Designer: Hisasha Hayashi

Possibly my favorite new-to-me game of 2017, this game casts you as a businessman in Yokohama as it transitions from being a tiny fishing village to a major modern city.

Yokohama is an intimidating board, to be sure, and more casual gamers may be spooked, but it’s a real treat for more hardcore Eurogamers. I should note that one player at the table called the game “Istanbul on crack”. Not having played it, I can’t comment on that, other than to say that I guess I’m going to have to go try Istanbul now!

Yokohama is a dense, busy, and yet surprisingly approachable worker placement game. On one level, it is similar to Lords of Waterdeep – you place your worker, gain resources, and use them to complete orders (i.e. quests) cards you have collected.  But the assistants mechanic makes it far, far deeper.

Key Mechanic: Placing Assistants and Powering Up Action Squares. During the player’s turn, he either (a) places three assistants on three different squares or (b) places two assistants on the same square. He then walks from where he is to any other space that is connected to where he is – but every square he walks through must contain an assistant!

He then takes the action in that square, but the strength of the action is based on how many pieces are in there. For example, if there is one assistant, he takes two fish. If there are four, he takes five! He then picks up all assistants at that location, so they can be placed in future turns. In this way, he can plan ahead to power up to a big move – and his opponents can get a good sense of what he’s planning to do.

Here’s the catch, though: a player can also build structures throughout the gameboard – similar to houses and hotels in Monopoly. The primary effects of these structures is that they replace an assistant in ‘powering up’ a square, effectively allowing the player to lean into certain strategies.

2016-06-07

(Photo Credit: Gameosity)