Yspahan | BoardGameGeek

Reply: Yspahan:: Variants:: Re: Making the caravan less valuable

elcomadreja2 — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 05:43:02 +0000

I guess I'm thinking of the situation where there are only 1 or 2 dice for that blocking space, in which case I'd rather take more cubes or a card.

And what's this about piggybacking? I'd never intentionally let someone else come on the caravan with me (with few exceptions of course) I'd simply hit my cubes from a different angle.

Reply: Yspahan:: Variants:: Re: Making the caravan less valuable

UnknownParkerBrother — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 04:13:14 +0000

by UnknownParkerBrother

elcomadreja2 wrote:
Many games no one want to take this spot from the caravan player, because whoever does so will have a suboptimal play compared to the other players who are filling in the shops.

Ok, I'm no expert here, but why? That makes no sense to me.

One, I cut off half his caravan points and slow him down. Two, I piggy back on his play, so every time he uses that spot to send his own guy, I get free points on his turn, and a card too if I built my own caravanserai.

Thread: Yspahan:: Variants:: Making the caravan less valuable

elcomadreja2 — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 23:02:29 +0000

by elcomadreja2

Our circle of players has learned the caravan strategy to perfection. At the risk of fixing something that isn't broken here's some ideas I have to change this (to be used independent of each other):

1) change the carvansarai to simply allowing you to put cubes on the caravan (yours or anyone else's) This seems to be the big one. If I build this guy early, this keeps my "move the supervisor every turn" plan from stalling out. I offer this alternative

2) change the spot that can move two cubes up at the same time to an either/or. I see this as less effective. Caravan is still powerful without this. If I can set this one up it's just more gravy. Many games no one want to take this spot from the caravan player, because whoever does so will have a suboptimal play compared to the other players who are filling in the shops.

3) only score caravan at end of turn, and empty it. Being able to score a cube multiple times is one of the strengths of the caravan.

New Image for Yspahan

DonovanLoucks — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 22:29:02 +0000

by DonovanLoucks

A small add-on aid for the tower board which shows whether the icons o...

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File: Yspahan:: Yspahan - Tower Board Add-On

DonovanLoucks — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 13:05:42 +0000

by DonovanLoucks

Yspahan - Tower Board Add-On for Board Game: Yspahan ]]>

Reply: Yspahan:: Variants:: Re: Yspahan: The Garden Expansion

dshortdesign — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 20:38:44 +0000

by dshortdesign

ohbalto wrote:
dshortdesign wrote:
Random and slightly off topic... what is Boardgamenews' Twitter ID?

https://twitter.com/BoardgameNews

Thanks. I ended up just searching for it. I'm loving getting the quick news updates thru my Twitter feed. :)

Reply: Yspahan:: Variants:: Re: Yspahan: The Garden Expansion

ohbalto — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 20:08:44 +0000

by ohbalto

dshortdesign wrote:
Random and slightly off topic... what is Boardgamenews' Twitter ID?

https://twitter.com/BoardgameNews

Reply: Yspahan:: General:: Re: How to pronounce?

joshp — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 02:31:22 +0000

by joshp

Watch this video and hear it for yourself: http://ia340913.us.archive.org/0/items/bgws_039/bgws_039_y_l...

Thread: Yspahan:: General:: How to pronounce?

BartowWing — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 02:14:32 +0000

by BartowWing

Can someone please provide me with the correct pronunciation of the title "Yspahan"? And on what syllable is the stress?

"eees puh' han" ?

Reply: Yspahan:: Variants:: Re: Yspahan: The Garden Expansion

LupusX — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 03:33:51 +0000

by LupusX

No this is just a fan made expansion, and Ystari wouldn't just publish it without asking. I'm sure they have some other ideas, but hopefully this has been inspiring them. :)

Reply: Yspahan:: Variants:: Re: Yspahan as a 2 player game

UnknownParkerBrother — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 02:23:13 +0000

by UnknownParkerBrother

thoia wrote:
My proposal to you is that whenever you take a game that wasn't originally designed to be a 2 player game and develop a way to play it with two that is fun (as with Yspahan) I believe you get a different game.

I guess that's my point, ultimately. With our 2 player variant of keeping the normal rules, it *is* the same game as the 3 and 4 player game. Same number of dice, same number of actions, etc.

Some games you absolutely have to change core rules to make it work, I just don't think this game was one of them. :)

Reply: Yspahan:: Variants:: Re: Yspahan as a 2 player game

thoia — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 23:55:03 +0000

by thoia

Glad8r wrote:
I don't understand the defensive tone here, like Im taking the game away from people :) No, I'm just proposing a variant and not forcing it on anybody.

Nature of the BGG Beast. All too often an inquisitive mind is responded to with an overly abrasive rebuttal. Just today my girl friend who only occasionally visits the geek was reading a thread in which someone asked a simple question but the responses were pretty strongly belittling the poster. "How very rude" she said as she then proceeded to leave the geek and go to other websites.

At any rate. My proposal to you is that whenever you take a game that wasn't originally designed to be a 2 player game and develop a way to play it with two that is fun (as with Yspahan) I believe you get a different game. It's not ever going to feel exactly the same with 2 players and I don't think it's meant to. The question is...does the game play well and is it enjoyable as a 2 player game? I say Yspahan does and is.

:)

Reply: Yspahan:: Variants:: Re: Yspahan as a 2 player game

Lightstorm — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 23:31:32 +0000

by Lightstorm

My wife and I have played this quite a bit - we feel that the official 2-player rules work fine. I can't say we've experienced a situation where we felt there was nothing to do but take cards. In all, the 2-player (official) rules keep the game quick, fun and heavily contested.

Reply: Yspahan:: Variants:: Re: Yspahan: The Garden Expansion

atholbrose — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 08:03:26 +0000

by atholbrose

ohbalto wrote:
I know it says, "Ystari" instead of "Yspahan" but I don't see that as a crazy reach from one to the other. Is this for Yspahan or some other Ystari game I'm not thinking of ("Ysysys", perhaps?)

It's a collection of expansions for several Ystari games: Caylus Magna Carta, Amyitis, Sylla, Metropolys and Yspahan. (I seem to remember reading that the US release might contain Mykerinos' "The Nile" as well, but can't find anything talking about that.)

Reply: Yspahan:: Variants:: Re: Yspahan: The Garden Expansion

dshortdesign — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 20:21:23 +0000

by dshortdesign

ohbalto wrote:
Hey, is this being officially published (or whatever) in the US? Boardgamenews just (sigh) tweeted, "Rio Grande Games will release the Ystari expansion pack in English; no date or other details announced."

Random and slightly off topic... what is Boardgamenews' Twitter ID?

Edited for spelling.

Reply: Yspahan:: Variants:: Re: Yspahan: The Garden Expansion

ohbalto — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 18:48:54 +0000

by ohbalto

Hey, is this being officially published (or whatever) in the US? Boardgamenews just (sigh) tweeted, "Rio Grande Games will release the Ystari expansion pack in English; no date or other details announced."

I know it says, "Ystari" instead of "Yspahan" but I don't see that as a crazy reach from one to the other. Is this for Yspahan or some other Ystari game I'm not thinking of ("Ysysys", perhaps?)

Reply: Yspahan:: General:: Re: Battle of the Clever-Use-of-Dice Games: Kingsburg vs. Yspahan

Trump — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 03:26:01 +0000

by Trump

Furunkulus wrote:
greatsage wrote:

Having said that, I think that To Court the King is one dice game, where rolls can be manipulated that doesn't appeal to me. I don't feel like I blame bad outcomes on luck, but rather in the convolutions of the rules. It is confusing as to which dice can be altered which can be added when they can be added and when they can be re-rolled. I feel that To Court the King is one game that is trying to be too fancy with dice games.

I originally liked To Court the King but since playing Yspahan, Kingsburg, and Stone Age it has really lost any appeal at all. I think To Court the Kings is just too fiddley. It is neat how the cards work with the dice roll and all but it just becomes too much.

Yspahan, Kingsburg, and Stone Age have really raised the bar as to implementing a good dice mechanic into a Euro game.

I don't see why you're including Stone Age with those others. Calling that one a "dice game" does it a gross injustice.

Reply: Yspahan:: General:: Re: 2 players, hardly any souks.

ohbalto — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 05:26:43 +0000

by ohbalto

My wife and I played a 2-player game of Yspahan tonight and I have to say the "bonus turn" for the 1st player really makes the game more interesting. I'd thought, at first, it might be bad, but we really liked it.

In a 2-player game, following this rule means there's a definite strategic advantage for starting a new week. Also, our strategy was affected by whether it was "my" turn or "your" turn -- when I was the 1st player, I'd factor in that I'd have that second go at the board, and vice-versa.

Following that rule really added an interesting element to the game. Plus, it gives a little boost to the trailing player starting Week 3. Depending on how the dice fell for a given day, the 1st player had some interesting options. Definitely a good rule in my book.

Edit: oh, and my wife had four buildings and I had three. We each had plenty of souks though we didn't concentrate very much on the caravan (she wanted to focus more on souks and buildings and I didn't have the heart to blast her with the infamous Caravan strategy. Why do that to someone when the goal is to get them to play again, right?

Reply: Yspahan:: Variants:: Re: Yspahan as a 2 player game

UnknownParkerBrother — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 16:23:08 +0000

by UnknownParkerBrother

Glad8r wrote:
Steve, when you play with standard rules, how often do you choose card because there is no better option?

Haven't played it enough to really answer that. I think we played it with the official rules twice, then tried ours once, and liked the feel much better. At that point we were still in the feeling out process, so I can't say we were taking cards only when there was nothing better.

With the official rules, we found there just wasn't that many souks on the board, once you grabbed gold, camels, cards, built a building or two, and the week was almost over: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/308446

Ah, I gotta get this to the table again, it's been too long.

Reply: Yspahan:: Variants:: Re: Yspahan as a 2 player game

Glad8r — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 11:44:06 +0000

by Glad8r

Thanks for all the comments. I feel much better about the official rules now. I just played 2 player game on PC and it was very good indeed. I did finish all buildings but at the expense of souks, so I lost 92-98. The vase district stayed completely empty most of the game however which bothers me a bit, so I will try my variant with my wife a few times and report here later on.

Reply: Yspahan:: Variants:: Re: Yspahan as a 2 player game

Glad8r — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 11:10:19 +0000

by Glad8r

cymric wrote:

Actually, no. They were released by Ystari themselves a few months after the game came out. They had announced at the time they were working on them because they didn't like the ideas suggested by the author, but at the same time would not delay the game's publication. They were '100% official' right from the start, and were even released on a separate leaflet printed in the same manner as the rule book.

You're right, you don't know what I mean. One thing is to have to print them out separately, the other thing is to have them integrated into the rulebook. It's ok if you don't understand, it's a 'geek' thing ;)

Well, why don't you follow the rules as written for a while, and don't increase the number of dice from 8 to 9 because it makes no sense to you?

Because 9 makes more sense to me (please read my comments about scoring Vase too rarely).

With 8 dice the Vase district becomes harder to fill in. You call that 'boring'. I call it 'play balance'.

You call 8 dice 'play balance', you call 7 dice 'game becomes fixed'. Perhaps you call 9 dice (and thus 3/4 player game) 'too easy'. Call them whatever you want sir.
By 'boring' I mean I rarely see Vase being filled, which almost takes it out of the equation. You make a very good point about using gold to buy yellow dice, but this is my least favorite mechanic in the game because I don't like gambling. I usually buy dice only for the excess gold, which mostly happens towards the end of the game (btw, if you play PC version you will notice that AI was programmed the same way). Gambling away gold while it is still useful is not a very interesting strategy to me.

I don't understand the defensive tone here, like Im taking the game away from people :) No, I'm just proposing a variant and not forcing it on anybody. The comments about 8 vs 9 dice were very useful. I admire Ystari work on playtesting. I will now definitely try my "9 dice/6 days per week" variant to see how it affects dice distribution in districts and overall balance, so You don't have to :D

Reply: Yspahan:: Variants:: Re: Yspahan as a 2 player game

Senor Swanky — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 11:03:05 +0000

by Senor Swanky

I agree with Maarten on all points. My wife and I play this as a 2 player game as written and always find it a good game.

Reply: Yspahan:: Variants:: Re: Yspahan as a 2 player game

Glad8r — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 10:37:35 +0000

by Glad8r

TermiGator wrote:
Ever thought about that the reduction to 8 dice is to compensate for 3-4 more actions each player gets?

You reduce dice by 11% and increase actions by 14-19% (assuming you use 6 actions for building).
Sounds like a fair solution and also an explanation to why reducing dice to 8 (and thereby the chances of getting recoursses) to me.

If you of course keep playing with 9 dice - no wonder it's no problem to get all the recoursses for building easily.

No, I have not. That's why I asked about it here.

We do use 8 dice, but I guess the 2 games that we played are not representative because we were just lucky both times, because we were able to build everything, and had lots of points from elsewhere (100+). Then I take back points from this game because I thought luck in it was more controllable :( Well, we will just play more and hopefully won't have too many streaks of dumb luck.

Reply: Yspahan:: Variants:: Re: Yspahan as a 2 player game

cymric — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 08:53:21 +0000

by cymric

Glad8r wrote:
I was surprised to find that my copy of Yspahan says 2-4 players on the box instead of 3,4 and has 2 player rules actually integrated right into the manual! It's actually a big deal for me as 2 player rules don't seem as an afterthought anymore, they are "100% official" now, if you know what I mean.

Actually, no. They were released by Ystari themselves a few months after the game came out. They had announced at the time they were working on them because they didn't like the ideas suggested by the author, but at the same time would not delay the game's publication. They were '100% official' right from the start, and were even released on a separate leaflet printed in the same manner as the rule book.

First, why 8 dice instead of 9? I understand they did it for some kind of balancing purposes, but I cant quite grasp what good does it do. What I do see is that it dramatically drops the chance of getting dice in the Vase district, which is boring. Unless I find reasonable explanation, we will play with all 9 dice. ... I would like to fix this, but the fix must be as simple and transparent as possible i]sic[/i. ...

Well, why don't you follow the rules as written for a while, and don't increase the number of dice from 8 to 9 because it makes no sense to you? You complain that there are almost always good choices of the dice to be had, that souks are filled up very well indeed, buildings are built too easily, cards are no longer that interesting, and so forth. You deduce that with 2 players there are more actions to be had, which is correct. But then miraculously fail to recognise that maybe there might be more to that number of dice than meets the eye.

With 8 dice the Vase district becomes harder to fill in. You call that 'boring'. I call it 'play balance'. If you want to take a shot at it (and you want to do that because it is worth so much points), you have to spend gold to buy extra dice. That's gold you cannot spend on buildings or the overseer. In addition, 1 die less on every throw means there will be less cubes, less camels, and less money. I'd have to do some tricky mathematics to figure out the expectancy values of each group, but it ought to be noticable. (The overseer will be affected too, but far less so---his movement is independent of the number of dice in a group.) Probably the effect was deemed too strong, so 1-2-1 rule was added in addition to making building buildings cost an action to offset the extra actions introduced by the last 1 in the sequence.

You could argue that dropping the amount of dice to 7 would make the game even more challenging, but then I think the game becomes rather fixed in its strategies because the souks are more difficult to fill up, resources become even tighter, and cards become more powerful, especially the gold and camels for free cards which can put one player out of the game fairly easily.

I'm not sure what the effect of leaving in 9 dice but shortening the week to 6 days would be. Having a longer week gives you more time to complete souks in the town, and makes souk + 'building 5' + 'building 6' strategies more viable. However, those buildings must not be built too quickly because they become too powerful otherwise, hence the need to scale down to 8 dice to limit resources (and to avoid someone walking away with the game because he could complete a few Vase souks). And so forth. The game's balance is too complex to ignore the effect of the amount of dice, in any case.

Reply: Yspahan:: Variants:: Re: Yspahan as a 2 player game

TermiGator — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 07:57:46 +0000

by TermiGator

Ever thought about that the reduction to 8 dice is to compensate for 3-4 more actions each player gets?

You reduce dice by 11% and increase actions by 14-19% (assuming you use 6 actions for building).
Sounds like a fair solution and also an explanation to why reducing dice to 8 (and thereby the chances of getting recoursses) to me.

If you of course keep playing with 9 dice - no wonder it's no problem to get all the recoursses for building easily.

Reply: Yspahan:: Variants:: Re: Yspahan as a 2 player game

jocose — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 04:12:37 +0000

by jocose

I like this game with 3-4, I am not a big fan of the two player game. Even so when the wife says "Lets play a game of Yspahan", I've never said no!

Reply: Yspahan:: Variants:: Re: Yspahan as a 2 player game

ColtsFan76 — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 03:57:16 +0000

by ColtsFan76

Sorry I misread what you wrote. We have found the 2-player works extremely well as written. The only time we ran into problems was when we misread the rules.

Reply: Yspahan:: Variants:: Re: Yspahan as a 2 player game

Glad8r — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 03:43:07 +0000

by Glad8r

Yep, I got it right. One thing I hate is not reading the rules. Sorry if I didn't explain well.

Steve, when you play with standard rules, how often do you choose card because there is no better option? I'm also afraid that the caravan strategy will become underpowered when the other player chooses bazaar strategy, because he/she will pick more dice on average and fill more souks.

That's the thing, this game, as many quality games, has a very delicate balance of strategies and many tight choices every turn. This balance is easy to break, and I think their 2 player rules break it somewhat, but the standard rules when applied to 2 players also tip it to the wrong side.

I haven't playtested my variant but I think it will work fine. If not I will also revert to the standard 3,4 player rules.

Reply: Yspahan:: Variants:: Re: Yspahan as a 2 player game

UnknownParkerBrother — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 02:27:32 +0000

by UnknownParkerBrother

He has it right, he specifically says that "6 of these (actions) can be spent building buildings".

For the reasons above, with 2 players I still just prefer to play it normal, 9 dice, choose 1 set of dice each, and building as a free action. Then it's exactly the same as the 3 and 4 player game.

Reply: Yspahan:: Variants:: Re: Yspahan as a 2 player game

ColtsFan76 — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 02:06:42 +0000

by ColtsFan76

I am not certain of why 8 dice vs. 9. I would guess because they felt too many dice might get onto one slot and they wante dto keep the value of the yellow dice.

As to the building, I think you made a common mistake (since the rules don't make this crystal clear).

Building is no longer a "bonus" action like it is in the standard game. You do not get to take you dice and place your cubes AND then build a building.

In order to build, you must use up an action. So the typical sequence is Player 1 takes the dice and places cubes/take gold/camels/card. Then Player 2 does the same. Then back to Player 1 who now uses the final action to build. That is one of the reasons for the 1-2-1 rule.

We played this wrong the first time or two and thought, man, it is real easy to get all our buildings built. Then we re-read the rules and realized building is really restricted. this brought it back in line with the original feel of the game.

Thread: Yspahan:: Variants:: Yspahan as a 2 player game

Glad8r — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 00:42:49 +0000

by Glad8r

I purchased Yspahan couple days ago after playing PC version. What a great game! My wife and son loved it right away.

I was surprised to find that my copy of Yspahan says 2-4 players on the box instead of 3,4 and has 2 player rules actually integrated right into the manual! It's actually a big deal for me as 2 player rules don't seem as an afterthought anymore, they are "100% official" now, if you know what I mean.

However I have couple issues with the 2 player rules.
First, why 8 dice instead of 9? I understand they did it for some kind of balancing purposes, but I cant quite grasp what good does it do. What I do see is that it dramatically drops the chance of getting dice in the Vase district, which is boring. Unless I find reasonable explanation, we will play with all 9 dice.

Now, about 1-2-1 rule. This one seems to be clear - if you only get to pick 2 groups of dice per turn, both players will have good choices most of the time and would rarely pick up cards and will have less motivation to go for the caravan strategy as well. I don't like this. So, I prefer to keep this rule.

However in a couple 2 player games that we've played so far, we get another glaring problem - we both finish all 6 buildings before the end of the game without much effort, making building score equal for both players and thus there is no more "building strategy".

There is a simple mathematical explanation for this problem - in 3,4 player games each player gets 21 actions. Buildings are built for "free". In a 2 player game each player gets 30 or 31 actions. 6 of these can be spent building buildings. This leaves 3-4 extra actions which can be spent just collecting money and camels, which makes finishing all 6 buildings all too easy.

I would like to fix this, but the fix must be as simple and transparent as possible. So I introduce "Weekends". This variant says that in a 2 player game traders don't work on Sundays. This leaves us 6 days per week, 18 days total to play with, 18+9=27 total actions per player. With 6 buildings to build this leaves each player with 21 actions to do everything else, exactly like in the 3,4 player game! This modification makes the overall game shorter, but per-player game time is about the same as in 3,4 player game. What do you think?

New Image for Yspahan

angeral — Thu, 28 May 2009 14:37:22 +0000

by angeral

Yspahan @ JoolClub, 3er in progress

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New Image for Yspahan

angeral — Thu, 28 May 2009 12:24:02 +0000

by angeral

Yspahan @ JoolClub, in progress

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