The Zambezi Board
Zambezi is best played as a full Expedition Game where aspects other than racing are taken into account, such as picking up commodities en-route and making documentaries about the wildlife of the Zambezi Delta.
Alternatively, for a shorter game, it can be played as a straightforward River Race, where nothing is collected along the way. The first boat to reach Lake Kariba is the winner!"
The Zambezi Box
Zambezi is a fun board game that is ideal for the family market, but also one which has sufficient depth of strategy and competitive edge to appeal to (and amuse) the more experienced gamer. Decisions require to be made regarding the management of your resources, particularly your precious units of fuel, which you need use sparingly to help you navigate around the many hazards on the river. You will need to try to preserve and maintain your crew (who tend to get lost overboard if you hit rocks or other boats during your journey). And you must try to avoid the spaces that contain nasty groups of hungry crocodiles. If you land on these, you will have to burn lots of valuable fuel on your next turn to allow you to escape from them.
Animals of the Zambezi Delta
The movement of tugboats in the game is card-driven. The numbers on the cards indicate how far you can travel down the river, but the cards also contain pictures of various different animals that live in the Zambezi Delta. As well as being used for tugboat movement, the cards can be collected, in matching sets, to become 'documentaries' about these animals. The beautiful artwork for these animal cards (and that for the game-board) was created by Vicki Dalton (who was, until recently, Vicki Paull).
At the end of the Expedition Game, the player with the most Victory Points is declared the winner (and most daring explorer). Victory Points are scored for:
reaching Lake Kariba before your rivals get there.
collecting treasure (diamonds, gold and silver) from landing stages.
creating the 'best' (i.e. the longest) documentary about one of the animals of the Zambezi Delta.
the amount of fuel you have left at the end of the game.
This points-scoring structure means that there is more than one strategy you can adopt to try to win the game.
The Tugboat Control Boards
The game includes the following components:
One Gameboard Map
Animal Cards
A deck of 110 cards, separated into 9 animal 'suits' as follows:
Lions (13 cards)
Giraffes (13 cards)
Hippos (13 cards)
Cheetahs (6 cards)
Gorillas (13 cards)
Zebras (13 cards)
Snakes (13 cards)
Hornbills (13 cards)
Flamingos (13 cards)
Tugboats Eight miniature tugboats, each in a different colour (red, yellow, blue, green, orange, purple, black and white)
Tugboat Control Boards Eight 'press-out' printed cardboard images of the eight tugboats, one in each of the colours listed above. These are where you put your crew members and fuel units.
Crew Members For each tugboat, five crew members matching the colour of the tugboat.
Fuel 128 black octagonal tokens representing the fuel that the tugboats will use.
Treasure
8 octagonal 'silver' tokens 8 octagonal 'gold' tokens 8 octagonal 'diamond' tokens
'Zambezi' Drawstring Bag A black felt bag (with 'Zambezi' printed on it in white) for holding the Zambezi treasure.
The Hippo Pool
Gameplay Videos
For further detail on how the game is played, several videos are available, via the following links:
A review created by W. Eric Martin for Board Game Geek:
https://boardgamegeek.com/video/64157/zambezi-expedition-game/overview-zambezi-spielwarenmesse-2015
Two reviews (one in English and the other in German) by Andreas Buhlmann for Cliquenabend:
English version: https://player.vimeo.com/video/120283286
German version: https://player.vimeo.com/video/120283287
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