So, just a quick expansion review this week. If you have ever wanted to add a bit more strategy to your Zooloretto Games then the Job Boards are the way to do it.
Job Boards
The Board of Directors has informed you of the results of years of study and now you know exactly what kind of animals will drive your public into a spending spree. If you can bag yourself the right kind of animals you’ll get a big bonus at the end of the year and if you’re really lucky the animal welfare inspector might not even notice all those extra elephants in your barn.
Unboxed
To play this variant you need all the components from the base game plus the job boards which appear in the “Gorilla Expansion” or “Expansion 2”
However I would personally recommend downloading these from Liumas on Board Game Geek. I used photoshop to shrink them and fit them all on one sheet, printed them on label paper and stuck that to thick card board. This will give you a much larger number of Job Boards to play with and it will stop other players being able to guess exactly which animals you need.
Playing the Game
At the start of the game each player is dealt a job board face down. If you are playing with fewer than 5 players then keep drawing until you have a job board featuring 3 animals that are in the game.
On your board are pictured 3 different animals, the first animal is worth 3 Bonus Points for EACH completed enclosure containing 
that animal, the second 2 bonus points and the third is worth 0 points in your barn (instead of –2) at the end of the game.
Thoughts
This, relatively simply, expansion adds a lot of strategy to Zooloretto. You now have a goal which helps give the players focus if they have played the game to death (hint hint).
The fact that you are rewarded for each enclosure with that animal type gives you a good reason to go after multiple enclosures with the same type of animals. If you add in the Extra Enclosures expansion then you have a cheeky way of boosting your points, although if you’re playing the game super competitively then players will complain about balance.
As well as providing a focus and a use for extra animals of the same type, these cards also give you some tactics for using the barn. Each game you will have one type of animal that costs you 0 points in your barn, if this happens to be an animal another player wants (that they will score three points for for example) then it is worth you taking it and putting it in your barn. At the end of the game it wont cost you anything, but it will, likely as not, generate extra income from players buying the animals from you so you can buy the animals you need to score those extra bonus points.
Overall this is a great little variant for the game that helps add strategy and tactics and a little freshness to a game that may have been overplayed (in our household). Plus, if you use Liumas’ files it’s practically free, although you could always throw him some Geek Gold for his trouble. Regardless, why not check it out and see for yourself.
Until next week, have fun gaming!
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