Perhaps it’s just the people I game with but if there’s an opportunity to descend into schoolboy humor we will. Repeatedly. Yedo was a target rich environment for just this, you’ll know why when we play it at the next Knavecon. Not since Serenissima have we sank so deep in the double entendres
Yedo is a similar beast to lords of water deep with a few subtle differences. The game sees you in ancient China trying to complete a variety of missions and score more prestige points than your opponents.
There are two phases to each of the eleven turns. The first is a bidding phase where you try and score various resources like weapons, geshias (highly flammable), extra rooms for your house, extra agents , missions, bonus and intrigue cards. There’s plenty of opportunities to force bids up and generally be a complete dick/front bum
The second phase sees you placing agents on the board in six different patrolled sectors to gather pretty much the same resources as you tried for in the bidding phase.
Missions require you to have agents in the right sector of the city and whatever resources are needed be it different weapons, money, blessings,geshias and so on. Missions come in four difficulties from handy green ones that give very little prestige to humdingers of black missions that require a shit ton of resources but reap big rewards.
Intrigue cards allow you to mess up your opponents plans in a limited way. Bonus cards give you bonuses for completing certain missions types, or having this that or the other at the end of the game.
There’s nothing particularly magical or unexpected in the game but it’s a good solid fun game. It’s a good length (see, schoolboy humor), the artwork is good, the theme is lovely, it’s competitive and close run. Is it better than Lords of Waterdeep? I’m not going to go there it’s apples and oranges.
I’m eager to play this again. There’s a good bit to it. As I said it’s going to be at the next Knavecon and I predict it will be a big hit
More of this sort of thing I say
Huzzah!
Vic
Ahem, Yedo is based in medieval Japan, not ancient China….. prepare for the torrent of correcting comments in Facebook!