Yellow & Yangtze Review - with Tom Vasel

[@GrailGames]

"It's delicious stress" :D Thanks so so much for playing Y&Y, Tom!!

[@heathcliff1801]

Just a quick clarification on one rule: you don’t need to discard two green tiles to establish a pagoda if you just placed the third tile in a triangle. Discarding two green tiles allows you to reestablish a pagoda on a already existing triangle of tiles. This game is awesome! I have both and love them both and will keep both, but I see this one coming much more often to the table!

[@StuBarfoot]

I'm trying to learn the digital version at the moment and came to the comments at 6:45 as that's not how the digital version operates. Thanks for the correction!

[@mrspank35]

A pagoda can be created when a third tile of a color is played to create a group of three. Discarding two green tiles to get a pagoda is optional later if a previous pagoda was destroyed, there are three tiles grouped without a pagoda, etc.

[@markusschmidt9260]

What would be interesting to know: if you own T&E, do you "need" Y&Y? Also, if you don't have any and just want to pick one, which one would be to recommend? How different do they feel because of the hex tiles? This review seemed to be valid for the old game as well, based on what Tom mentioned in other videos.

[@TylerDeLisle]

T&E is a top 3 game for me. Y&Y surprised me by feeling so very different in feel. Not even because of the Hex vs Square tiles but more the group-war system, the slower point grab, and the alternate abilities of tiles. I think Y&Y is the better choice if you have the type of gaming life where you are constantly playing games with different players, it's less punishing and more intuitive. I suspect that T&E would still be the better game if you're going to play dozens of times within the same group of 4 players... but I'm not even positive, Y&Y has much more depth than I thought.

[@markusschmidt9260]

I didn't notice, when I wrote this, that Tom did cover the question in the other video. But thank you very much for your insight. Great to have it, since you seem a be a very profound player of T&E.

[@deeza85za]

Either I’m color blind or those blue leaders do not look blue. Can anyone confirm?

[@jamesolney3456]

They’re very blue

[@KArmstrong83]

Thanks for the review.

[@robertdullnig3625]

On components, my pagodas have chipped a bit; I've taken to storing them upside down separately padded by bags of other components in the box.

[@ondrapolak5055]

"Blue Leader" "Red Leader" ... sounds like a Star Wars game.

[@e7diablo]

Is it just me or did this make NO sense

[@RaduStanculescu]

Some of the rules weren't clear, but overall it's pretty similar to T&E. Have you played that one?

[@TylerDeLisle]

Hah, if you haven't played Tigres & Euphrates then it's probably not just you. Both games are really hard to grasp from a rules explanation.

[@TylerDeLisle]

Lol, just watched his rules explanation, Tom's speed-rules to give an overview of a game don't work too well here, think you'd only remotely follow that if you were familiar with the previous game. This is not an easy game to teach though, and they really dropped the ball by not providing player aids.

[@RaduStanculescu]

Oh, I definitely wouldn't consider this a rules explanation, and I think Tom's pretty upfront that his videos aren't really that. :)

[@browncoat2814]

So why does he spend so much time on it then?

[@michaelgrayer7351]

I'm sure this video will make sense if I watch it after I've played the game. At the moment though... um... anyone for Cones of Dunshire?

[@wetwillyccma]

O.k. Tom you got me confused totally. Did not sell me on it. Sounds interesting but I will pass.

[@jeremyoverton7047]

wetwillyccma T&E (or Y&Y) is a brilliant game and very different to anything else out there. It’s not that complicated once you play a few turns, but it’s so unique that it seems confusing at first. I recommend that everyone play T&E or Y&Y once, as I didn’t think I would like it, but found it enthralling.

[@felixfryxell7529]

I don't think the scoring system is unique at all. It's just a simple set collection (1VP for a set of each color) explained in a quirky way (for the sake of playability, I guess).

[@ntompkins]

Wow, I never thought about it this way.... :/

[@TheMrE]

I like it, i think the set collection scoring is simpler to explain. However, tie breakers are not as elegantly described.

[@markusschmidt9260]

Not sure, if Set Collection was so common in '97 like nowadays. But also, most SC games let you decide to work on different types of sets. (One of each, multiples of ones, sometimes depending on the individual sets.) So I think, this "Knizia scoring" is quite special for the doctor.

[@TylerDeLisle]

He said it wasn't unique anymore today, but was pretty ground breaking at the time of the original. Tigris & Euphrates is over 20 years old. An interesting way to look at it though, I might try teaching it that way, seems like it would be easier to grasp. Had a new player get confused with how the wild cubes worked thinking that he could score them all as his lowest color.

[@nathannemeth4094]

A war tiling laying abstract euro? No thanks.

[@egoszmotyike]

This game looks awful, how can you say it looks better then T&E? I have the FFG version of T&E and that looks waaaaay better than this, but anyway I should give this a try because I like T&E very much

[@smoothcriminal28]

Levente Domonkos it doesnt look that bad. But yes, the FFG version of Tigris looks vastly superior.

[@egoszmotyike]

don't get me wrong I usually adore Vincent Durtait's artwork I bought Lewis & Clark and Discoveries only because of the artwork, but this game is disturbingly bad looking for me apart from the box art

[@ntompkins]

I think old-school T&E players will prefer the wooden cubes, leader tokens, and monuments. There was a lot of backlash to the updates of these components with the FFG version. So they were definitely playing to that nostalgia with these components.

[@smoothcriminal28]

Nathan Tompkins That makes sense. I’ve just finished watching the whole video along with his comparison video and I gotta say... mechanically, I prefer this one. I love the new color giving one the chance to pick from the face up tiles and that War pts have been decreased to create more awareness for maintaining control of the structures. My only concern is the 2p game. This Map seems more open. Can anyone elaborate on this concern?

[@ntompkins]

Hmm, well I'm basically not at all interested in picking this up. I've been playing T&E for almost 3 years now (coincidentally around when the FFG version came out) and my issue is not so much "Is the refined update an improvement?" vs "You can't improve on a classic", but just that regardless of which one is better, I still love T&E and feel like I'm still just getting started cracking the nut of what it has to offer. So yes, though it is surely a classic, I can't say for sure if it can be improved on or not, and the bottom line is that I don't feel like I need to replace or add to it in my collection. Still, I have no doubt this is a perfectly excellent game that could bring many more gamers into the wonder that is T&E, simply by virtue of being a new release, along with the ever-so-slightly modernized mechanics.

[@republikadugave420]

WTF did i just watch??? Whaaaaaat???

[@JosephFlemming]

just as confusing and complicated as the original. not my style of game lol