Game: Yucata

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geggakloss — 2007-12-29T17:04:51+00:00

Closeup of the board at the start of the game

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geggakloss — 2007-12-29T17:01:54+00:00

Red moves first using his 'Move 1'-Card knowing that Green has already spent all his low cards. Green however uses his '?'-card to copy the 'Move 1'-card that Red played. Thereby forcing Red to use his last remaining card to move 2 steps and pick up the t

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geggakloss — 2007-12-29T16:55:19+00:00

Cover of the Swedish Edition

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spearjr — 2007-10-07T13:14:04+00:00

Online Interface on Yucata.de

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chiputti — 2006-08-31T15:12:35+00:00

Thread: Yucatá -- a quick racing game without luck

steveoliverc — 2005-09-01T21:34:48+00:00

Yucatá

Luckless racing game by by Stefan Dorra
Playing time: 10 to 15 minutes
Players: 2 to 4
Ages: 8 to adult & suitable for adults to play with children
My rating: 7 out of 10

I discovered Yucatá at the yucata.de online play-by-web game site, and went looking for a copy of the game. It seems to be out of print so I made my own set and have played several two-player games. This is a quick-playing abstract game of racing without any luck, where players race to collect points while avoiding negative points. My daughter helped me with this review.

THEME
Players assume the roles of Mayan priests who are collecting good spirits and trying to avoid bad spirits. The theme has little to do with the mechanics of the game, although it does make for an attractive board.

THE BITS
As I said, I couldn’t find this game anywhere for purchase so I printed the board and pulled out the cards from a standard playing deck. I used glass beads for the stones. The player pawns came from a tub of plastic dinosaurs we use for Trias. From looking at the pictures here at boardgamegeek.com, it appears that the game has similar glass beads and cards. There are 25 light-colored stones, nine dark stones, and one red stone. Each player has their own set of cards numbered 1 through 5 with two special cards, explained below.

SETUP
Put a light stone on each of the squares with a dalek. You can tell which are the daleks because there are 25 spaces with them, and you need to place 25 light stones. Put a dark stone on each of the nine squares with the oval icon. The red stone goes on the last square. The first five squares are empty.
Place all player markers on the starting square, and takes one set of cards into their hand.
According to the rules posted at yucata.de, there are variations for setting up the board, presumably where the dark and light stones are placed in alternate spaces. I haven’t played those yet with the exception of Yazurika which is a random setup and that is an interesting way to extend the replayability of the game.

OBJECTIVE
Collect the largest number of light stones. Each light stone is worth one point. Each dark stone reduces your score. If you’ve collected one dark stone, then reduce your score by one point. Two dark stones reduces it by three points (1+2). Three dark stones by six points (1+2+3), and so on, up to six dark stones which reduces your score by 21 points. You can collect up to nine dark stones but with only 25 possible light stones to collect, your score will be negative, and it’s unlikely your opponent (who would have only one or two dark stones) has a positive score.

GAME PLAY
One player starts. On your turn, play one of your cards which remains in your hand. Here’s how the cards work:

Cards numbered 1 through 5 move your pawn forward the number of spaces on the card.
The Question Mark card allows you to play the value of the card that the previous player used.
The Dagger card moves your pawn to the space in front of the pawn that is furthest along the path and closest to the finishing square. If your pawn is already in the lead, then move it one space forward.

You collect the stone on any space that your pawn moves into (include the space it stops in) that contains a stone, regardless of the color of the stone. Of course, you are trying to collect the light stones but stop short of collecting the dark stones.

After playing your card and moving your pawn, place your card face up in front of you, covering your previous cards. In this way, your opponents can see which card was last played. Players with good memories will remember which cards you’ve played and which are left in your hand. Then it’s the next player’s turn.

When a player has played all of their cards, then on their next turn they will collect all of their cards back into their hand and can now play any of their cards again. In a two-player game, this will happen at least once, but with more players may not happen at all.

SCORING.
As mentioned above, the dark stones you’ve collected reduce your collection of light stones. In a two-player game, you can expect at least one player to get very low (or even negative) score. With nine dark stones on the board, one player is going to get a lot of negative points. Even in an even split where each player gets four dark stones (one dark stone going away from the end-game bonus stone), we’ve seen a game where the final score was 2-0.

STRATEGY
My daughter put together this list of strategy tips:

* Try and make your opponent take dark stones, but don’t let them take a bunch of light stones.
* Don’t play all of your low numbers first, thinking that you will save your higher numbers to collect light stones, because the dark stones become increasing closer together as you move down the path towards the finish square.
* Play your large numbers early so you can collect more light stones and few dark stones, and save your low numbers for later when there are proportionately more dark stones.
* Know when to play the Question Mark card. If you need to move slowly, then follow your opponents 1 or 2 with your Question Mark, so that you can save your own 1 or 2 for a later play. The Dagger card can also serve as a 1 if you are the lead player.
* Try to bluff your opponent about what your next move will be. Are you lying in wait to make a big leap forward on your next turn? Are you making a big jump on this turn so that you can follow it with another big leap? The bluffing is more effective if you have kept track of the cards your opponent has left in their hand, and more so if you suspect your opponent has not been paying attention to the cards you’ve played. It’s a definite advantage to know what options your opponent has left to them.
* Play a card to prevent your opponent from playing the same card. If you’ve been keeping track of the cards they’ve played, you might force them to play a different card which causes them to take a dark stone.

COMMENTS
In Yucatá, you find yourself trying to avoid the dark stones, or devise a way to make sure your opponent gets the dark stones. For this reason, the game puts the players into immediate and direct confrontation. Also, the card you choose to play cannot be played by your opponent, and this adds to the confrontation. The confrontation is intensified by the short playing time. This game gets down and dirty right from the start, and continues that way until the end. If this is the type of game you enjoy, then you should enjoy Yucatá, but avoid it if you prefer a less confrontational game. For me, I had fun playing this but if it were a longer-playing game I would likely not enjoy it as much. The game length feels appropriate for the type of game that Yucatá is.
This game has several strategies to try and for that reason it has a good amount of replayability. Combined with the short game time, you can easily play several rounds in half an hour or 45 minutes.
Yucatá is appropriate as a children’s game. My daughter noted that Yucatá has similarities to Fish Eat Fish, Cartagena, Mancala, and Clash of the Lightsabers, so if your children like any of those games then Yucatá might also be a game they would enjoy. The use of the cards, and the inability to re-use a card you’ve already played until all of your cards are played, is similar to Fish Eat Fish, another game that kids enjoy, and my daughter enjoys Yucatá as well. We’ll try it out with other students when the after school game club starts back up next month. I would think that children over 8 years of age would not have any trouble playing Yucatá and would enjoy it as long as they are fine with the idea that you need to prevent yourself from losing points, rather than try to gain more points. Yucatá can serve as a definite step up in complexity for many children and is a good way to introduce them to luckless games. Just be sure to carefully explain how collecting more dark stones has an increasingly negative effect on your score, otherwise you are likely to see some surprised faces at the end of the game when it’s time to add up the scores.
It is fun to play the game two or three times to give each player a chance to be the starting player. It’s also interesting to see how differently the game is played the second time as players often learn from the first game and try a more conservative strategy the next time out.

NUMBER OF PLAYERS
I’ve only played with two players. Each player will go through their set of cards completely once, and once again, with the actual number of cards left to play depending on the cards played. For example, if you use your Question Mark card following a 5, you are pushing the game to quicker ending with less cards likely to be played.

It would be interesting to play this with three or four players but I have to wonder about the loss of strategy. Increasing the number of players would most likely decrease your lack of control over collecting stones, but might also present you with unexpected scoring opportunities.

One aspect of a 3 or 4 player game would be that (hopefully) each player would collect fewer of the dark stones, and the game might see some higher scores.

OVERALL
I enjoyed this game because of the tension it delivers in a very short amount of time. It makes for a “heavy filler” because in ten minutes you will find yourself agonizing over your choice of cards. I suggest you play with two players in two rounds so that each player has a chance to start the game. I wouldn’t recommend paying a lot for this game, but you can try it out for free at yucata.de or make your own set. Yucatá is easy to teach and quick to play, with no luck. It won’t be a game you play every week but will make for a good game to add to your collection if you enjoy luckless racing games. And a big thanks to my daughter for the strategy tips!

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steveoliverc — 2005-08-31T17:28:54+00:00

Yucata seems to be out of print, so here's my home-made board using a deck of cards, glass beads, and dinos

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soren_due — 2005-01-11T15:43:29+00:00

Thread: Session Report

batman — 2003-09-24T14:57:21+00:00

Jonathan roped me into trying Yucata with Ike. This is a quick 10 minute game that I enjoyed. It's kind of a race to get stones along a path. Dispersed along the way are negative stones that work cumulatively. The more stones you have the worse it gets exponentially. The first game I had no idea what to do so I jumped out early to get some positive stones. Jonathan and Ike were content to let me trailblaze and pick up a lot of stones, both positive and negative. They would occasionally jump ahead of me to claim a stone or two, but most of them were mine. I ended up with negative points while Ike had the most positive ones. I learned from my mistake the first game and showed a little more constraint the second game. I was able to time an occasional jump ahead of the leader to get some positive points and never got a negative stone. This time I was the victor. This game is done by Stephan Dorra of For Sale fame. He makes some great real short games of which this is one. Give it a try.

Thread: General Comment

BoardGameGeek — 2002-01-01T06:00:00+00:00

It is supposed to be reconstructed from a real ancient Mayan Game. The rules, however, are obviously assumed and may not be he same. Since there is no Summary in the database I will merely state that (as far as I remember) you must move all your pieces around the board to win. Certain cards are played to determine moves but restrictions on moves, and penalties caused by other players moves, creates the strategy. I don't remember it real well but someone should add a more accurate summary to the database.

Thread: Session Report

dougadamsau — 2001-01-01T06:00:00+00:00

Doug writes:

Titan: The Arena was winding down, so we hurtled through a quick game of this nice filler. The object is to collect stones blessed by good spirits, while avoiding stones possessed by evil spirits - did I mention we are Mayan priests. Obviously one of the more ambitious themes in the hobby, but the game is fine and usually quite tense.

Each player holds a hand of 7 cards (1-5, and two special move cards). On the play of a card, they must advance their stone around a track as many spaces as the number played, and collect any good or bad stones they pass or finish on. Timing is everything, as you want the good stones, while avoiding the bad (see a review and image on the Reviews page).

Doug tried his usual tactic of leaping out to the front and scooping up the early good stones, along with the one bad stone. This usually means he is forced to take the second bad stone as well as everyone else slams on the brakes, and again it happened. Bernie was forced to take the lead and scooped up more bad stones than he would have liked. Janet and Moray played careful games, with Janet taking the red stone at the end without a bad stone to cash in for finishing the game.

Scores:
Doug: 9-6 = 3
Moray: 2
Janet: 2
Bernie: -1

Thread: Session Report

dougadamsau — 2001-01-01T06:00:00+00:00

Dey Alexander writes:

Players: David, Roger, Dey

Being the first three to arrive, we quickly settled on a game of Yucata. When I first played this game, Doug indicated that he thought it was very much like Elefanten Parade. At that stage, no one in the group owned a copy of the game, but we quickly found one-- motivated by the elephant theme. The games are similar, though I think the strategy in Yucata reveals itself fairly readily after one has played a game or two. I'm still trying to figure out Elefanten Parade (Alan, we have to have a game of this some day soon), but I'm convinced that strategies become somewhat haphazard in a 3- or 4- player game, and easier to manage in a 2-player game. But back to Yucata. Roger and I have probably played this game maybe half a dozen times, and it was obvious from the start that David hadn't played it as recently, or as much. He charged out ahead, collecting lots of brown stones, but unfortunately also taking many of the blues. It wasn't until the middle of the game that he realised he needed to hang back a bit, but by this stage, it was too late to recover. I was forced to take several of the last blue stones, but was also able to get home and take several more brown, and the red, enabling me to discard a blue.

Results:
Dey - 1 red, 4 blue, 13 brown = final score of 7
Roger - 1 blue, 2 brown = final score 1
David - 4 blue, 10 brown = final score 0

Thread: Session Report

dougadamsau — 2001-01-01T06:00:00+00:00

Roger Smith writes:

This was only my seventh session with the Billabongers, so I feel suitably humbled by the honour, and the slightest bit intimidated by the responsibility, thrust upon me.

Games played at The White Table

Doug 5
Dey 4
Roger -3

Roger 4
Dey 3
Doug -6

First game on the white table at Julian C's place, and a newby for Dey and myself. Each player has a set of seven identical cards (numbered 1-5 + two special cards) which they use to move their piece a corresponding number of spaces around a spiral track, picking up stones as they go. The object is to pick up brown stones while avoiding blue stones. The former are worth one point each, but the negative value of the latter increase by one point for each you collect. (As an example, in the second game Doug ended up with six blues stones, their respective values -1, -2, -3, -4, -5 and -6, giving a whopping penalty of -21 to his score.) In the first game I managed to accumulate 7 brown stones, but was forced on to 4 blue stones, resulting in a negative score. Dey did better, avoiding picking up any blue stones. Doug's convincing win served as a tutorial for Dey and myself: in the next game we were able to turn the tables on him.

This game is apparently a close relative of Elefanten Parade, a game which Dey, obsessed as she is with elephants, is keen to play. For me this was the game of the night: fast, simple and lots of opportunity for tactics.

Roger's rating: 8.

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2000-09-21T05:09:53+00:00

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2000-09-21T05:09:35+00:00