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.