“Sabotage rival clans by completing cloak-and-dagger missions in the city of Yedo.”
Link: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/117915/yedo
Playing Time: 120-180 Minutes
Weight: Medium
Genre: Worker Placement
Designer: Thomas Vande Ginste, Wolf Plancke
Players: 2-5
This is basically “Lords of Waterdeep but with ninjas”. Players play as rival clan leaders in Edo, competing for favor with the new Shogun. To do so, they’ll be directing their agents (i.e. ninjas) to gather weapons, resources and even geishas to be able to complete missions to increase their favor.
This is all relatively straightforward but the game does have a couple of twists that make it worthy of inclusion. My favorite is the night watchmen, a meeple who wanders the board in a preprogrammed pattern, effectively disabling worker placement locations and arresting any ninjas unlucky enough to be placed there. Normally, he’s relatively easy to avoid, but if you play on higher challenge modes, players actually can manipulate his movements, effectively sending the cops to arrest their adversaries.
On top of it all, Yedo has a beautiful aesthetic, with a charming board and beautiful pieces that really sets the aura of 16th century Japan.
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