Review

Fishing village to trade center

Yokohama

Industrial Revolution in Japan

The globalization of the board game scene has progressed quickly over the last few years. A lot of games from American and Asian publishers and designers have by now arrived in Europe. However, I personally, had so for not encountered a high-class, complex expert game, originating in Asia. This gap has now been finally closed with the publication of Yokohama in 2016. The game, designed by Japanese designer Hisashi Hayashi and originally published in 2016 by OKAZUbrand, with good rules in German and English, but with only Japanese and English card texts, has by now – 2017 – been published in various international versions and also as a German version by dlp games.

It must be mentioned here, that I only had the first edition to play and therefore could not take into account eventual changes or improvement incorporated in newer editions.

Players take on the role of a Japanese Trade. Round for round, the trader pawn moves about in Yokohama to gather fame. Whoever has accrued most fame, wins the game, what a surprise!

The town of Yokohama, in this game, is put together from several rectangular area tiles, which are assembled randomly at the start of the game. Furthermore, you need to sort, reveal and set out ready numerous and various small cardboard tiles, wooden tiles and cards.

If you play Yokohama fort he first time and look at the completely set-up game, you are overwhelmed for a start. You are confronted with a very colorful heap, fraught with symbols, that is not really very pretty to look at. BUT, as soon as you have read through the rules and have gained an overview, suddenly all makes sense. At this point, praise is due for a rulebook without gaps, albeit without the clear structure that is offered by the up-to-date rules issued by big publishers.

The many symbols are really logical and allow you to play the game nearly without rules, which is not so self-evident when you consider the complexity and the many different details. The only thing missing is a scoring overview for the end of the game.

The game is played in turn, players do their turns one after the other, until one of the end-of-game conditions is achieved. Each player commands a president, a few assistants, trade posts and shops, as well as various resources.

In a turn, you first place assistants in Yokohama. You can place up to two assistants in one area or distribute up to three assistants in different areas.  

Then the President moves about in Yokohama. You can only enter adjacent areas with your own assistant in it. When another player’s President is in this area, you pay him one Yen. You can move over any distance, provided that there is no other President in this area. In the final area, you can then resolve the action of this area.

These actions are very different and give you new resources, new orders, technologies, assistants, business, money, allow donations to Church and various other things.

A common factor for all those actions is, that the strength of the action is governed by your influence. This influence is the total of all your own assistants, trade posts, shops and the president in this area. If you achieve an influence value of Four or Five – Five is always the maximum – you can set up a new trade post or shop in the area, which costs you money which is scarce. After the action is resolved, all your own assistants in the area go back into your own stock

This mechanism of action strength results in some interesting considerations. Especially at the start of the game you need to consider well, where you place your assistants, because values of Four or Five are not achieved instantly, they must be prepared over several turns and various weak interim actions. And then there are, of course, your lovely fellow players, who are of course in the way just know or block your action field at the worst possible moment. So, always have a Plan B in reserve and keep an eye on your fellow players.

In many ways, Yokohama reminds me of Istanbul, which a few years ago was very successful with similar movement mechanisms and a similar board. Yokohama, however, is much more versatile and much more intricate, due to is clearly more complex action mechanisms and its various action cases – definitely an expert game contrary to Istanbul, that caters for a less versed clientele, too.

Markus Wawra

Players: 2-4

Age: 12+

Time: 90+

Designer: Hisashi Hayashi

Artist: Ryo Nyamo

Price: 49,95 Euro

Publisher: dlp Games 2017

Web:  www.dlp-games.de

Genre: Collect

Users: For experts

Version: de

Rules: de en jp

In-game text: yes

Comments:

Interesting, innovative mechanism

Many options for advancing the game

Easily understood rules, albeit not up-to-date as to graphic design

Colorful and fraught with symbols

Compares to:

Istanbul, Ora et Labora

Other editions:

OKAZUbrand (en jp)

My rating: 6

Markus Wawra:

While being busy with picking up on the various options and the fraught graphics of the game, I quickly came to appreciate Yokohama. I love the feature that I must build up my game over several rounds and therefore should plan ahead. Even the many symbols are soon only logical and not over-demanding. And yet, I do not award full points, because, as the similar, but clearly simpler Istanbul, I did not catch fire over Yokohama, a fact that I cannot explain rationally, because Yokohama is a felicitous and impeccable game.

Chance (pink): 1

Tactic (turquoise): 3

Strategy (blue): 2

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 0

Communication (red): 0

Interaction (brown): 2

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0