OUR REVIEW

Beware of the Watch Patrol!

YEDO

Strategic power play with all you’ve got

„I’ll go and make some coffee in the meantime“, Carmen announced when I did spread the huge amount of components from Yedo on the table. There won‘t be much room left when the huge, but fantastically coherent and harmonious board is spread on the table. All the same, nearly 170 cards in different sizes and with different uses want to be stored on it and next to it, as well as 40 weapons tiles, seven Geishas, five Blessing markers, one personal storage board for each player, upgrades, cardboard coins and 38 wooden playing pieces and markers.

 „Setting up this thing takes longer than the game itself!“ I am not paying any attention to comments from my player friends who will take up the roles of five clan chiefs in 17^th century Japan - also because they are wrong. Because Yedo takes at least two or three hours to play and setting it up does not take that much time. After Carmen has returned with a steaming mug of coffee to the table, where in the meantime all is in its place and offers a wonderful overview over seven districts in Yedo from the castle district to the red-light district we can start!

Something for everybody

You like auctions? Then you are okay with Yedo! You love free trading as in settlers? Then you are lucky, too! You fall for classic worker placement or rather prefer event cards, which influence a game drastically, as in Säulen der Erde? Congratulations, you have come to the right game! Because all this you can find in Yedo. And saying this, we have already presented the individual phases of the game, that are implemented a total of eleven times each.

Basically, we aim for prestige points, as so often in a game, which are mainly awarded for the completion of secret mission cards. What exactly we have to do we learn when we turn the cards over, but do know in advance that it is potentially more difficult to complete a yellow or a red mission than a green one. The black missions are the hardest to crack - for this we might have to assassinate someone or the other at some point. All this happens completely without bloodshed, because to complete a mission means that the prerequisites must be met. So you might have to have your own men in certain districts while at the same time owning certain kinds of weapons or upgrades or must discard special tiles or pay money. This in turn is rewarded as stated on the card, with money, additional cards and- at long last - also with prestige points.

At the start of each round you cheerfully bid for action cards, bonus cards, weapons, disciples (playing pieces) mission cards and whatever else might be lying around on the board. But, you can only place one bid, that’s it! If you started the auction you are allowed to change your bit once and then the winner of the auction is known. If you do not want to bid you pass and receive three coins from the bank.

In the Event Phase the market is replenished with new weapons and an event is revealed that applies to all players, but against which you can protect yourself by discarding money or a Blessings marker.

Following this event phase the playing pieces, called disciples in Yedo, are placed in turn on the board or into upgrades on your personal board, before the Watch Patrol comes into play in the truest sense of the word.

Go to prison

The seven districts are arranged in a circle around the Watch Patrol’s tower and this Watch Patrol is making his regular rounds in Yedo. Whoever he finds when he enters a district by means of the one step he is allowed he arrests and puts him back into stock. So it is good that you can influence the Watch Patrol’s movement with action cards or use them to protect yourself from being arrested. Whoever is left on the board afterwards and has his disciples in the Market or Tavern district, can now trade and barter to his heart’s content with others present there, regardless if the commodities are money, weapons, geishas, action cards or bonus cards. When this is done the actions of players are implemented, that is, the placed disciples are activated.

Multiple effects of board areas:

Each area in a district has very special effects which can give you for instance an additional disciple, a Geisha or additional money. In the Tavern district you can also acquire an upgrade for your own clan House (player board), in the Market district you can buy the coveted weapons. To list all options here is not necessary, the plethora of options which of course you cannot make use of as intensely as you would want to, can be imaged easily now. Alternately, and that is the mean think, you can use your presence in a district to complete a mission which, among other prerequisites, demands the presence of a piece in exactly this district. This of course, loses you the direct effect of the district.

The missions in turn are the meat and bones of Yedo and earn you all that what you can otherwise only acquire painstakingly, one by one, and usually for good money in the individual districts - albeit in higher numbers. There are four different kinds of missions in play, of different levels of difficulty for completion. The harder a mission is to complete the higher the reward will be be in the end.

Despite those cards being of rather a big format, the tiny symbols of them denoting what you need to have or need to discard in order to complete the mission are not easy to decipher in a dimly lit room, but contrary to this the text introduction to each card is very atmospheric and tells us what we achieve by meeting with the depicted requirements. When we take a look at the categories in which the missions are sorted - spying, theft, abduction, assassination attempt or warfare - makes it clear rather quickly that as clan chiefs we plan some very dubious machinations. But what is one prepared to do for a bit of prestige ….?

And then we were done

Over eleven challenging and thrilling rounds (Carmen was so engrossed that she forgot to drink her coffee which is lukewarm by now) we collect cards, markers, money and tiles and complete our secret missions until the clan chief owning most prestige points, supplemented by points accrued from bonus cards that one might have acquired during the game, wins the game.

The explanation of what we experienced in those eleven rounds takes up a total of 16 pages in the rules, which at first glance is quite a deterrent, as is the huge amount of components which must not only be correctly placed and distributed, but whose effects and functions must be grasped to start with and whose interdependencies you must remember. During the game itself it becomes clear rather quickly that all this is not as complicated as it is presented on paper. The course of events over seven phases is logical in itself and the actions really do support the story, and the other way round.

Of course, I must, when I want to murder the sun of Cloth Merchant Hyoshi with the help of a poison cocktail, have a disciple in the Market District and be able to show Poison as a weapon. So, despite all the complexity, you get your bearings rather fast. So, at the end, the age denoted on the box, 14+, seems a bit too high.

Yedo does not really offer anything really new, but the combination of elements is felicitous and harmonious, game mechanics and story support each other and the all-over result plays really nicely.

For beginners the rules provide a more simple Geisha version. Only when you are really prepared to enter the ruthless fight for honor and fame at all costs you should try to play the Samurai version. But, at the end, those versions do not differ in the amount of rules or the flow of the game, but only in the fact that fate, that is, event cards, is even nastier towards clan chiefs than the Geisha version. Well, life is not fair and Yedo mirrors this wonderfully. Luckily, it is only a game ….

Strategic tactic?

According to eggertspiele Yedo is a tactical game. Yes, maybe. But only when placing the pieces, when of course everybody takes care to note what others are doing and where - based on the current situation on the board - the most can be gained. But all in all, each clan chief maps out his own strategy in order to complete the missions in hand. How and where do I most quickly acquire geishas, weapons, blessings and upgrades that I need? This is the ruling question. And to answer it you need long-term planning. So it can happen that some players diligently complete mission after mission and it seems that the will decide the winner among themselves, until, shortly before the game ends, someone completes two or three red or black missions in one turn, flatten out everybody else and collect prestige points without end. You cannot achieve this using only tactics considering the here and now.

Conclusion

At long last a strategy game that did really fascinate be because the mechanisms blend perfectly into the topic and do not give a feeling of being imposed upon it. The arc of suspense is perfect, as until the end, despite openly marked prestige points, you don’t really know who will win in the end. A classic worker placement with many new ideas which finally result in the total being more than its parts - even in a game for two Yedo works perfectly.

There is only one real point to criticize: The Asian-style lettering on the cover is so stylish that one can barely decipher the names of the designers. There is nothing more to grouse about from a player point of views. Only Carmen’s coffee is cold now.

Stefan Olschewski

Players: 2-5

Age: 14+

Time: 180+

Designer: Wolf Plancke and Thomas Vande Ginste

Art: Franz and Imelda Vohwinkel

Price: ca. 50 Euro

Publisher: eggertspiele / Pegasus 2012

Web: www.pegasus.de

Genre: Strategy game

Users: For experts

Version: de

Rules: de en

In-game text: yes

Comments:

Impressive design

Excellent components

Copious rules rather deterring at the start

Well-balanced mechanisms

Challenging to the very end

Compares to:

Worker placement games

Other editions:

English language edition

My rating: 6

Stefan Olschewski:

Despite the fact that the plenitude of components and the copious rules are rather daunting at the start, the first game shows how logical and stringent the flow of the game runs. An impressive tidbit for expert players, which might entice families to try it due to the beautiful design, as the age recommendation seems a bit high in the end.

Chance (pink): 0

Tactic (turquoise): 2

Strategy (blue): 3

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 0

Communication (red): 1

Interaction (brown): 2

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0