Zimby Mojo Dedicated Thread

We played a couple of nights ago and our experience mirrors that of some of the folks in the "What Board Game Have You Been Playing" threads - it has the tendency to run far longer than it deserves to. It's weird how it's a lot like Dungeon Run and ends up like Talisman, where the end-game is far too long. It's not so much a design problem as players are free to fuck with one another to make sure that they're weak enough to be beaten once you team up to knock down the magic walls.

I'm thinking that there is a fix to truncate the game significantly, like not allowing cannibalism or something if the crown is in a player's possession to limit players' turns. I don't know. As it rests, it can be short or it can be long, and that's cool and all but it makes "game night" really hard to predict and schedule.

All that said, the game is bad ass and creates incredible stories. I really like the game, I just wish it was more predictable and could be kept to an hour and a half.

Thanks for the comment, Pete! I can certainly see where it might become an issue! I've been working with a few ways to put the brakes on part 2.

Method 1: (This was in the original design but removed based on play test feedback.) Do not reshuffle the discard pile to create a new scroll library. When the scroll library is depleted -- the first refresh that one or more shamans cannot draw a card -- the game immediately ends. You can declare a complete loss or award the win to shaman who is in possession of the Crown or who's tribal board is closest to the Crown if it is lying on the ground.

Method 2: When the King dies, his blood mojo is no longer available to maintain the blood tickets and blood vines so they die off over two rounds. Suppose his blood mojo also sustains the scroll library, and it begins to decay and crumble when the King dies? Here's how that could play out: during wrap up in the round the King dies, reduce the Scroll Library to just 4X or 5X cards, where X is the number of players (e.g., 4X = 16 for a 4 player game). The game ends when the Scroll Library is depleted (a la Method 1). Advantage: shorter part 2; disadvantage: predictable end timing and inability to plot long game strategy.

Method 3: This is the same storyline as Method 2 but unpredictably rots away the Scroll Library. In this story, all the scrolls in the Scroll Library have been protected from decay by the King's blood mojo. When that blood mojo is no longer available, the scrolls begin to decay and rot away. This adds a new mechanism to wrap up: a) roll X=2d4, b) remove the bottom X-many scrolls in the discard pile from the game, c) remove the top X-many scrolls from the Scroll Library and place them on top of the discard pile. The game then ends when the Scroll Library is depleted (a la Method 1). Advantage: faster part 2 with random end timing; disadvantage, inability to play out longer strategies.

I'd love to hear back from anyone who tries one of these out! Personally, I am partial to Method 3. If I ever redo the rules, I will add these (or something very similar) as optional ending rules.

I was reflecting on this on the drive to cure my cat's male feline balledness problem and I thought of something similar to M1:

When the crown is gotten, reshuffle the library. Each turn, discard X cards (X=players) and it's never reshuffled. Once it's depleted, it is unavailable. No Zimbies may come from the Far Shore when it's depleted.

If a Thug gains the crown back and becomes the new King, the game ends immediately with a loss for all players; they all swear fealty to the new regent, hoping for a more sinister and brutal form of tyranny.

That would make the game end in a hurry.

An immediate loss upon the Crowning of a new King would certainly give the players incentive to stop a thug with the Crown at all costs!

I also think that restricting scroll availability post-regicide -- either by not refreshing the Scroll Library when depleted (M1) or actively depleting it (M2, M3) -- will give the players increased incentive to kill the King faster in order to preserve more options (scrolls) for themselves in part two.

I've got to admit I'm curious about this one. The oft-mentioned length and complexity of the rules is really putting me off though. I guess I should just download them and see if my poor old brain will take them in.

The rules complexity is overblown. My 15 year old got it in 20 minutes. It seems daunting but it's really very intuitive. If you've played war games where units stack then you'll have a definite leg up.

My fave bit is the Bag o' Fate. It perfectly captures the concept of both a group being attacked randomly and one or two unlucky bastards catching the golden BB as well as the idea that the group flips their shit, drops their shit, and then the survivors scramble to pick up whatever's at their feet like a fumble recovery in American Football.

I'm likely playing 2p tonight. I'll give one of these methods a try, probably discarding a random # of cards from the deck.

Sweet. Read MB's review, then read CharlesT's review on BGG, watched a couple videos, made my first boardgame purchase in i don't know how long. This looks awesome.

My two player game tonight ended in relative short order, so I did not make any changes in order to spur the end game. Besides, the scroll deck was giant and it really wouldn't have mattered.

MattDP wrote: I've got to admit I'm curious about this one. The oft-mentioned length and complexity of the rules is really putting me off though. I guess I should just download them and see if my poor old brain will take them in.

The complexity is overblown. There are a bunch of rules, but they internalize pretty easily. The kind of stuff you can do on your turn makes sense.

I have a suspicion that the length is tied pretty strongly to player numbers, shaking out at about 30 minutes per player, maybe a little less with experience. I'm going to play again this weekend with fewer people. My first game (with 5) was over in about 2.5 hours, but my second game (with 8) still hadn't ended after four hours. The longer game was still a ton of fun, with lots of memorable moments and great stories, but I didn't properly prepare my group for it.

I'm not sure how many players Pete had in his game, but the number of players gives the game a lot of opportunity to bog down, especially if you have any players who will parse out action points, which is what the game relies on.

It's such a weird, colorful game. I suspect that the length and complexity will end up being reasonable trade-offs for the enjoyment and memorable moments, but that won't be true for everyone, especially not these days.

Oh, and when I think of Zimbies, the best image that comes to mind is Fetish, from Diablo:

san il defanso wrote: The complexity is overblown. There are a bunch of rules, but they internalize pretty easily. The kind of stuff you can do on your turn makes sense.

Maybe I'm getting lazy in my old age then. I read them, understood little and thought: CBA.

More power to those that can, though. Sounds like the makings of an unusual game.

Zimby Mojo is now available on Miniature Market.

Finally played Zimby Mojo today. Our four-player game took over three hours, but that involved a certain amount of rules-searching as we were getting a handle on the game. By the time we killed the King, we were all pretty comfortable with the rules. We used the slower start setup, and since we were all imitating each other to some extent, we were trying to get by with relatively few dudes. I don't if I ever saw anybody with more than six or seven zimbies on the table (not counting those on the Far Shore).

Aside from the rules, there was definitely a learning curve to playing. Early on, it felt like all of the magic was overly expensive, but by mid-game, people were using some nice incantations. And when everything turned back stabby in the second half of the game, suddenly ritual and especially witchery became really crucial. Careless deployment of a zombie nearly always caused grief to that player.

Most of the game, I tended to have fewer zimbies than the other players. I ran afoul of thugs and zombies and damaging obstacles throughout the game. But at the very end, a player was trying to run a two-zimby column near my area, and I managed to pull together a two-zimby interception column, as the other two players were also sending zimbies that way. On the final turn, I sacrificed my last zimby on my tribal ground for the mojo I needed to get my last zimby with the crown safely back home for the win.

We all enjoyed the game, but feel confident that it would be even more fun if we started with more dudes as recommended for experienced players. The first half of the game is important, but not nearly as enjoyable as the second part, so better to get through the first part faster.

One thing that I like to do to enhance my board game playing is to play music that feels appropriate to the setting. While I still have plans to do a 3-disc mix for Zimby Mojo (in case of a eight player game), I had to improvise today. One of my general music mixes felt jarringly wrong, so I pulled that after a dozen songs. But my next attempt worked out great, with people nodding their heads and even making little hand movements at times during certain songs. It was the 2-disc set by Kruder & Dorfmeister, The K&D Sessions. Some remixes and some of their own music, with some drums and bass, psychedlia, and major influences like jazz and bossa nova.

Disc 1, as a series of YouTube videos:


Disc 2, as one long YouTube: