10 Zooloretto (Mark's 100 - 2012)

10 Zooloretto (Mark's 100 - 2012)




Zooloretto
Mark's Ranking2012: 10th

2010: 10th

2005: new

BoardGameGeek rank: 351

rating: 6.93
Print Statusin print
Why It's On The ListMichael Schacht takes the central game mechanic from his card game Coloretto develops it into a full-fledged board game with delightful artwork theme. And then, if that wasn't enough, he keeps expanding that world (thanks to the SdJ win) in some very intriguing ways.
Tips Tricks:I didn't like Zooloretto particularly the first time I played it... that, as you can see, has changed. (The theme drew me back in, btw.)
Lots of people like Coloretto better than Zooloretto - they're wrong, of course, but I think that's more a function of "liking a clever mechanic" versus "liking a clever mechanic in the midst of a thematic enjoyable game".
Zooloretto spawned Aquaretto - which I've included in the family for purposes of this list. Aquaretto is the more gamer-friendly of the two - there's more potential for a new player to mess themselves over with bad tile placement.
The plethora of large small expansions can be confusing - but I like how you can tailor the game to your personal tastes.
The game is best with 3 or 4 players... 5 has a little too much downtime (if you're using any expansions) and 2 is bland. If you're going to play Zooloretto Aquaretto together, you should only play with 3 players... or with Michael's 6-player partnership variant.
ExtrasI wrote an extensive post about Zooloretto the various expansions entitled Renovating Your Zoo(loretto) for this blog.
I translated the Big Boss variant from Michael Schacht's site - it's used w/the Zooloretto: Boss expansion.
One of the proudest moments of my life - my son, Braeden (who was 7 at the time), created a really great variant idea for Aquaretto - and Michael Schacht published it on his website! Check out the Touch Pool...
At some point, I did the hard work of combining the rulebooks for all of the big expansions and base gameinto one document... and I'll post the link here when I find it. (Yes, I'll put it on the Geek, too... kind of surprised I hadn't done that already.)==========

If you feel a need to catch up on my admittedly-aging Top 100 as of February 2012 list, you can check out:my Pinterest board about the Top 100a BoardGameGeek Geeklist (in order of BGG ranking) the rest of the posts here on aka pastor guy