I have backed Zong Shi on Kickstarter a while back and like most I am eagerly waiting on it to come in so I can play it. Luckily for me a buddy of mine has a knack for getting advance copies of things and I managed to play it twice in the past week. I will try and give an overview of the game and my thoughts afterwards. I will do my best to get ALL of the rules I mention correct but again, I don’t have the game in my possession so I am kinda working from memory so I as a little latitude.

All photos borrowed from Board Game Geek

Ok so here’s the game overview.

Z-S is fairly light worker placement game in which everyone has two workers they send off to do errands. You are essentially trying to score the most points at end game by getting goods and fulfilling projects and making respectful visits to the elders.
You have a Master Worker who is the bigger figure who can start and work on projects, and a smaller apprentice worker who can go to the other areas but does smaller version of the master’s effects (more on that later).

Resources— There are four main resources represented by the 4 color tiles. Yellow->Gold , Green-> Jade, Brown-> Bronze, White-> Ivory

Spots on the Board

Respectful Visits– There are 4 spots (one for each resource) where you can make respectful visits to the elders. You get points in end game for each spot you make a visit to in the game (1,2,4,8 pts at end game based on 1,2,3,4 boxes visited). In order to fulfill a “visit” you have to pay the cost of the resource you are visiting. You have 4 cardboard chits with the numbers 1,2,2,3 which you put one of those in the box which you visited. You have to pay X number of that resource to make the visit. The first person to visit each of them gets a chit which was randomly put there that has a special 1 time reward on it. These include getting your resources back, drawing 2 random resources, a free card (more on those later), and a couple others. There is only one per each visit space and only the 1st one who goes there gets it and only the master can do it.

Master–> Master can do two things the Ap cannot. First he can get the special chit if he’s first. Second, he can work on more then 1 visit at one time. The penalty for doing so is you have to pay 1 more resource then normal. Ex if you are doing the 1,2 chit you pay 2,3 of those resources.
Apprentice–> Can visit but he can only do 1 of them.

Marketplace
There are two markets. They prolly have names but for here we will call em the big and small market. The big market has #players +1 resources from bag, and the small has # minus 1 resources from bag.

When you place a worker here you get a draft which ensues after the workers are all out.

In player order the Masters first draft 1 tile from the big market. After they Masters get 1 each then it’s on to the Apprentices. The A’s get only 1 tile no matter how many other workers are there (no more). Then if there are tiles left the Masters may continue to draft tiles. If there is only one Master there then he gets ALL the remaining tiles there. The same is then done for the small market.

Temple
The Temple is where you get your action/cheat cards in the game. They have a variety of powers including a 1 tile discount on projects, a 1 round discount on projects, getting random resources from the bag or market and some other good ones.
Master–> Either worker can get 1 card from the Temple. The bonus for the Master is he can then discard tiles to get more cards per tile (resource) discarded.

Pawn Shop

In the PS you can turn in 2 tiles of any color and claim one cardboard tile from the PS. This tile you can then use as an exchanger later for those colors. Example you go to PS and you turn in a Green and a white resource tile and thus claim the G/W chit. It goes into that spot on your board. For the rest of the game you can exchange one Green in your Workshop for a White or vice versa.
Master–> The advantage of the Master vs the Ap is that the master can turn in as many pairs of resources he has to claim those tiles vs just 1 for the AP at a time.
Each one of those claimed is worth 1 point at end game, if you have all six of them you get a 2 point bonus at end game.

Projects

Ok finally we will talk about the meat and potatoes of the game. You go to the bottom right of the board to get your Master to start working on a project. In order to start any of the projects you have to pay the costs listed on the card in resources (Example-each discount project costs 4 of that color to start) to the supply. Once completed the project is completed it goes to your board and you then get the bonus associated with the project. The other type of project is the Masterwork projects which give you points only no power. They also have 7 tiles (I think it’s 7 and not 6) to turn in to start and they are all 4 rounds to complete (more on that in a sec too). So as you can see by looking at the player board you cannot work on the masterworks until you either A) have other projects completed that give you discounts or B) have the project which gives you 2 extra workshop storage spaces.

The types of basic Projects

A) Discounts–> The top row has a project in each color/type of resource, in which when they are done allow you a 1 tile discount of that color to start a project.

B) Other powers–> The second row has 4 projects which once completed allow you to cheat in one way. These powers include:
–Reduce your time to complete projects by 1 round
–Draw 1 random tile every time your master goes to the market
–Store 2 extra resource tiles (giving you 7 storage)
–Draw 2 cards when your Master goes to the Temple and you can now hold total of 5 cards (In stead of the base 4 –I think the base is 3 or 4)

Timing of projects
Ok so how long do they take? Well, each project has a number next to an hourglass on it on the top right of the card. When you claim/start a project you put your Master worker on the # spot next to the hourglass. At the end of each round you move your Master down one spot. Once the Master has reached zero the project is complete and it goes onto your board and you can start receiving the effects the start of the next round.
Two exceptions to the timing include the power of one project which decreases the time to complete by 1 round, and a Temple card which does the same.
There is also an exception to this all where you can get a card which allows your Apprentice to begin a project but I will save that whole explanation for when you play it.

Individual Player Board

End of Game
When one player fills his board up it triggers the last round (remember you complete a project at the end of one round and the next is the last round). After the last round you add up all the points from your board/projects, your visits, resources left over, and Pawn Shop chits and figure out who wins!

Ok before I get to a couple of quick session reports I will give you some review info.

Components

Boy did I love the components. Namely the resources. The square tiles are real nice and shiny and heavy and just top notch. The little bag that came with it is a nice Asian inspired sewn bag and looks cool. The board also has some nice artwork to it (even with a not so hidden meeple on it). The cards are also on a nice stock and feel good. All in all the game just looks cool. The Pawn shop chits are cardboard but eh they still look fine. And the workers and completely cool as hell start player Buddha are both real good.

Rules/Game play/ease to teach.

All in all I have to say it’s kinda easy to teach and play. Yet, it’s also have some depth to it and seems like it has some real re-playability. I think friends ranging from the guys who play at the FLGS (bit more hard core), my usual gaming group (medium core), to even a couple who games with my wife and I (light strategy gamers) will all pick it up quick and not be confused by anything at all.

Verdict
It’s prolly not secret if you have gotten this far in my write up that I loved playing this. I cannot wait to get my hands on it and show my group and wife the game and get it into rotation. It’s not hard to learn, it’s fast enough to play (60-90 mins with teaching) and looks great.

I will try and get some session reports written up about the game soon. So stay tuned!
–GeekJock

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