Army of Zero is a

puzzle A puzzle is a game, Problem solving, problem, or toy that tests a person's ingenuity or knowledge. In a puzzle, the solver is expected to put pieces together (Disentanglement puzzle, or take them apart) in a logical way, in order to arrive at th ...

and two-player card game, published by Point Zero Games. ''Army of Zero'' is both a card game and an armchair treasure hunt, similar in concept to ''

Masquerade Masquerade or Masquerader may refer to: Events * Masquerade ball, a costumed dance event * Masquerade ceremony, a rite or cultural event in many parts of the world, especially the Caribbean and Africa * Masqueraders, the performers in the West ...

'' and ''The Key To The Kingdom''. A cash prize was on offer to the person who could provide the best solution to the puzzle. Army of Zero was launched at Toy Fair 2009, held at ExCeL London in January 2009. The game includes two six-sided

dice Dice (singular die or dice) are small, throwable objects with marked sides that can rest in multiple positions. They are used for generating random values, commonly as part of tabletop games, including dice games, board games, role-playing g ...

and a deck of ninety-nine cards. The cards are made up of eighty-four character cards, eight attack/defend cards, six cards defining the rules and one card which acts as an entry form into the puzzle competition.

Card game

The cards can be used to play a two-player game. Each player receives ten character cards, dealt at random. In each round, both players put forward one of their characters, and these two characters battle each other. In each round of combat, each player can choose to attack or defend, but no character can attack for more than two rounds in a row. Players can gain an advantage by successfully predicting whether their opponent will attack or defend. The outcome of each round is determined by the rolling of six-sided dice and adding the appropriate character statistics. Each character card has four statistics: speed, combat, weapon and armour. Each of these is an integer number, and each can range between -2 and +2. The statistics used to resolve combat depend on whether each player chose to attack or defend. When a character is defeated, he or she is out of the game. When all ten of a player's characters are defeated, the other player is the winner.

Characters and puzzle

Army of Zero has eighty-four character cards, depicting a series of odd fantasy characters. Each character is depicted as belonging to a particular "clan", each clan being named after an animal. The character designs are representative of the clans, so for example, the members of the Bat clan are all vampiric in appearance. Each character also has a name and a rank, or title. Each character's name is unique, but there are only five ranks; "Thegn", "Guardian", "Commander", "General" and "Lord". The design of the eighty-four character cards includes a series of interconnected puzzles. The objective is to work out what the objective of the puzzle is, to solve it, and to submit the answer to Point Zero Games. A prize of £1,000 was on offer to the person providing the best solution by the closing date of April 30, 2010. The puzzle was solved by Tim Pickup. The objective was to discover the identity of an implied missing character, General Voleda of the Crocodile Clan. Solving the puzzle required all eighty-four character cards, and part of the solution was related to arranging the cards in a particular configuration.

References

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External links

Official Army of Zero pages
at the Point Zero Games web site
Army of Zero's entry at Board Game Geek
at IGUK Card games introduced in 2009 Puzzle hunts Dedicated deck card games