{"id":3674,"date":"2006-11-25T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2006-11-25T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/2006\/11\/25\/yspahan\/"},"modified":"2006-11-25T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2006-11-25T11:00:00","slug":"yspahan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/2006\/11\/25\/yspahan\/","title":{"rendered":"Yspahan"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yspahan<\/a><\/h2>\n

reviewed by Peter Riedlberger<\/p>\n

“Yspahan” is a German-style board game produced by Ystari. This may already vouchsafe
\nfor its quality since Ystari delivered only excellent games so far. Fortunately,
\n“Yspahan” is no exception to this rule.<\/p>\n

As most full-blown board games, “Yspahan” is about victory points. How do you get
\nthem? Those numerous, little coloured wooden cubes and the game board, which features a city map
\nlayout, might suggest a majority mechanism like we had so often since “El Grande” times –
\nbut far from it.<\/p>\n

The city is divided into four quarters, and those quarters again in neighbourhoods. After seven
\nturns (“a week”), victory points are scored for every completed neighbourhood. Once you
\nstart a neighbourhood (i.e. you put the first cube into a house of a neighbourhood in a quarter),
\nno other player is allowed to put their cubes into houses of this particular neighbourhood. So, the
\nchallenge is not to get more houses than other players, but to complete the neighbourhood before
\nscoring takes place.<\/p>\n

How do you get your cubes into the city? This takes us to the most interesting novelty of
\n“Yspahan”, the dice board. At the start of each turn, the starting player rolls 9 dice.
\nHe groups them according to the number they show, and accordingly, he ends up with 1-6 different
\ngroups.<\/p>\n

First, all dice showing the lowest number are placed onto the first spot. Then, all dice showing
\nthe highest number are put onto the last spot. Those two spots represent camels and money,
\nrespectively. Within the framework of this game, think of camels just as another currency, just as
\nuseful as money. Some things are paid with camels, others with gold, a few require both.<\/p>\n

Let’s image that there were two 1s and three 6s. The first player could now choose either to
\ntake two camels, or three coins. Got the idea?<\/p>\n

However, there are of course six different spots, and the four others represent the four
\nquarters. Every die on such a spot means you may place one cube into the respective quarter.<\/p>\n

Once a player chooses an action, he takes all the dice from the spot he chose. The next player
\nmust do something different. Therefore, in each turn, only one player may put cubes in any one
\nquarter. This is exactly why it may get difficult to get your neighbourhood full before scoring
\nday.<\/p>\n

\"board\"\/<\/p>\n

There is another, statistical challenge. Rolling six dice, one usually does not end up with
\nevery number from 1 to 6 in the result, meaning that one or more quarters will not be accessible
\n(and those quarters are the ones, which offer the most victories points, of course). The starting
\nplayer can do something about it: Play up to 3 coins, and add up to 3 dice. Those dice are only
\nuseable for him, and they often tip the scale and make all neighbourhoods available.<\/p>\n

My review is already getting long, and I’ve only explained a mere third of game play.
\nI’ll try to catch up. Instead of taking the coins\/camels associated with a spot, or placing the
\ncubes, a player may always choose one of two other actions: Taking a special card (well, the usual
\nstuff: “free camels”, “change camels and coins as you like”, “get victory
\npoints for coins\/camels” etc.) or moving the supervisor.<\/p>\n

The supervisor is a token you move on the game board. The cube in the house in front of which
\nthe supervisor stops gets kicked out and is put on the caravan. Sounds pretty aggressive, huh? In
\nfact, it’s not. The caravan is another game mechanism for earning victory points but it works
\nobviously according to different rules. This means you almost always kick out your own cubes, not
\nthose of your fellow players.<\/p>\n

\"board\"\/There is a third and last way to earn victory points: At the end of each of their individual
\nturns, players may buy developments (e.g. “every time you collect camels, you get one
\nadditional camels”, “every time you put a cube in the caravan, you get a card for
\nfree” or “every time you score for neighbourhoods, get an additional 2 VPs for each
\ncompleted neighbourhood”). These developments do not only offer those special powers but add
\nsome VP as well.<\/p>\n

The most important strategy hint is that you need to buy those developments that match your
\nstrategy. If you want to win by neighbourhood majorities, go for “place one extra cube every
\ntime you place cubes” and “get 2 VPs more when scoring”. For caravan gaming, you
\nneed “move the supervisor up to three places for free” and “get a free card every
\ntime you send a cube to the caravan”.<\/p>\n

This is, basically, the rule set of “Yspahan”. It allows for carefully planning
\ndifferent strategies. Yet at the same time, a player whose turn it is does not have an overwhelming
\nnumber of choices. Accordingly, “Yspahan” can be played with an appropriate amount of
\ntime, and even deep thinking players will not annoy their fellow players for too long while making
\ntheir choices.<\/p>\n

“Yspahan” should be as enjoyable to casual gamers as it is to real buffs. In my eyes
\nit is one of the best games of the 2006 vintage.<\/p>\n

G\u00fcnther provides more information for finding a good strategy here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yspahan reviewed by Peter Riedlberger “Yspahan” is a German-style board game produced by Ystari. This may already vouchsafe for its quality since Ystari delivered only excellent games so far. Fortunately, “Yspahan” is no exception to this rule. As most full-blown board games, “Yspahan” is about victory points. How do you get them? Those numerous, little … Yspahan<\/span> weiterlesen →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3674","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spieleabende"],"views":16,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3674","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3674"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3674\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.westpark-gamers.de\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}