Sunday 26 May 2013

One of the Most Thematic Games Ever

This article is going to be more of a review of a game that I really, really like. It is a  game which I think is at the top of the pile for me not only because of the rules it uses as part of its experience, but mostly because of the wonderful, wonderful immersive theme that it brings to the table. This article is meant to be an attempt to get readers to understand the way that my mind works in relation to games and the way that I like to interact with rules and theme in order to bring me enjoyment. Now, I don't expect for everyone that reads it to completely agree with me: I would actually be shocked if everyone tended to agree with everything I say, but what I do hope to do is make you think about the subject of theme (which I already touched on before) in a slightly different way as you read about the two games that I will review in this article.

So, if the first thing you thought upon reading the title of the article was 'Vlaada', well, you might be surprised that this article will not review a single Vlaada game. Let me get something straight: overall I think that Vlaada's game are a wonderful fusion of rules and theme that is pretty unprecedented in most other games.

Dungeon Lords does in some way make you think like a dungeon keeper and every little rule has a particular thematic explanation to support it (although I have spoken to people that don't think it's enough like building a dungeon because it's not enough like D&D/Descent/etc: you can't please everyone).

Dungeon Petz feels like managing chaotic pets that might not do what you want them to do at any given time. Space Alert feels like you are in a rapidly disintegrating spaceship attacked from all sides. Galaxy Trucker feels like you are in a rapidly disintegrating spaceship attacked from all sides.

Through the Ages feels exactly like the games of Civilization that you play on the computer, even though the mechanisms are completely different and there isn't even a map. Bunny Bunny Moose Moose makes you feel like you are a complete idiot. All of them wonderful games (well, I don't know about the last one) and all of them perfectly suited to their theme. Unfortunately, I am not going to talk about any of those games, as appropriate as they might be.to this particular topic. If I mentioned any of those, the connection to theme would be too easy to explain. I want a challenge.

The game I want to review in this article is going to be Tigris & Euphrates. Merely by reading that, some readers might have punched their screen in disgust. 'A Reiner Knizia game being called thematic? You have gone too far Tekopo, TOO FAR!'. If you bear with me though, I hope to explain some of the thought processes that have me reached the conclusion that this is possibly one of the most thematic games available, although it hides it's thematic roots very well.

First of all, a brief explanation of the game for those that haven't had a chance to try what is rightly called Knizia's masterpiece. Tigris & Euphrates is a game based on Mesopotamia, the land of the two rivers: each player is in control of a dynasty within the region, with each player have 4 different kinds of leader (unlike most games, it is symbols that denote one player from the other rather than colours). Scoring is based on 4 different colours, with the winner being decided by who has the most in the colour that they have fewest points in (so, if your distribution is 4-5-6-6, your score would be 4). You gain points by having your leaders on the board and either expanding your own kingdoms or conquering other kingdoms: one novel feature of the game is that players don't exclusively own each kingdom, with shared ownership being possible as long as your leaders are a different colour from another player's. All expansion and conquest is done through the laying of tiles on the board. There are a few further features in the game (monuments, internal conflict as opposed to external conflicts, how combat works etc) but this small explanation has gone far enough, considering the aim was to give a brief overview of the game.

Reading the above, you might think that there isn't a lot of theme present: you play tiles on a board and (a bit like Acquire, if two kingdoms touch there is a conflict. How can laying down a tile possibly be compared to actually waging war or taking over a kingdom diplomatically? You might think that there is too much detach from playing the tiles and actually doing the actions that a ruler in those times would do. You might think that having to place leaders on the board and them taking up a space is way too abstract and gamey. And you would be right. If you look at Tigris & Euphrates at that level, the themacity of the game is not present, but the thing about Tigris & Euphrates is that it's not attempting to portray the world at such nitty-gritty level, but actually at a much higher, more simulation-like level. And it's at that level that the theme really starts to kick in and you appreciate the game as more than a simple Euro in which you want to get the highest score possible.

I was able to appreciate this level after I ran one of my Tigris and Euphrates game on a forum. By the end of the game, I had collected all of the updates, turn by turn, each showing the two actions that each player had chosen on each of their turns. For fun, I decided to turn all those pictures into an animated GIF in order to see the progression of the board. What I saw astounded me. The board developed in an almost organic way, each tile-placement almost like a shared decision by the players. You could see kingdoms grow, collide, collapse and then be reformed. Once mighty kingdoms would leave a few lonely tiles on the board (I've forgotten to mention that tiles can be removed from the board if you lose a fight), remnants of a once mighty civilisation that was now no more, lying in the dust Ozymandias-style. Even those remnants would eventually be scooped up by the next big empire. Large empires that had made too many monuments would be greedily attacked by their neighbours and quickly taken apart. Small kingdoms that hadn't had space or time to expand would be attacked by their larger neighbours, only for those neighbours to be destroyed from within either by internal strife or disasters (a type of tile that a player can play in order to create a dead-zone that doesn't count as any tile). Singularly, each placement of the tiles did not seem to drive the narrative necessary in order to have a thematic game, but taken in aggregate all the tile placements by all the players created a shared narrative that seemed to capture the essence of the era much more powerfully than many wargames I have played.

Upon noticing the above, the level of detail present in the game in order to adhere to theme seemed to increase, in my eyes: farms (as represented by blue tiles) can only be placed on river tiles, representing the need for flood-waters to fertilise the soil. The setting up of trade links from one place to another is also represented through the use of treasures. Internal strife is based mostly on religion (a powerful force during those times) while external strife is fought with the relevant colour/theme, be it religious power, farmyards, markets or even armies. It doesn't take long to realise that the placing of each tile doesn't always represent the placing of actual buildings/structures, but also the spread of influence from your kingdom.

Apart from this high-level theme, there is also a very compelling game underneath: a game about being cut-throat, striking when you are strong and trying to shore up your defences when you are weak. The interaction between players is cut-throat, with anyone attempting too much to keep to themselves likely to be beset from all sides if they aren't careful defending their kingdoms. The shared kingdoms can also make it difficult to expand your kingdom without also helping other people. The fact that you are scored on your lowest points in one of the four categories means that you can't just concentrate on a single strategy to win: you have to be flexible. The overall package of the rules really works to give a fulfilling, tactical experience.

In terms of negatives, the game is very much a Euro, much like most, if not all, Reiner Knizia's games. As much as I attempt to show that it has a wonderful sense of theme above, die-hard ameritrash players might find it difficult to find the theme within this game as I described it (although largely this is one of the reasons why I decided to write this review). When I say to people that I think that Tigris & Euphrates is thematic, many times they think I am joking, even when I attempt to explain the thought processes behind this analysis. The main issue is that Tigris is not traditionally thematic: it doesn't match with our commonly held assumptions of how a thematic game should feel and look: it looks like a Euro game with it's different colored cubes and tiles. Other issues present within the game is that, for a Euro, luck can play slightly too much of an element: it is perfectly possible to end up without any tiles in a colour you require and although you can re-draw as an action, if you fail to re-draw what you want, you are still in the same place but now missing an action. The game can also snowball if the players aren't careful, but usually aggressive play can prevent this. If players aren't aggressive enough, though, the game can end up being about who gets the luckiest with the tiles but hopefully as players get more confident they should quickly realise that sometimes it's best to be aggressive.

As I mentioned earlier, I don't really expect everyone to agree with my analysis of the game above and I would actually be interested in hearing anyone that disagrees with the points above. I hope, though, that this piece does showcase slightly better the way that my mind works and some of the reasons why I would give Tigris & Euphrates a very well deserved 5 angry scowling King Philips out of 5.

Sunday 19 May 2013

Randomness

And by that, I don't mind Monkey Cheese kind of stuff, just in order to clarify things from the get go. Now, a lot of people might have realised that randomness is not something I particularly enjoy within a game, but I don't think that statement is actually correct: randomness can be an important, even crucial element within games and without it many games that I play and enjoy today would not be anywhere near as enjoyable as they are. The crucial element is that randomness needs to be managed through the proper construction of rules in order to allow it to supplement the game rather than completely supplant every aspect of the game. It's a difficult balance to find and there are many, many games out there that instead of working out this balance just replace every mechanical resolution within the game with randomness since they are unable (or unwilling) to find alternatives. One example that nowadays I find almost inexcusable is the use of X+ to hit systems (i.e. systems in which you need to roll a certain number or above in order to perform an action/hit a monster/etc). We have been using such combat resolutions systems for a very long time now and superficially they are a very easy way to work out combat resolution. Unfortunately, the modularity of this  system is also it's downfall: although it can be used in a variety of different games, games that have this system will largely feel homogenous as well as being mechanically unexciting. To me, it's the hallmark of a designer that had a great idea for his game, mostly in terms of the setting, but didn't really have the knowledge or experience to develop a resolution mechanism unique to his system.

Departing a little bit from my rant against X+ to hit systems, let's first of all understood why randomness is included within games in the first place. Randomness, for example, affects drastically the replay-ability of games. If we think of a single board game session as an exercise in which we have a defined start state and end at a end state that is decided by the events throughout the game, it is clear that if a game always ends at an end state very similar from session to session, the replayability will be low. If one particular strategy is overwhelmingly more powerful to the extent that the player that does that strategy will always win, then it is likely that players will soon stop playing the game since it has simply become an attempt to reach that premium strategy and nothing else. There are some badly designed euro games that fall precisely within this trap. It is clear, then, that in order to be successful a game requires a way in order to make it possible to reach diverse end states, all of which are possible to achieve while playing the game. The two main ways to diversify the end state have usually an element of either of the following (there are possibly more elements but these seem to be the most prevalent to me):

The first element is the unpredictability of the actions of other players. This element is usually strongest in games that have little randomness, like for example worker placement games like Caylus or Agricola. Political manipulation games also feature this element strongly, although the unpredictability can be sometimes manipulated by cutting a deal that is mutually beneficial to both players (of recent games that I've played, Tammany Hall features this element). Unpredictability can be used as a replacement for randomness, especially within games in which there is an antagonistic selection of resources/worker spaces/etc.

The other element is of course randomness. Randomness helps to diversify the end state of games in several ways, with the most important being the inability to be sure if you can fulfill an action or not (where I define stuff like hitting a monster for damage as also being an action). Unlike the former element, where you might be unable to perform a desired action due to the actions of others, with this element you are unable to perform actions due to random chance of not being able to perform them. Every roll of the dice or draw of the card branches the path towards the possible end state, because if you don't deal with the monster THIS turn you will need to plan to deal with him the next!

It is important to note that in order to make a game truly re-playable and enjoyable through many, many games, a mixture of the two elements above is important and to lean too much towards one side can actually be detrimental (although not all of the times). A game which entirely relies on the first element might find it's re-play value curtailed after a group that has been playing it develops too much of a meta. I define meta here as an almost group-think element that can be constructed within groups after repeated plays in which the group accepts (correctly or incorrectly, it does not actually matter which) that there is only a particular way to play the game. Some of the strongest examples of this I've found within 18XX games, games are almost devoid of randomness entirely except for the starting order and thus rely on player unpredictability in order to remain interesting in subsequent plays. There are many 18XX games in which my group has developed an Accepted Method of Winning, usually to the detriment of our playing experience, since the sessions spent playing that particular version of 18XX homogenize into one, with the only memorable games being the ones in which a new strategy manages to break the meta.

On the other hand, games can stray too far into using randomness as a crutch in order to boost the re-play value of a game. If a game is too random, players can feel like choices within the game become meaningless since even playing the game at the peak of your abilities can lead you to be last. It's at this point that an important distinction needs to be made: is the game being played PURELY for the experience (as all games are meant to impart a certain experience to the player) or are they being played in order to test the strategy//intelligence/skill of the player?

Let's note that neither of the objectives outlined above are necessarily wrong or bad. Board games don't necessarily need to provide a challenge or be tactically interesting in order to fulfill their purpose as entertainment (although for some that will be an important aspect of playing games, as it is usually for me). What is important is that the designer of the game has internalized this choice and thus bases his design decisions on what he wants the game to achieve. I've seen plenty of games on, for example, Kickstarter which purport to be tactical, strategical, skillful and then when you actually look at the rules for the game in question, it's almost entirely luck based. It's the divergence from the purported objectives of the design and the actual outcomes of the mechanistic rules of a game that can cause a game to ultimately feel unrewarding.
On the other hand, I usually find that games that are up-front about being experience generators are more successful in their design. Tales of the Arabian Nights is not the greatest of games but I find that it hits its intended function perfectly: although the game features a win condition, it is a second thought compared to the experience and stories generated by the game (and which is why I was shocked when someone suggested skipping the text when I played the last game of this, it seemed so counter-intuitive to the objectives of the game). This is also one of the reasons why a simple house rule to Arkham Horror (having someone else read cards to you) can make the game much more of an experience simulator. It is important to note, however, that in the end all games are intended to provide experiences of some sort: what is important to note is if there are other aspects to the game apart from the experience by itself.

Going back to ways in which randomness manifests itself, it might have been apparent from previous posts that I have made that I have a strong interest in wargames. Usually a strong interest in Euros seems to preclude an interest in wargames since the latter are so random and in most cases you might be right. My common way to answer this dichotomy is to point out that wargames are essentially games in which the aim is to always stack the odds within your favour: this can be done by ensuring that your attacks are likely to succeed while forcing your opponent to make though decisions that might potentially backfire if they go wrong. Although this is true in most games, within wargames this aspect tends to be more organic due to the number of individual units in question and the range of actions that each of these units can take. Being a wargame, however, is not enough: the system behind the wargame is also important. As much as I like games like Here I Stand, I absolutely detest the combat resolution present within the game, which is just a simple X+ to hit with very, very limited modifiers. Although stacking the odds in this system is important, the outcome can be wildly unpredictable that it almost becomes meaningless. Better systems usually involve Combat Resolution Tables, which in Paths of Glory, for example, attempt to reduce all possible factors within combat to a single dice-roll. You may ask how this changes probabilities in comparison to multiple dice rolls, but since the result of the dice is not binary (hit or miss) and instead a table is needed to look up the result of the dice roll , it is possible to have a much more finite control over the probabilities within your game. A smaller range of possible values will make your game less luck-based: differences in the ranges between small and large formations might make it more or less possible for a small formation to beat a large one: a CRT system allows a developer a much better control of how much the designer wants to make the uncertainty in dice rolls a part of his game.

It's this control over probabilities that I find lacking in most systems that use X+ to hit: there's no way to be able to manipulate the probabilities of dice to your advantage. If the ways are small and insignificant then largely the player's actual actions are going to have a very small impact on the game, with the result instead being decided by how lucky/unlucky a player is.

Although largely I have talked only about dice randomness, it is also important to speak briefly about card randomness. I usually prefer the use of cards over the use of dice in determining randomness: one of my preferred ways involves the need to shuffle decks or not, an element used to great effect by deck building games especially. A great example of this that I'm very familiar with is Card Driven Strategy games: there are many different designs within this genre of wargames but usually the ones that I find more fulfilling are the ones in which several reshuffles of the deck are necessary, which brings in elements of deck management to the game as you want to get enemy events out of the deck in order to stack the deck in your favour. On the other hand, decks that do not get reshuffled tend to be more random in terms of what cards affect the game: a great example of this is For the People, an otherwise excellent CDG that slightly suffers from the fact that you only cycle through the even deck once. Another example of card randomness is when cards are used as random events: I have already gone through this in my review of Yedo when comparing the game to Dungeon Lords. Both games use random events but a measure of forewarning in Dungeon Lords allows the player to have a chance to change his plans, something that in my opinion ultimately enhances the gaming experience.

One important positive aspect of randomness is that it can level the playing field:: it allows inexperienced players to play with experienced players at a level field that ensure that the game remains competitive throughout. I think this is an important aspect of randomness but I find that the length of the game can be equally important: if a game lasts too long and is too random, no matter how level the playing field is, it's gonna be unrewarding even for newbies, especially if early luck snowballs into ultimately winning the game. I find that shorter games do not tend to have as much of a problem with needing to limit too much randomness because the game is over quickly enough to prevent people from dwelling too long about having lost due to random luck.

To end an article that has been going on for far, far too long, I think randomness is an important aspect of game design, but it does need to be tempered in order to prevent it being the only memorable thing about the  mechanics of your game. It is still helpful to point out, however, that like in all things, a degree of balance is important: take, for example, Agricola. It's possible to say that the success of this design is partially due to the occupation/minor improvement cards, which can add some variety to the game and can even change the dynamic of a session completely depending on which decks are chosen. Randomness, unlike what some of the more die-hard euro fans suggest, is not something that needs to be removed: it's something that needs to be managed.

Thursday 16 May 2013

Yedo: Or, the Allure of Confirmation Bias and the Dangers of First Play

I played Yedo recently and I had a pretty bad time, even though I earnestly said at the end of the game that I had liked it. First of all, it is important to note something: it is very easy to categorize games in terms of how well we play them in our very first outing. I have fallen into a tendency to be much more favourable of games in which I won in my first outing as opposed to being beaten badly, but in recent years I have attempted to reach a more objective viewpoint on this matter. I am starting to actually view games in which I do badly more favourably, since it means that they have more strategic depth than it is at first apparent to me and therefore would eventually be much more fulfilling. The problem seemed to be, however, that my first experience of Yedo was not only mired by the fact that I had played badly and hadn't understood the strategy of the game, but also because a terrible string of unavoidable bad luck had pretty much put me out of the running in the mid-game and only a subsequent string of good luck managed to keep me in the running at all. My trained instinct, however, was not to blame the game but my own mismanagement of the resources I had available to me: the game was, after all, a worker placement game and therefore, from my own prior experience with the genre, I was conditioned to think that any troubles that I had throughout the game was of my own making. After all, there are plenty of situations in Dungeon Lords in which a random event seems to be aimed specifically at screwing your own personal strategy (since I usually go for a monster heavy strategy, the random event in this day is Monster Strike, which is an extra mini-payday).

I therefore filed Yedo, after that first play, in the mental category of "bad experience due to own mistake, try again while avoiding previous issues". This particular category is one in which I'm not completely sold on the game since the experience was so bad the first time around (I put Agricola in a similar category because of a single dickhead that I played the game with), but that I had to at least give another go since I was sure that the experience was not representative of a standard playthrough of the game.

So, what exactly happened in this first experience that soured me to the game? Well, for a start, let's describe how Yedo plays (for anyone not interested in my 'theory of board gaming reviews' crap, THE REVIEW STARTS HERE). Yedo is a pretty simple worker placement with a separate auction mechanism at the start of each round. The main way to get points within the game is through the use of missions, which are very reminiscent of Lords of Waterdeep although, unlike LoW, the resources you build up in order to accomplish these missions are almost never used up. Instead, in order to accomplish the missions, you are required to have certain weapons (of which there are 8, with you only able to have 4 at the same time), or have Geisha's (which give you additional points but apart from that do nothing else), or use up a blessing or have workers on specific spaces on the board. Missions give you points based on their difficulty (more difficult missions require more resources/workers) and also have bonus objectives that give you even more points/money. The other type of scoring in the game is based on bonus cards that give you points based on having the most of a particular resource.

The auction at the start of each round allows each player to bid on getting a certain type of resource: although some of the resources can be gained in the worker placement part of the game, most items in the auction have a 'draw 3, keep 1' mechanism. After everyone has taken something in the auction, the worker placement part of the game begins, which is fairly standard, each space having only a limited amount of slots. Workers can be placed either to complete missions or do a specific task within the space and usually a space has more than one option available. The placing of workers is done by a changeable turn order (think Caylus), where everyone places all of their workers and then each player resolves one in turn. Additional difficulty is created by the presence of a watchman, who goes around the board capturing any workers present within the area he's currently patrolling: his movement can be affected by several intrigue cards which are also very reminiscent of LoW in terms of how punishing they can be.

Comparisons to LoW present within the game are obvious and it is useful to compare the two games in terms of how they stack up against each other. In terms of theme, I think Yedo has LoW pretty much beat: each mission has an accompanying flavour text which helps the player understand what the mission actually entails: instead of collecting cubes that are meant to be adventurers and somehow mysteriously losing them once the quest is completed, the buying of Geishas, weapons and having your workers in specific places feels more natural and usually the things that you need fit the nature of your mission. LoW does the latter as well, with specific missions requiring specific adventurers but since the adventurers just feel like random Euro resources (white cubes, red cubes, whatever), you never really feel like you are getting into the spirit of the game. 

So, what did I actually stumble against in my first play of Yedo? Well, I got into a situation in which I couldn't get one of the weapons necessary to complete most of my missions and since all the weapons of that type had gone in the discard pile, I would have to wait before I could get what I needed (or get lucky and find the intrigue card that allowed you to look through the weapon discard, but that didn't happen). I had one mission I could complete, but it required two workers to be in two different places. Turn 1, I placed my worker on one of the spaces that I needed, securing the one that everyone had seemed to use more often first, only to get shut out of the second place, meaning that it was impossible for me to complete the mission. No one had ever played on that particular space prior to that round so not knowing the game very well, I didn't prioritize  that space: the other players that had blocked me out hadn't done so intentionally, but had just happened to need that space for one of their own missions during that round. I chalked it up to not knowing the game very well and since I didn't have the money that was part of the reward for completing the mission, I sacrificed a couple of victory points in order to get enough money (going broke in Yedo is very, very crippling). 

The second turn came about and I was set to complete the mission when unexpectedly someone played a card that made the watchman go the other way, preventing me from placing workers in one of the spaces I needed without him getting captured. The player in question hadn't played this card in order to screw me over directly, but simply because he needed to do his objectives which otherwise he would be prevented from doing. Another turn in which I was forced to spend VPs for money and in which additionally I lost one of my workers.

The third turn I was prevented YET AGAIN from completing the mission by a random event card that closed one of the areas I needed: I do not know if there was a way to view upcoming events (answers in the comments please), but it meant that I had yet another turn in which I lost VPs in order to get enough money to do anything in the next round.

At the time, I chalked all of the above to a mixture of bad luck, not knowing the game and playing badly and I kind of forgot about it until one evening in which I got into an interesting discussion with one of the people I play regularly with. I had told him my experiences with Yedo and when I got around with outlining the above, he confirmed to me (where you wondering what that part of the title was about?) that my experiences of the game weren't singular to me and that he actually thought were failings of the game. Rethinking it in my own mind, I couldn't help but agree with him. Although partially it was my fault for getting into the situation above, there were several issues that I might have not picked up if my first experience hadn't been so disastrous. For example, one of the issues with the game seemed to be that one of the critical parts of the game, the worker placement, was largely luck driven due to the lack of information that players have concerning the likely placement of workers by other players. It's impossible to know what spaces each player needs to complete his missions: in most standard worker placement games, it is at least possible to ascertain roughly what a player would be going for, but in Yedo this information is completely lacking, making it impossible for someone to judge if they should prioritise one space over another when attempting to complete a mission: spaces that were hardly used in the early stages of the game might become required depending on what missions the players have. This lack of knowledge has impact in all aspects of the game: it's impossible to know what weapons someone will need or what annexes (think buildings) someone requires. It is also nearly impossible to know what kind of action/intrigue cards someone has, or even what bonus cards he has. There's a fundamental lack of information from which to make informed decisions throughout the game. In this aspect, the game is even worse than Lords of Waterdeep, since in the latter game, since you choose from an open choice of quests, people more or less have a knowledge of what you are going for. As well as that, since you don't need workers in specific places in order to complete quests, the ways of countering someone are obvious, since you just need to prevent them from getting resources.

Although in both games you can get screwed by other players, within LoW the interaction is more often direct than indirect. It often occurs within Yedo that you get screwed not because of someone directly wanting to hinder you, but to hinder you in indirect ways through the following of their own objectives. 

My opinion of Yedo had thus changed, but largely it had been an opinion that I originally had formed but had been afraid to express: after all, the game had been lauded by many people, many of whom I respected in terms of their opinions towards board games. My own mental training had also prevented me from making that snap judgement and it was only the confirmation of my negative experiences that had finally allowed me to express my negative views of the game. Like all things in life, there can be a degree of peer pressure in evaluating games and due to my own nature, if my opinion of something is radically different from the norm, I usually think that it's an issue with my own opinions rather than the opinions of others.

So what are my ultimate thoughts about Yedo. It's difficult to say: I think this truly is a game I have very mixed opinions about: there is a lot to praise about the game but after some analysis, I can't avoid but see the obvious weaknesses of the design. I was willing to try it again after I had played it the first time but the situation now is that I honestly don't know if I would be willing to play it again: the possibility that I might experience the same issues as the first time (and the confirmation that others had experienced the same issues  and they weren't strictly speaking an exception) meant that I now feel reluctant about wasting time in a game from which I might only get to experience negative situations. I think there is enjoyment to be found and if you tend towards the more thematic part of the board gaming spectrum, there is the potential for a lot of replay-ability  even considering the (apparent to me) weakness of the design.. I thought originally that Yedo would be like LoW but with tighter, more euro rules, but it is apparent that it actually goes the other way and this, although not a good thing for my own tastes, might be just the right fit for ameritrash (if you'll excuse the use of the word) players.

Think about it: the game has a fairly well implemented theme while attempting to produce euro-like worker placement elements: for someone that enjoys worker placement games but doesn't necessarily like euros, this would seem like a unique, almost perfect fit. It does what Lord of Waterdeep attempted to do and although like LoW it tries to disguise its thematic roots, it provides a stronger theme without just copying most of its rules roots wholesale from other Euros. 

It is therefore not possible for me to either recommend Yedo or not, because that recommendation is so strongly based on the personal tastes of the player. If, like me, you prefer games in which you have enough information to make informed choices, this game won't be for you. My own rating for this game would be 2.5 scowling King Philips at most, but that score is meaningless: the people to which this game is aimed at will score it higher and rightly so. There is only one true recommendation that I can make: try the game for yourself and only then decide if you agree or disagree with me.