Zaberias Board Game Overview

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Introduction: What is Zaberias and What Makes it So Unique?

Zaberias is a strategic skirmish game where two to four players battle it out to be the last tribe standing. The base game includes four tribes: Orcs, Humans, Undead, and Guardians. Each tribe has its own characters with unique abilities. However, they are very balanced, and none is more powerful than the other. It requires thoughtful planning and strategy to be victorious.

This game is designed for ages six and up and introduces younger children to math, planning, and problem-solving. Keep in mind that, although they altered the original version to make it suitable for younger players, this is a fun game for all ages.

How to Play the Zaberias Game

Setup

Each player chooses one of the four tribes and places the armory with the dice in their respective playing area. Then, they place the map board in the center of the table, orienting it according to the number of players. For example, four players place their map boards in a square grid, with all of the power stars in the center and each player’s city in the bottom right corner. Other player board placements are shown in the rules. Zaberias Map Boards

How to use Coins and Units

Coins are used to activate units. You pay the coin cost shown on the back of the unit and place it in one of your cities, which must have your flag on it. You can take over other players’ cities and have cities on any of the map boards. The main rule for unit placement is the level of city has to match or exceed the unit being placed. For instance, metal units can only be placed in a city with a metal or gold flag, while a wood city can only have wood units placed in them, since they are level one cities.

Once placed in a city, units can move the number of spaces indicated by the foot symbol; these are their movement points. They can move in any space except water, unless they are a unit that has a special ability that specifically states they can fly over water and other units or move over water. Movement is orthogonal unless a road allows you to move diagonally.

The range of a unit (if any) will be shown between the foot and muscle man icons. By default, units can only attack if they are adjacent to another unit. However, units with range can attack as many spaces away in a straight line or along a diagonal road, as their range allows.

Attack Summary

When a player is within range of another player’s unit, they can choose to attack by adding their strength points, depicted on the muscle man, to the number of dice rolled. Beside the muscle man is the amount of dice to be used; they add these numbers together to calculate their attack strength. They can ambush by using their other units that are in range of the other player’s unit. They can only add the strength of the muscle man from the reinforcement units to their total strength. The defending side does the same, adding their total strength to the dice rolled, and can add reinforcements that are in range of the attacking unit.

You can also attack cities and take over the city by moving your unit into an unoccupied city and placing your wood city. Or by attacking a unit in the city and them moving a unit into that empty city. Zaberias Cities The rules go further in explaining how reinforcements survive or perish in an ambush attack. You run the risk of losing all of the units in the battle.

What are the Magical Places on the Map Board?

Zaberias Map Board Magical Places There are three magical places on every map board.

Portal – this space allows players to travel to a portal on a different map board, which is a great way to sneak up from behind and attack their opponents.
Gold Mine – At the beginning of their turn, players receive one coin for each of their units on a gold mine. They can also occupy other players’ gold mines.
Power Star – this space gives the all of the players units and additional strength during battles. You can occupy other players Power Stars. This is a very strategic way to boost your strength.

How do you win the game?

The winner is the last tribe standing. Once a player has no cities or units left on the map boards, they are out of the game. As long as you have units on one of the map boards, you are still in the game, as you can always come back and take over cities.

Our Overall Impression of the Zaberias Board Game

We truly enjoyed playing this game and had a blast. We played both a three-player and two-player game, each with its own unique strategies for winning. The game is simple to learn yet difficult to master. Each time you play, you discover new ways to use the units, as each tribe has its own abilities. The Zaberias website offers the rulebook and unit guide in PDF format. The unit guide was very helpful, providing lots of useful information and answers to questions pertaining to each unit. This game has been in development for fifteen years and the developers have modified and adjusted it after many playtests and years of playing it themselves.

We highly recommend this game and you can purchase it directly from the Zaberias website. They also have really cool branded merchandise for the game in their store. There are rumors that they may have more tribes in development, which is a another great thing about this game. More tribes would not only add even more replayability to the game, but it would also be very easy to mix and match various tribes without complicating the game.

In Conclusion

We hope you have enjoyed our overview of this wonderful skirmish game, which is a great way to introduce younger children to the mechanics. Be sure to check out our full playthrough of the game below and visit their website to get a copy for yourself.

Zaberias Board Game How to Play and Playthrough

This is a sponsored blog post, for which we were given a free copy of the game and compensated for our thoughts. All opinions are our own, and they reflect our honest opinion of the Zaberias game.