The board is a 5x7 grid onto which five city tiles of six main varieties are placed (plus the town hall, bank and three parks. Parks are surrounded with 12 white neutral rods that can't be moved in the course of the game. Investment is symbolized by a player's color coded investment rods and the idea is to place your investment rods around the city tiles to try to earn a "majority" and claim that building's prestige points.

   The buildings (tract homes & villas, ballparks & marketplaces, factories and offices) are worth 4, 5 and 6 prestige points respectively with the bank and city hall being worth 10 prestige points each. As soon as you have sufficient investment rods around a city square (so that no one can have as many as you do around that particular square's perimeter) you can flip over the square to signify renovation and claim the resulting prestige points...

   The third process... [is]... options... You turn over one of three chits showing the tract homes & villas, ball parks & marketplaces, or factories & offices, all selected in pairs. If unopposed, you can build for the smallest banknote you have. If opposed, you have a sealed bid, risking 1-5 banknotes and revealing simultaneously. All winners from options bidding pay banknotes to the bank; losing bids are returned to their owners.

   Each turn, when there has been one or more successful bids, an action card is flipped and carried out. Action cards can either trigger a bidding round... or they can cause bonus rounds where everyone can regain four influence points or up to $100,000 in banknotes... and can result in additional investments, movement of investments already on the board and replacement of other player's investments. The action cards are also the game's timing mechanism. Each action card played covers up a year from 1907 to 1918...When 1918 is covered and played, the game ends. The player with the most prestige points wins.

   In Phase A of each turn, the players bid on one of seven different items: a lake, a forest, a park, a Baumeister (architect), a Jester, a Prestige (Victory Point) card and a "Companion" card... the player on turn decides which of the seven... is auctioned.... Whoever wins the auction marks the stack of the card or piece with his color marker. The auction winner and the auctioned piece are out of all subsequent auctions for that turn. So, in a five player game, everybody gets to win one of the five auctions in which five of the seven pieces will be chosen.... In Phase B..., players get to build a building or two for their artisans, buy them the freedoms they require, buy bonus score cards and, if satisfied that they meet minimum requirements for the round, they may "display" the artisan.... In Phase B, you have only two actions, meaning if you buy a freedom and a building, you don't even get to display a person. There is so much that has to be done and so few actions to do it all!...

   There are seven rounds of play and the minimum requirement for display rises with 7, 10, 12, 14, 154, 16 and 17 points required as the rounds progress. For instance, the proper building is worth four points, the right landscape is worth four, the right freedom three. Each Jester...brings another two...Each "personality" or companion - including the one displayed - adds one point... When the player displays, he adds the points together and then marks the "werke" score on the same track as the VPs. The best single display at the end of the turn scores three VPs...The buildings? There are three of each kind and nine types in all. Two are large (seven spaces), five are medium (five spaces) and two are small (three spaces). When erected, they must be arranged in the estate without touching each other (diagonal is okay) although landscapes are allowed to touch.... and they are expensive at 700 florins each. With a Baumeister, things are much more manageable at 300 florins each. A second Baumeister allows buildings to abut right up against one another and scores three VPs. A third allows players to erect buildings for FREE and scores another three VPs.... did I mention there are only six available for the entire game?!

   Action cards allow players to seed stones on the islands that dot the area between the villages, place planks (to enable player tokens to travel towards other villages), move tokens onto the planks and even remove stones and planks. In addition, Dragon cards can cancel the action of the player with the matching color (but you may only play one Dragon per round. But all is not quite as simple as it may appear.

   The planks of each player comes in different sizes ranging from a rather smallish 1 to a lengthy 6. When placing a plank, that plank must be supported by a stone at each end (or a village). Planks may not be measured but must be gauged by sight. If a plank does not reach, the player loses that action. Similar misfortune befalls a player if he plays a movement action and cannot complete it (because of a plank not being in the proper place or another token not being in the position for a player to jump). In those cases, that player's token is considered to have "fallen into the delta" and goes back to start!

   The removal option is rather clever. When playing the remove a stone or plank card, a player may remove a stone to the communal supply. When removing a plank, however, there are certain restrictions. You may never have two planks of the same number or planks of more than two colors... The first player to successfully navigate over the delta to the opposite village wins!

   The 37 rings that make up the field of play are arranged in a hexagonal pattern with four rings to a side. The marbles begin off this fluid board. Furthermore, each color or marble comes in a different quantity. The white are the fewest (with six pieces), followed by grey (eight pieces) and, finally, black (ten).

   On his turn, a player places any color marble they wish from those remaining off the field of play and then removes one of the rings from the edge of the "board" thus reducing the playing area of the game. The only way players would not do this is if they have a jump move available at the start of their turn. A jump move is created by a player placing a marble next to another one on what is left of the play area. If you have a jump available at the start of your turn, you must take it. If you have multiple jumps, you can choose which to take but, as long as you can continue to make jumps, you have to keep jumping. A player captures all of the marbles he jumps. If you make a jump move, you do not place a marble or take a board ring. The marbles you capture in a jump are stored in front of you, rather conveniently, upon rings that you have previously removed from the field of play. This leads rather nicely into how one goes about winning Zertz.

   In the basic game, the first player to take half the number of one color of marble (three of the white, for example) or take two of each color of marble wins the game. The tournament rules are one half plus one of a single color or three of each color to win.