Yotei

• Designer: Huy Pham
• Publisher: Mighty Boards
• Players: 2-4
• Age: 8+
• Time: 30-60 minutes
• Kickstarter link: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mightyboards/yotei 
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

Create the most charming town at the foot of Mt Yotei, also known as Ezo Fuji, located in Hokkaido Japan

• ︎ Expand your land with limited manpower, win bids using potatoes, and develop your town.
• ︎ There are multiple paths to victory. The person who maximizes the charm of their town and collects the most “Charm Points” wins!

Set in Niseko, a breathtaking region on Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido, this board game brings the local scenery, people, and wildlife to life. We’ve paid special attention to environmental sustainability by using Hokkaido-sourced wood for the tokens, while the artwork—created by a talented Japanese illustrator—is based on real people, landscapes, and events from the community.

In this game, you’ll craft the most enchanting Hokkaido town. Your currency? Potatoes. Bid with them, unearth more when you run short, and welcome the delights of the north: savory ramen, melt-in-your-mouth wagyu, delicate sushi; wild trout, mighty Ezo-bears, curious red foxes; and iconic developments from snowy ski resorts to serene hot-spring villages. With evolving tactics each round, the game stays fresh and captivating from start to finish.

To set up, each player gets a screen and hides 5 potatoes behind it as well as some character tokens.  The display is made up – there are 3 different decks, and you place 5 Forest cards, 4 Potato cards and 3 Vending Machine cards in the display.  The cards come in 3 tiers – and in general you need the lower tier cards to work your way up to the more powerful higher tier cards.  The fourth and final deck of Mystery cards is placed nearby, but you don’t need them quite yet.   The bidding boxes are also placed nearby.

These cards have a potato cost in the lower left, and a set of conditions needed to acquire it in the lower right (those elements are themselves found in the upper left).   The draw decks are placed next to their respective rows.  

The game is played over several rounds – each with a Placement Phase followed by a Harvest Phase.  In the Placement phase, players take turn in order to place one of their character tokens on a card (each card can only have one Character on it):

• Place on a Face Up card – when you place on a regular card, you also place the needed potatoes on the card.  You do not need to meet the prerequisites now. You can also place on a bidding card, by putting any number of potatoes into a bidding box.  Any number of players can bid on this card.
• Turn a card face down and place on it – the backside of most cards do not require any prerequisites to collect them (but they are also generally not as strong).  If you flip a card over, you’re committing to taking this back side of the card.
• Place on the top of a draw pile – you also commit to taking the facedown side of the card

In the Harvest Phase, each player takes back their Character Tokens (in the order of their choice) and resolves the cards at that time.  If they try to take a card that has prerequisites; you check at that moment whether you can collect the card or not.  Players are even allowed to take back Character cards out of turn in order to meet the conditions.  Any potatoes placed on the card are discarded (they are spent to get the card).  If the player cannot meet the conditions for the card, they simply take back their character and potatoes.

  If a bidding card is to be resolved, all players who bid prove they have met the conditions to collect it – and the player with the highest bid gets the card.  If the card you took has a mystery card reward in the upper right, you draw a card from the mystery deck.  You can have up to 3 at a time, and you can always sell them back for potatoes.  Or you can use the card for its one time unique ability.

When all players have Harvested, the phase ends. Check to see if the Game End condition is met – that is when one or more players has 2 Star Symbols on their cards (These are found on the Tier III cards).  If so, go to final scoring.  If not, refill the holes in the display, pass the start marker and play another round.

Final Scoring – Players tally the Charm Points in their area (the Pink Hearts) and also counts every 3 Potatoes left over as a Charm point. The player with the most Charm Points wins! Ties broken in favor of the player with the most potatoes.

My thoughts on the game

Yotei is a game that is coming to crowd funding this month, launching on April 14.  Note that all the pictures here are from a prototype, and of course, everything could change during the campaign and afterwards.

The game feels like a little engine builder where you spend the early part of the game building up your infrastructure – getting the right assortment of elements on your cards and, of course, managing your potato supply.  Potatoes are everything in the game – they are your currency to buy things, they are your auction bids, and they score points.  You need to have a steady stream of potatoes

There is an interesting bit of anticipation here, as you often have to select cards before you’re entirely sure that 1) you can use the card and 2) you can afford the card.   The game does give you a nice escape hatch in that you can always turn the card over (or draw a facedown card from the deck) – so you never fully waste a turn.  But, of course, it is sometimes a less efficient use of a turn if you cannot take the faceup card you want and have to take the facedown consolation prize.

At the start, everyone can pretty much operate in their own world – there are enough options for everyone to get a card they can use.  Obviously, even more room at lower player counts – because the tableau of cards available doesn’t change that much for differing player counts.  

However, later in the game, there will be a bit more competition for cards.  You’ll be able to look around and see what sorts of plans everyone else has.  Maybe you’re fighting for the same card.  Or maybe amongst equal cards (for you), you might take a card which you figure someone else wants more than the other.

Near the end game, you’ll definitely have to watch the cards in the market as the game end is triggered when someone has two cards with stars on them.  So, once the first one is obtained, the game is at risk of ending before you want that to happen.  You’ll have to plan accordingly to get your endgame in motion…

Thus far, Yotei has been a really intriguing game that I’m fairly sure I need to play more to grasp the subtleties of play.  There is a lot of planning that I still have to get comfortable with – the game always asks you to play for the future, and I have not yet mastered the ability to predict how my tableau will look.  We’ll keep playing this game through the summer, and I look forward to the full version after the crowdfunding campaign is complete and delivered.

Until your next appointment,

The Gaming Doctor

Kickstarter link: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mightyboards/yotei