How to Play The Mines of Zavandor & Review

The Mines of Zavandor is an auction and trading game.

Title: The Mines of Zavandor

Year Published: 2010

Designer: Alexander Pfister

Publisher: Z-Man Games

Players: 2-4

Game Time: ~90 minutes

Set-up Time: ~3 minutes

Ages: 10+

Theme: The Fantasy world of Zavandor

Mechanisms: Auction, Trading

How to win: Score the most points from points tokens and upgrades.

Game Description

It’s all about dwarves, and mining, and gemstones and other enhancements for the mines that need to get developed further.

Set Up, Game Play & Game End

The Mines of Zavandor Round-Up

I generally don’t like auction games due to the auction part being way too slow. Here, you bid once, on 4 auctions simultaneously then resolve them, it takes no time at all.

Games like For Sale see auctions drag on too much.

You take the income and have to choose between bidding for auctions and upgrading your stuff. You’ll have to check where the King is and which of your Gems you may need for upgrades this round.

This is why not being able to use Gems you use to lose auctions for upgrades is great. You can’t just dump everything down and cross your fingers.

It’s just a very simple game: Get your income, Bid on things, Increase your income, Bid on more things etc

It’s really nice and really fast-paced.

The Mines of Zavandor Rating

A very nice auction game.

I give it 6/10

The Mines of Zavandor First Impressions April 2017

Positives

A lot of auctions in games can be S.L.O.W. but as you’re making just one blind bid for all 4 auctions in one go it’s REALLY quick…

Not being able to use Gems you used in the auction to upgrade that turn prevents you from just throwing everything at it. A great way to prevent cheesy auction strategy:)

There are restrictions to what you can do but they’re thematic. Maybe, you can draw 12 Gem cards each round but you’re limited to 6… That makes you good at Mining, but you haven’t got the ability to bring it all up to the surface, that makes sense.

The art is cute and the flavour text is funny.

Negatives

It makes your brain hurt. There is a LOT to consider each round and a small miscalculation can cost you big time.

Summary

A very fun game, auctioning done right.

Jesta ThaRogue