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by Cyril Demaegd
Rating: 5/10 after 2 plays
by Cyril Demaegd
art Arnaud Demaegd
published 2004 by Ystari Games
players: 3-4 (2-6 with rules from publisher's website)
duration: 60-90 mins.
type: medium strategy board game
PACE: QUICK. Players place one pawn face-up and one pawn face-down on their turn, and the decision is usually fairly quick to make since each player will be prioritizing certain areas. Some pauses for evaluating possibilities of opponents' pawn placements.
COMPLEXITY: MEDIUM. The first part of the rules seem very simple (piece placement), the latter part of the rules seem fairly complicated (price manipulation), but if you read through carefully and compare the rules to the board, the game comes together fairly well. To win, you'll need to your wits about you (a good read of other players will help) but it's the kind of game nearly anyone could learn -- much like the very similar Aladdin's Dragon's.
LUCK: MEDIUM. Players place half their pawns face-down, and bid for turn order face-down, so the luck comes in the way of unpredictible play by way of your opponents, but since half the pawns are played face-up, there is quite a bit of room for strong tactical play. Good players will beat average players almost all the time. There are a LOT of tactical layers in this game.
TENSION: MEDIUM. In a game of this type, there is some hidden information and a fair bit of bluffing, allowing for a good sense of tension from the very get-go. Only knowing half the info creates a neat dynamic of assessing other players' priorities. Also, the multiple layers of consideration and how the different areas affect each other make for a very tight-balancing act that helps amp up the tension.
CONFRONTATION: MEDIUM. Players can constantly one-up each other, leaving one player unmolested, or players can pick and choose their battles carefully, grabbing uncontested areas rather easily. This factor will largely depend on whom you play the game with.
INTERACTION: HIGH. Interaction comes in the way of one-up-manship (when players are tempted to start a bidding war), but also in the action cards where players can affect many parts of the game with their special abilities. Lots of contesting in this game.
VISUALS: FAIR. I really like the round playing area which is a little different from most other games, and the graphics overall are fairly good. The main problem is that the areas on the board aren't very clearly labelled, causing some confusion upon first reading of the rules. Nothing special here, but quite functional considering all the parts of the game. Kudos on easy to understand pictographs on the action cards, though character pictures and action text would have made a big aesthetic difference -- but language-indepedence prevailed, and so the board is quite straightforward.
THEME: FAIR. The theme is close to well-applied, but several things render it merely fair. A lack of character illustrations on the cards certainly hurts the theme, and yet the cards are highly functional.. This principle ("function-first") is present in nearly every every aspect of the game -- the pawns, the cards, the board design -- and has the players more focussed on the mechanics than the theme to use an analogy, it's sort of like reading the sheet music instead of listening to the symphony.
PLAYER SCALING: FAIR. Many games with influence and blind-bidding benefit from having more players, and I believe this is just as true for Ys. With three players, the bidding can too easily swing in one players favor. (Although the rules seems to allow 3 players to play in 4 areas, I have since heard 3 players should play in only three areas, which I tried recently and had MUCH better success with.
GAMER APPEAL: PROBABLY. The mechanics of the game are very well done here and the general buzz indicates many gamers will enjoy this game immensely. Tactics will appear about halfway through your first playing, and it becomes a real battle of wits and double-guessing amongst experience players. To say this game is a tactical balancing act would be the understatement of the year. Have I mentioned all the layers yet...?
CASUAL GAMER APPEAL: UNLIKELY. Note, this is a preliminary rating, but the rather mechanical feel of the game, coupled with the surprisingly amount of tactics required to win, has me thinking this game will not have strong appeal to casual gamers. It doesn't have the color or character of Aladdin's Dragons, but the games are aimed at two different markets in my mind.
REPLAY: pending.
RATING: 5/10 after 2 PLAYS
Players send out their employees to the different parts of the city of Ys. By clever bluffing and piece placement, players will be able to pick up gems in the shipping area of town, acquire the favor of prominent figures in the city of Ys, or affect the price of gems in the marketplace. All of this is done using wooden pawns of differing values. Each player has an identical set of pawns in their own color, and will deploy them, 2 at a time, to do all of the above. Each turn, one pawn goes face-up, the other face-down, into one of areas in the 4 quarters of the city, or into the gem market. Highest totals in different areas will help players aquire gems, get special abilities in the way of cards reresenting prominent figures such as the bishop or the mayor, and even affect the relative price of the different gems for end-game scoring.
My 2 cents: A solid blind-bidding game, and a very tight piece of design, Ys manages to create a game fairly similar to the wonderful game Aladdin's Dragons, but with a lot more room for strategy than Aladdin's Dragons, and will thusly appeal more to the gamer crowd. The clever implementation of layered bidding gives players some real tough decisions to make, and good players are rewarded. My opinion of this game is very similar to my opinion of Maharaja: a brilliant, tight piece of game design that seem a bit bland in the execution -- mainly, the theme (and related graphics) seemed to lack pinache. I just don't find myself engaged in the game experience. But if you're a gamer not bother by thematic tepidity, you really need to check this out...soon!