The Yellow House

• Designer: Geonil
• Publisher: Mandoo
• Players: 2
• Age: 8+
• Time: 30 minutes
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

In The Yellow House, inspired by artists like Van Gogh and Gauguin, you’ll engage in debates about which elements are most crucial in the arts.\

Your goal is to empty your hand during these debates. On your turn, you can either play a card to make a claim, or strengthen your arguments by discarding cards if the topic you bring forth is not stronger! With cunning, you’ll be able to say the final word and, that way, win the debate of the century!

Place the Canvas board on the table and the four colored Element tokens on the bottom space. The deck of 28 cards is shuffled and each player gets a hand of 12 cards.  The support cards are kept nearby.  Both players secretly and simultaneously choose two of their cards from their hand to give to the other player.  These are revealed upon passing, and the corresponding colored marker for each card is advanced one step on the board.

The game is played over at most five rounds, and each ends if a player runs out of cards (i.e. they have won that particular debate).

The dealer goes first each round. There are two choices on your turn: Make a Claim or (Strengthen an element then make a Claim). If a player cannot or does not want to do either of these, they pass and immediately lose the trick.  The player who won the previous trick leads the next trick.

Make a Claim – initially, play any Topic Card from your hand. Afterwards, each Claim must be an element that is stronger than the opponent’s previous play and new (not yet played in the trick).  The strength of an element is determined by the position of its marker on the board.  These Claims are played to the right of the board.

Strengthen then claim – if you want to play a card that is weaker than the current claim, you must first Strengthen the desired color.  Advance that color’s marker until it is exactly 1 level higher than the current claim and you must play cards of that color equal to the steps moved.  These cards are played in front of you.  You can also choose to take a Supply card in place of a single Topic card when doing this.  (You can only use one Supply card per trick play and no more than 3 per round).  Then play a single Claim card to the right of the board.  

When a player runs out of cards in their hand, they win the round. They take the last claim as their reward, placing it under their Palette token to show it is a victory spoil.  The game is won by a player who either has two topic cards of the same color under their Palette or any three cards.

My thoughts on the game

The Yellow House is a real location, found in Arles, France – a city that is proud to display his artwork and residences (I know, I was just there on vacation!).  After the huge Roman amphitheater, the Van Gogh sites were the next most advertised thing to see.  The actual Yellow House doesn’t exist anymore, but guidebooks brought me to the correct street corner to gaze upon the site.

https://thefogwatch.com/arles-van-goghs-yellow-house/

(And here I am in front of the Roman Amphitheatre in Arles)

This two player duel has a nice back and forth as you try to come up with a plan to shed the cards in your hand. The passing here actually can be quite important as it helps you set up your hand – the starting influence levels in the colors definitely can change how/when you are able to play the cards. 

There is a bit of timing that you have to work on as you are constrained in the number of cards you can play on a given move. If you make a claim, you can only play a single card of a color.  If you strengthen, you can play more than one card, but again following a fixed rule.  

At first, the math was confusing until someone broke it down to me – on a turn, you’re either going to play a single card for a new claim, or (Steps+2) if you strengthen and claim.  Once you figure this out, the difficulty in figuring out what you can play is gone, and the game becomes a quick affair.   Games can be as short as 2 rounds, and each round maybe takes 3-4 minutes at most?

The supply cards help you massage your hand, but you are limited to how many you can play in a round.  As there is no penalty to using the supply cards, I’d take advantage of them when you can – as they can help you make legal plays.  After a few games, you’ll possibly realize though that you don’t always want to play as soon as you can – there can definitely be an advantage to waiting until your opponent only has one or two cards left, and then you can play out your whole hand as they cannot respond.

This is the third game that I’ve played from this Spiel to have a cloth board – and I don’t know if this is a growing trend or just coincidence.  The cloth board is nice, though it sometimes doesn’t lie as flat as a traditional folding cardboard piece would.    

For a nice tight 2 player card game, The Yellow House delivers in spades (or four different colors at least).  You can play this game with a friend through a Starry Night or maybe while you eat potatoes.

Thoughts from other Opinionated Gamers

Alison Brennan: A 2p shedding game. There are 4 suits of 7 numberless cards and, with only a few cards missing, you know your opponent’s hand is pretty much the mirror of your own. If you play a colour that’s a higher rank than the previously played colour, you only get to play one card. But if you play a lower rank, you have to play enough cards to move it up the ranking track to be higher. And given it’s a shedding game, they’re crux moves. We found you need to formulate your going-out strategy from quite a long way out so there’s mucho look-ahead planning. Which is engaging but … after my first game I felt I’d played the same game 5 times (it went the full 5 rounds) and did I need to play more than that?

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it!
• I like it. Dale Y
• Neutral. Alison, Mark Jackson
• Not for me…