New York Zoo

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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 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. 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. 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.

New York Zoo | Board Games | Zatu Games UK New York Zoo | Board Games | Zatu Games UK

Set-up is relatively straightforward. All of the adorable meeples need to be placed in their respective piles. You take a game board, dependent on your player count, and take the starting meeples indicated by your board. 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! 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. Zooloretto is the most accessible game on our list. It’s perfect for families, as its game mechanics cater to both beginner and advanced gamers.New York Zoo is an abstract puzzle game in which you’re trying to complete your zoo. Do this by placing animal enclosures and attractions to complete your construction board, before your opponents. Full disclosure: I am an Uwe Rosenberg nerd. As of this writing I own 38 distinct titles by him. So take that as a confession that I tend to view his creations through rose-tinted glasses. When I find out that Uwe is releasing a new game, I get excited and very rarely am I let down once I finally get my hands on it. So, bear that in mind as you read my thoughts on New York Zoo.

The 15 Best Board Games of 2020 - Paste Magazine The 15 Best Board Games of 2020 - Paste Magazine

As you progress around the board, breeding will be activated for animal types. If at that point you have two or more of one type of animal in the same enclosure, they breed! You may take one more of that animal and place it in the same enclosure! 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.

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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. Players start with a blank board, a dirt covered empty lot where their zoo enclosures and attractions will soon begin springing up from. Players move an elephant, the shared placement marker around the board, up to four spaces in a two player game, where the elephant stops means that player can take the top polyomino enclosure tile or the two animals depicted on the space. The enclosures get added, and then if you have open enclosures, you add the penguins, flamingos, arctic foxes, meerkats and tree kangaroos. You’ve got a little holding pen area, a green room for animals, to the side as well – if you need to hold on to one of the critters you’ve just acquired. The New York Zoo, a place where the wild meets civilisation. A gallery of living art where nature is the only subject. Your role is to design the perfect mix of animal enclosures and attractions to ensure you fill your respective plot of land. The first player to do this wins. The rest? They have to make do with half-finished plots, where flamingos can pray on the unwary penguins and the meerkats and kangaroos form gangs to bully the arctic foxes. Well, that’s the fiction in my head, at any rate. Breeding occurs for all players simultaneously. When a player crosses a breeding line with the Elephant, they should announce to the other players that a breeding for the specific type of animal will occur once their main action is concluded so that everyone is aware that the breeding is about to happen. This player has crossed the penguin breeding line. Hence, a penguin breeding will occur once their main action is completed. Tile placement is the name of the game. On your turn, you either take a tile or you take animals. If you want to take a tile, you must have an animal to place on it. If you place two animals of the same kind, they will breed, once an enclosure is full, you can empty it to buy an attraction, and so on.