(New Acquisitions) - Yokohama

Yokohama

Hisashi Hayashi made a splash a while back with Trains a kind of area control deck building game. This game is more of a classic euro style and also very well received.

At its core is a action select worker placement game. The game uses a variety of cards that contain the actions and worker slots. Unlike many worker placement games the workers actually move rather than being placed anywhere, meaning that different setups when dealing the locations can change the tactical thinking between sessions.

Like many euros it is a bit of a multiplayer solo game, there is some blocking but really it is more a kind of "race' game were you rush for points vs your opponents.

The game does look busy and kinda of crowded, particularly in at full player count. You deal less locations at lower counts so there are less slots, this is how this games gets around the worker slots issue that worker placement games have for different player counts. This allows great variance between the sessions as certain actions are missing from some games, but lacks the coherence of a properly deigned board. I am not sure anyone can seriously defend the look of it on the table, it looks a little worrying at first glace!

4 Player Game

2 Player Game

It is extremely well designed, and is not nearly as complex as it looks and is one of those games that has very interesting decisions on every turn.

The game reminds me a little of Bruxelles 1897. I know it is not actually like that game really, but even so it reminds me of it somehow. Maybe it is in how there are so many avenues to victory and you build this little player area as you go. Bruxelles 1897 btw is one of my favourite games, so reminding me of that game is a good thing.

Anyway, this is a top game. I have only bee able to play it a few times on TTS, and it has been on my wishlist for years, the subsequent pre-xmas sales and reprint seemed like a great time to pick it up.

Most photos are for the deluxe version, I just got the standard. It is basically the same but the small cardboard tokens are replaced with meeples and fancy meepels replace the cubes.