Riyas

OK I’m pretty new to serious board gaming so my review is based on my limited experiences. I guess the bast way I can review this game is by comparison to other similar games I have played. As other reviewers may have already mentioned the closest game I have played to Yedo is Lords of Waterdeep but Yedo has much much more to it than Waterdeep. think of it as Waterdeep on steroids.

The games objective is to gain as many prestige points as possible by the end of the 11 terns (years). You do this by completing missions that come in 4 difficulties. the requirements for the mission are a combination of weapons, geisha, blessings and sending your disciples (meeples) different parts of the Yedo (the city) if you have all the requirements shown on the card and disciples on the locations you can use one of the disciples actions to complete the mission and takes the rewards. which can be mon(money)/items/cards/prestige points or a combination of the above. each card also has a bonus section if you can satisfy the bonus requirements as well as the basic requirements when completing a mission you get to claim the bonus rewards as well.

the game is played on a beautiful board representing the 6 sections of the town of Yedo. each section is also subdivided into boxes that your disciples can occupy in order to person different actions. some sections of the town have options for different actions ie all boxes in each section are not always the same action. in addition to the game board each player has their own individual board that represents their clan mansion where they will keep their Mon, cards, missions geisha etc.the players can also build upgrades to their mansion that will give them addition advantages as play goes on

the game begins with the bidding phase where players bid for one of the following
bonus cards
action cards
weapons
upgrades to their mansion
geisha
disciples
mission

all of the above can be purchased from the town itself but if the bidding goes well you can get them for less than half of what it would cost you in town

once the bidding phase is done the event card is revealed which can be good or bad or neutral depending on the game. warning some event cards are very bad like earthquake which can leave your strategy in tatters. Personally I like it but some people don’t.

there is also a policeman mechanic in the game which affectively closes off one area of the board. so you will need to plan for this or use action cards to use the policeman against the other players.

then players start placing their disciples in order to take the action or full fill mission requirements and for trading which is only allowed if both players who want to trade have disciples in a certain area on the board.

once placement is done the disciples are removed to activate the chosen action to complete missions. and the turn starts over again.

I’ve played the game a few times now and though its a bit hard learn and explain you get the hang of it after one or two games. I really like this games unpredictability and theme. you can still plan but you will have to have a plan b and c just in case. It also brings a nice tension into the end game. However this is a relatively long game with 4 players it takes on average about 2 – 2.5 hours.This is one of my favourite games.

the first fluxx game i played was start fulxx and have also played zombie fluxx. this version is much simpler as in the monsters/keepers don’t have any special abilities. there are also only 4 types of cards in this version.

if you want to play fluxx choose a different version this one is probably for younger players

the website wont let me stop at this point but there is nothing much more i can say about the game. the cards of of standard manufacture nothing to complain about there and the artwork is reasonable but nothing to make you go wow.

I have only been playing board games for the last few months and love it. I mainly play through at a local guild that I found on the net and am trying to convince some of my friends and family to get into it as well. I have recently bought some card games GoT, Doomtown which are probably too complex to start with so I bought this to ease them into how card based games work.

I played with my two twenty something cousins over the weekend and I would say it was a success. the game is fun and quite easy to learn and teach. though unlike me I would suggest playing it with someone who knows the game first. the first game was a bit awkward as it was my first time playing as well. but once we had played one game everyone felt they knew more about the cards and the second game flowed much more smoothly and with was much more fun.

overall this game is funny and relatively easy to learn and a good way to introduce newbies to card game mechanics.