ZÈRTZ - the pleasure of breaking your head

We present you another offer from the GIPF series - logic games for two, published in Poland by the Rebel publishing house. ZÈRTZ is a great entertainment for puzzle lovers, especially unusual ones.

In the box, in addition to clear instructions, we find 49 plastic rings and a set of 24 solid balls in three colors. The game can be played by up to two players at least 9-10 years old. Estimated time for one round is about 15-20 minutes.

This time we don't have a board, and the game itself starts with a hexagon consisting of 37 rings on the table. For more advanced players, you can build a "board" with all the available pieces. We put balls of three colors on the rings: white, gray and black. The balls are shared by both players, and we have them at our disposal - six white, eight gray and ten black. The winner is the one who first collects four white, five gray or six black balls or three balls of each color.

In each ZÈRTZ turn, the player can use any ball from the bank and place it on a random ring, thereby automatically removing one of the rings from the table (the “board” becomes smaller). If the removal of a ring separates one or more rings from the rest of the board, the player may take them with the balls on them. He can also break the ball in situations where the balls are next to each other. The grab is similar to that used in the well-known game of checkers, and consists in jumping the ball over one or, if this happens, over several balls. Thanks to this, we are enriched with new balls, bringing ourselves closer to the desired victory. Remember that after our next moves, the playing field becomes smaller, and all the balls on the table are common, so the moves also need to be carefully considered.

Perhaps for people unfamiliar with “ZÈRTZ” all this seems difficult at first, but the game can be implemented very quickly, getting great pleasure from it. The fun is based on simple rules, and there is really a lot of potential in it. What's more, more sophisticated players can even easily intimidate beginners once they get a feel for the rules and gain the appropriate strategic experience.

The big advantage of the game is its compactness, because we do not need a board, and all the elements necessary for the game will fit in the included bag. So we can easily put it all in a suitcase.

ZÈRTZ has received two prestigious awards in the past: MENSA named it the best intellectual game and GAMES Magazine named it the best abstract strategy game. I recommend too 🙂!