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Rarely heralded out in the world, but highly respected on BGG, TZAAR might approach the limits of the Project's complexity.
It's possible for some games to live quite successfully in the shadow of others. Reiner Knizia's Medici tends to live in the shadow of his far more popular auction games, Modern Art and Ra, for example. Similarly, TZAAR tends to live in the shadow of its physically and mechanistically similar sibling, DVONN. Both use almost matching discs that are stackable and both utilize said stacks as key elements of the game, but they do so in a contrasting fashion that is at the root of their gameplay. In DVONN, stacks determine movement and any one piece is as strong as the next. In TZAAR, movement is universal and stacks determine that strength that decides whether or not you understand not just the position of your opponent's pieces in play but your own.
The board is once again a plain hexagon and "spaces" are the intersections drawn in the wireframe that makes up that hexagon. There are 30 pieces for each color of three different types: 6 Tzaars (colored dot and ring), 9 Tzarras (colored dot), and 15 Totts (blank.) The pieces are arranged randomly on the board to start and white begins with a single move that must be a capture of an adjacent black piece. After that, each player takes two moves per turn. The first, which is required, must be a capture. You can move over as many blank spaces in a straight line as you want, but you stop and capture the first opposing piece that you come to (which, again, could be right next to you, as with white's opening move.) Your second move of each turn is optional. You can do another capture, you can stack one of your own pieces on another(s) to make it stronger, or you can pass. When a stack is formed, only an opposing stack of the same or greater number of pieces can capture it. The identity of the stack is determined by its top piece (whichever was the last to be stacked), no matter what other pieces are in it. The loser of the game is the player who at some point doesn't have all three types of piece (Tzaar, Tzarra, Tott) in play or who cannot make the required first move of the turn.
Right away, the imagery should be obvious to those of you that are religiously aware: This is the holy trinity (in nomine Patris et Fili et Spiritu Sancti.) I'll let someone else decide which piece makes up which element of that concept. Clearly, the Totts are the plebeians of the arrangement, since they're both the least eye-catching (Sneetches without stars) and the most numerous. Those are the building blocks of your stacks but usually not the most frequent target of your opponent's captures. The Tzaars and the Tzaaras are much more enticing with both their fancy gold and silver detailing and their lower numbers. And as much as the movement/stack arrangement is kind of the converse of DVONN, it's not more or less "free" in terms of that movement. In the same way that the other game prevents huge stacks from moving because of their size, in TZAAR you'll often find yourself without useful or even viable moves in the late game because of those selfsame stacks, since you might not have stacks of your own large enough to make captures. This, again, is the other way to win the game, if you've maneuvered your opponent into a position where they can't make that first capture that is required at the start of every turn. Note, too, that in DVONN one describes a "winner", whereas the easiest way to describe the endgame in TZAAR is to cite the "loser" (i.e. one who doesn't have all three of the trinity or can't move.)
The setup has come into a lot of question because, as noted, DVONN's is a crucial step of the game whereas TZAAR's is potentially "random." How does one do "random" setup? We've usually just spilled all the pieces out of the bag and just begun filling spots on the board until there are no more to be placed. Then we take the crucial step of deciding who is going to be white or black. White's first move is just one capture, so black will be the one with the first full turn and the ability to strengthen. To my knowledge, there is no accepted wisdom of the advantage of one color or the other as there is in chess with white's first move often allowing it to set the tone of the game. Since it's usually seen as important to protect your Tzaars as soon as you can, the ability to be the first to strengthen can lead to an advantage. The rulebook suggests a setup if people are uncomfortable with the random one, but the suggested placement has all 12 Tzaars in very close proximity, which makes them susceptible to both capture and to instantly becoming roving stacks of destruction quite quickly. It has always struck me as quite the accelerant, which is not something I think this or any of the Project games really needs.
And that leads into some of the arguments placed on the BGG fora about the more simplistic nature of this game compared to some of the rest and most notably to DVONN. That may be a factor of the loudest being the complainers, though, since in the abstract rankings (literally and figuratively) on that site, TZAAR comes in at #7, just below YINSH at #4 and just above sister game DVONN at #12. (The rest all make it to the top 100, with PÜNCT at #99.) There is some greater focus that is perhaps lacking around the Tzarras, as well, since there are only 3 more of them than the favored Tzaars, while the plebes (Totts) come in at 6 more than the Tzaaras. While your opponent is occupied with your really fancy pieces, the slightly less fancy ones could be the key to driving you toward victory or at least it's turned out that way in my more memorable plays. But being memorable is of some note here, too, as this game hasn't quite reached the heights (stacks?) of some of the others for me. It's still an excellent game but not quite on the level of YINSH or PÜNCT or ZÈRTZ, putting it just above GIPF in my series assessment. I've never quite questioned as to why that is. While GIPF seems almost too simple as the initial offering and baseline for the system, perhaps TZAAR was the tail end of that first development cycle, using ideas that had been discarded elsewhere and weren't quite of the same level of innovation? The next game wouldn't appear for a decade, so there might be something to that but, again, as BGG rankings (inexpertly) note, I'm in the distinct minority there. Like a Tzaar.
The wrapup next time with the game that brought overt component color to the Project, LYNGK.
