Zenith, a Tense Two-Player Board Game, Is a Real Battle of the Planets

Capture-the-flag or tug of war games are perfect for two-player titles, since they create an automatic level of interaction between the players and can turn a game tense very quickly, as one player approaches the last flag or token they need to win and the other has to drop everything to play defense. Battle Line, Riftforce, and the new King of Tokyo Duel are built entirely around the capture-the-flag mechanic, while 7 Wonders and Watergate include it as one part of larger games where it’s just one way to win.
Zenith comes from the designers of last year’s Castle Combo, a great small-box game that played larger than its size, and asks players to fight over control of five planets at the center of the table, with tracks of three spaces on either side. To win the game, you must capture the same planet three times, capture four different planets, or capture five planets in any combination. You move the planets by playing cards either directly below one of those planets or to the technology tracks to try to build up your tech for bigger moves later in the game. It’s extremely tense and mostly well-balanced, with some risk that the initial card draws can skew too much in one direction.
The cards come in the same five colors as the planets, and each card has an action, a cost, and one of the three technology track symbols. You can play a card directly to its matching planet by paying the cost, subtracting one for each card you have already played to that planet’s side of your board. When you play a card in this way you move that planet one space closer to you, and then take the action shown on the card, sometimes paying an additional cost in coins or Zenithium, or by discarding cards you’ve already played, with actions that allow you to move planets, discard your opponent’s cards, gain resources, take the Leader token, draw more cards, and lots of other things alone or in combination. The first player to claim each planet gets a one-time bonus, randomly chosen for each game. There’s also the ‘diplomat’ action, which gets you the Leader token and one small additional benefit—one Zenithium, three coins, or drawing two cards. The Leader token expands your hand limit and activates additional powers on certain cards.