Welcome to Clay's ZAR page

Introduction

The game of ZAR™ was created by Lynn Dalton. It is a wonderful, fast-paced, addictive card game, comparable to card games like UNO®.   Comparable, but much more fun!

The official web site for ZAR is www.playzar.com. Definitely check out that site for interesting information about ZAR and to order copies of the game!

My web pages provide an alternate (and In My Humble Opinion - improved) version of the ZAR rules. Regardless of which rules you choose to play by, you'll still need to acquire an official ZAR deck. Considering how much fun ZAR is, you may very well want to get more than just one deck.

I welcome feedback on my ZAR pages. If you have any comments or suggestions, please email me. Thanks!

History

My friend Richard is the master of thousands of games. If you've ever played with him or seen his house, you know that this is not an exaggeration. Among all of the games lining the walls of his house, he had a ZAR deck from the first or second printing back in the early 80's. I first encountered it when he brought it to a science fiction convention we were both attending and it quickly became one of my favorite games. I am very grateful to him for introducing me to ZAR.

Richard taught me and many others to play and over the years I played it a lot. As it turned out, the second printing was in 1984, but the third didn't happen until 2003. For a long time, there were simply no ZAR decks to be had. When they finally became available again, I bought several for myself and as gifts for my friends. Two things happened as a result. First, I started to play a lot more ZAR. Second, I actually read the printed rules that came along with my new deck. To my surprise, I discovered that the rules I had been taught and the printed rules were not identical.

I compared the rules as I knew them to the printed copy. Even though only a few rules had been changed, they were important and clearly improved the game. I could have simply written up those rules, but my experience with the game had shown me that there were other places for improvement. The game's pacing could be sped up a bit and there were several omissions and ambiguities in the rules. I decided to take the opportunity to combine the best of what I'd learned into a new more comprehensive rule set.

The ZAR Pages

The Clay's rules for ZAR page is the result of applying the fixes and enhancements mentioned above and many hours of play testing over the years.

The Clays' extended rules for ZAR are optional rules which are definitely worth playing. Check them out!

The rules provide the framework for the game, but they don't tell you how to play it well. Reading the Clay's strategy for ZAR page can help here.

There are several other miscellaneous ZAR pages which although not required reading are still quite interesting.

Special Thanks

I would like to thank the many people that have provided feedback on these pages and who have helped with play testing. Special thanks to Richard Tatge, Kevin Austin, and Bill Christ!