I am assuming anyone reading this review is already familiar with Ys.

What you get with Ys+ is:

Set of blue brokers & blue scoring token
12 new character cards
14 event cards
Several +5 gem cards
Screen for the 5th player
Ys+ rules addition (this was missing in my copy but if available on the Ystari site)

Before I acquired Y+ I assumed it was just the pieces to allow a 5th player to participate. Since 5-player games get to the table more often than 4-player games with our gaming group, I ordered Ys+ after seeing it was available on the Ystari web site a few months ago.

I was pleasantly suprised to to see the other goodies that came with the expansion. The new character cards give you a pretty large pool to draw from. You are still only using 12 character cards in a game, so a lot get burned after the board is set up. So, for those of you who have played this game a lot, the new characters wll definitely provide some variety.

The bigger change was the introduction of events. When you prepare the 4 stacks of character cards for each neighborhood, you now make a pile consisting of 3 character cards and 3 event cards. You shuffle these and place the stack on the normal spots on the board. When you turn up the character card for a turn you may turn up an event card. Event cards have a purple border unlike the yellow-orange of the characater cards. The artwork on the backs of the cards are the same for a character and event card, so you do not know when one will come up. When an event card is turned up it will be in play that turn. Some affect a single neighborhood while others have a bigger impact. An example of a single-neighborhood card would be an event that gives victory point with each gem obtained from the port, including the black gem. There is another on the quarantines the neighborhood and only the port pays off that round. An example of a general event would be one that provides a gem for each column in the market as well as the usual row.

If an event is drawn, then it is set aside and the next card is turned up. If the next card is an event, then it is discarded and the next card is turned up until a character card is flipped. So for each neighborhood, there can only be one active event and each neighborhood must still have a character card available. Quarantine is the exception as it prevents the play of any brokers in the palace so there is no need for a character card.

The main difference with 5 players is each player on places 6 brokers on the map. A '1' and '3' broker are removed from each player's brokers. I wasn't sure how I would like only playing 6 brokers, but it seemed fine. You're actually placing 2 less total brokers than a standard 4-player game, so things do not get overly crowded. It did seem like the game played longer with 5, even with one less round of broker placement. I was the only player who had played Ys before though, so that may not be a fair judgment.

I would say the Ys+ expansion adds some nice variety and the game still plays well with 5 players. Word has it the Ys+ expansion will be reprinted and will be available through Rio Grande in the US. This would be very welcome with Ys fans in the US, as the expansion has been very difficult to obtain here, and even in the few times some copies have become available on the Ystari web page, it's close to $30 with shipping from France. I'm glad to have my copy though and think other Ys owners will as well when Ys+ is more widely available.