Intro to Yokohama: Strategic Trade & Tactics in the Meiji Era!
🏣Yokohama is a beloved mid-weight euro with a really cool action selection mechanism. The biggest issue with the game is how it went out of print for a while, but luckily Synapses Games came to the rescue with an amazing new edition! 😊 The game is set in the Meiji era of Yokohama, a harbor city that is becoming a major trading hub. Players are merchants trying to become famous by running the most successful export company. 💴
The game board is made up of modular city tiles in a pyramid shape, with each tile depicting a specific action. On your turn you can choose to either place 3 assistant meeples on 3 different tiles, or 2 meeples on a single tile. Then you have to move your president meeple and activate the destination tile’s action. This is beautifully nuanced! 🥰
The more of your pieces you have on the target tile, the stronger your action will be - you have to take back the meeples afterwards however. 🧐 To make things interesting, the President can only move along tiles with your assistants, plus rival presidents block their tiles. ☝️So you really have to plan in advance for things, as you usually cannot immediately get what you want.
If you manage to do a 5-power action, you can get a bonus tile from the city tile if one is still there, and 4+ power lets you place down a building. 🏠 These further increase your power for future turns and reward you with bonuses. The fun comes from managing all of this at an optimal pace! 🙃 You have to place down assistants in advance to grow action power and make a route for the president while making sure you keep unlocking new pieces in the flow.
Some tiles give you money, resources, or order cards which are needed to fulfill contracts. The church and customs house let you claim important spots for scoring. You can also research new technologies that have a big impact on your strategy. 👍
💭As you start playing for the first time it’s hard to grasp what you need to do, but as you get in the flow it opens up and is really fun. You always have some short and long term goals to work towards. Replayability is off the charts with everything being randomly set up!
