The Treasure Ship of Zheng He

• Designers: Hisashi Hayashi
• Publisher: Harvest Valley
• Players: 2-5
• Age: 14+
• Time: 90-120 minutes
  Played the prototype copy by the publisher

Summary:

The Treasure Ship of Zheng He is a fun immersive strategy game for 2-5 players set at sea, designed by Japanese game designer Hisashi Hayashi. Players compete to travel great distances from China all the way to Africa, and improve Zheng He’s influence across the lands. As an officer of Zheng He’s fleet you will take command of the journey and aim to improve your diplomacy with other nations, visit the High Officials at court to ask for their favor, bring back rare items and exotic animals, and build many monuments in honor of Zheng He.

This preview was based on an early preview version of the game, since we played the game in Japanese some of the terminology, names, and parts of the game may be updated before the final edition.

Gameplay:

The Treasure Ship of Zheng He, takes place over 7 rounds representing the 7 voyages that your fleet takes. Players need to effectively use their actions to gain victory points and reputation in their travels. The game takes place over 3 main game boards, the Main game board which is used for sea navigation, the High Officials board where there are 9 ranks of State officers for the emperor. The higher they sit on the board the closer to the emperor they are. The 3rd board is the Planning board which tracks the Rounds and is an important step in deciding the player initiative in the voyage. Each player also has their own player board to place animals that they collect, and resources gathered.

After the start player is decided, each player will get a different amount of resources based on their turn order.

There are 7 rounds. In each round there are 4 phases.

In the High Official Phase, players visit the High Officials one by one and chooses which official they want to give rare items to in return for some assistance for their journey. The officials have 9 ranks. The lowest ranking Officials don’t require any gifts, but the higher up the chain of command you go you will need to bring back rarer items like whale ambergris.

In the Planning Phase, the player who visited the highest ranked Official and furthest to the left will go first, followed by the next highest. Players each take turns choosing which face-down Voyage card to choose to lead and ‘captain’. The Voyage card on the left will be the first and closest leg to China, and the one on the right will be the last. Being on the last leg means you may get closer to Africa and have a better chance of finding animals and rare resources. The Planning Phase goes really quickly as there are usually only 3-4 Voyage cards available.

The next Phase is the Voyage Phase, the active player – ‘the captain’ of the leg starts with the player who chose the leftmost card. Each card gets revealed and resolved one by one. This is the main phase where actions take place on the main board map.

Reveal the Voyage card for that player. Take and place the number of ships indicated by the card onto the map, one by one in the next available space. If there is a fork in the map, the active player ‘the captain’ chooses. During this time any mass events listed on the Voyage card happens now. Otherwise an event on one of the ship’s stops will occur or calm seas. The ‘captain’ places the lead ship token on the space they want to use.

The ‘captain’ performs all their actions first, but in The Treasure Ship of Zheng He, all the other players also get to perform an action in that same turn. They cannot choose the lead ship space, they must choose one of the small ship’s spaces. If they have a rare Emperor’s directive order, they can spend it to override the rule and use the lead ship’s space.

If there’s a pirate in space, players first must defeat the pirates by matching military might, use cannons, or bribe the pirates with gifts. Once the pirate is defeated the player will move up on the military track and gain rewards passed and landed on. If they decide not to fight, that player’s turn ends.

On the map spaces symbols indicate which action can be performed.

1. Resource spaces: Players receive resources, gold, weapon
2. Merchant spaces: Players trade with the merchants.
3. Great Nation spaces: Players level up their diplomacy by sending 1-2 diplomats to the country. If they reach the highest diplomatic level at the end of the game they will receive victory points for any diplomats in their possession. Every time they level up they will gain rewards at that level and the one below it.
4. Animal spaces: Players can receive the animal and place it on their player board. Trying to cover as many spaces as possible, and cover the largest rectangular space. They receive items as soon as they cover a space on the board with an icon.

Players can then build a monument by paying the cost. Monuments are powerful! It allows the player to repeat the same action, and if it’s built adjacent to another space that you have already built a monument on, you get to activate that space’s action as well. For example, if you landed on a Great Nation space, you can raise the diplomacy level to 1, and receive those rewards. Then you build a monument by paying the required amount. You then raise the diplomacy level to 2, and gain the rewards at level 2 AND at level 1. If the space to the left or right already has another one of your monuments on it, you get to activate that space as well!

Once the ‘captain’ is done, all other players get to choose an action to take also. Everyone gets to do actions on the active player’s turn.

Proceed to the next voyage card and resolve it, continue until all the voyage cards in that round are completed. After a clean up phase, the round starts again.

At the end of the 7th round, the 7 voyages are complete. The game ends with one final trip to the High Officials. In turn order, players get to use one of the High Official spaces. If players are lucky they may choose the Emperor’s space which requires 2 of each rare resource to gain 30VP and more.

During Scoring, players add up their current victory points on the victory point track, the highest victory point they have reached on the Military Reputation track, the end game Victory points at the Great Nations + a bonus if you reached level 3 diplomacy, add up the victory points on spaces where you visited the High Officials. For the animals, each covered space is worth 1VP, and the largest rectangle area gains a bonus 1VP space each. Monuments built gain 1VP each, every 2 trade goods token is worth 1VP, every 3 coins is worth 1VP, Directive Order tokens, Dispatch ships, Gifts are worth 1VP each. And the player who has the highest victory points wins!

Impressions:

‘The Treasure Ship of Zheng He’ kept me engaged all the way through the game. Some of the phases had an impact on who would get the initiative to go first in the next one. Deciding on if you want to try to visit the highest Official so you get first pick of the Planning stage but it may cost more expensive rare items, or go for an Official that doesn’t cost as much so you can save your resources for a later move was really interesting. I was holding my breath during the Voyage phase trying to anticipate which move the ‘Captain’ of that leg would take. Every action was quite fun to take, I found myself using all the actions – trading, fighting pirates, gathering goods, building diplomacy, racing to grab animals and so on. And at the end of the game it was exciting to count the points together to see who won.

I played the prototype game in December 2024, and overall, I would say it was my most enjoyable new game that I’ve tried in 2024. It’s one of those games that I walked away saying I wanted to play again and again. Even as I write this review I really want to play the game again, and I can’t wait to get the final version and bring it to the game days.

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers
I love it! Mandy
I like it.
Neutral.
Not for me…