (October 2023) By Garrett Martin and Paste Staff October 20, 2023 | 12:00pm

Board Game Review: New York Zoo Board Game Review: New York Zoo

When a player gains animal meeples they can be placed into an enclosure of matching animal type or into an empty animal house. Making this a little more complicated, whenever a player adds an animal in this way to an enclosure they can also move a matching animal from a house into the same enclosure. This can be slightly forgettable in your first game, so players may have to keep reminding each other. Video games paved the way with various “theme” games, but board games are following their path and there are several available on the market. In this article, we take a look at the Top 5 Zoo Board Games currently. In my first game, I became hyper focused on setting up an animal breeding factory. It made me feel exceedingly clever watching my Enclosure tiles fill up each time a breeding occurred, but that level of focus ultimately lost me the game. It’s very easy to get so caught up in the excitement of watching your board fill up with animals that you lose sight of the end goal: filling up your board with tiles. But ignoring animal breeding entirely is also not the way to go. You must have animals to place Enclosures, so you’re forced to maintain a healthy balance between filling up your board and filling up your Enclosures. Uwe Rosenberg is a master at putting his players into these kinds of positions. In Patchwork, for instance, instead of balancing breeding versus expansion, you’re juggling buttons and time. Other games, like A Feast For Odin, have you trying to keep even more plates spinning. In A Feast For Odin you’re having to deal with feeding people, acquiring points, and filling in your board to avoid negative points.When an Enclosure tile is acquired, it is immediately added to your player board. It can be flipped and turned in any manner that you like as long as a.) the placement of it does not cover up a portion of an already placed tile or b.) any portion of it does not extend beyond the boundaries of the construction area on your player board. This is usually the part where I would dive right in talking about the artwork and components, but there’s one glaring thing about New York Zoo that really bugs me that I want to talk about first: the theme. Perhaps the stand-out game mechanic is the bidding in the worker placement phase. Players simultaneously prepare different-sized groups of imps (workers) and the largest group gets to act first. Prepare a bigger group to make sure you’re the first to get the wanted actions space or prepare several smaller groups to carry out more actions? The main zoo board is placed in the middle of the play area and the polyomino tiles placed in the little gaps, according to their colour lightest green to darkest green. Take your time with this, as getting any of the shapes in the wrong spots may cause the game to be slightly unbalanced.

How to Play New York Zoo - Board Games - Zatu Games UK

In New York Zoo, a 1-5 player eurogame designed by Uwe Rosenberg and published by Feverland, you take on the role of zoo designers. You are competing to build New York Zoo? Or a part of New York Zoo? Ok, it’s not clear, but you’re building something Zoo like. New York isn’t relevant, it could be called Cromer Zoo or just Zoo Builder. Your goal is to place geometric tiles, representing animal enclosures or attractions, onto your player board until all the spaces are filled. This is how you play it. Set-UpIt is possible that adding one (or both) of these animals to your Enclosure tiles might cause those tiles to become full. To avoid duplication, I’ll talk about what to do when this happens in the next section. Breeding Of course, this is a high level view of the game. If you’d like to see how the game is played, then continue reading. Otherwise, feel free to skip ahead to the Thoughts section. Setup

New York Zoo - The Board Game Hut New York Zoo - The Board Game Hut

With 127 cute wooden animal meeples, this game also features adorable artwork with simple easy-to-learn rules. You can only breed in up to 2 enclosures within your zoo at a time and breeding happens simultaneously for all players. On successful breeding, you can also add a further animal from one of the houses, if you have one, to that enclosure. In New York Zoo, you are designing an animal park. Build enclosures, introduce new animals, and raise their offspring. The first player to cover all the construction spaces on their zoo board with Enclosure Tiles and Attractions wins the game.

The third game in the Azul series keeps the tile-selection mechanic of Azul and Azul: Stained Glass of Sintra, but has an entirely new placement mechanic, as players try to fill out the seven stars on their individual boards, but have to discard varying quantities of tiles to place on each open space. The tile colors all score differently, and you get more points for placing tiles where they’re adjacent to ones you’ve already placed. One color serves as a wild tile in each round as well, making it easier to get things done than in the previous two games. It plays longer given how much more real estate you’re trying to cover, and neither sequel has quite lived up to the original, but it’s still a good game to grab if you enjoy the core Azul mechanics as much as we do. Each player that has at least two of the named animals in a single Enclosure will be able to add an additional animal of the same type to the Enclosure. If they have a second Enclosure containing at least two animals of the named type in it, they may add an additional animal to that Enclosure as well. Only two Enclosures can be added to in this way.* When breeding occurs in an Enclosure, if you happen to have an animal of the appropriate type in one of your houses, you can add that to this Enclosure as well, but only 1 animal can be moved from your houses in this way. Even though this player has 3 penguin enclosures with the appropriate number of penguins needed to breed, they can only add penguins to 2 of them. New York Zoo is an abstract puzzle game in which you're trying to complete your zoo by building animal enclosures, introducing new animals and raising their offspring!