How I Play: Yellow & Yangtze

 How I Play: Yellow & Yangtze

From the app, which is the majority of how I've played this game.

So far, my "Strategic Musings" have basically been limited to Spirit Island. That's mainly because my Armada strategic musings go in the Armada section of my blog and Spirit Island is the only other game about which I feel very confident in my knowledge. None of what I do is expert level, but there are just a lot of games I play and enjoy, but in which I don't necessarily feel so well-versed that people *should* consider my strategy in a vacuum. I'm sort of trying to get over my own anxiety about "not being good enough at a game to offer thoughts on how to play it" so that I can add some more to this section. And if strategies are helpful to you, then great! If not, then don't use them!

Admittedly, most of the times I've played this game, it's been via the app rather than with other people. That said, the AI is quite good and I'm looking forward to playing this with other people again so that I can try implementing some of my strategies and seeing what happens. Personally, I'm curious as to how much human judgement changes the likelihood of different people becoming targets. I say that because VPs are hidden in this game. At any given time, I may look to hold a commanding lead, making obscene profit off of my black, green, and blue pagodas. But if you've been paying attention and noticed that I'm not scoring nearly as many yellow and red VPs, then you don't need to stop me from scoring what I'm already scoring; you need to prioritize your own scoring and interfering any time I try to score yellow and red VPs. Because I can score 50 points in each of those three categories, but my score is only my lowest total, right? It can be tough to keep track of in-game, though! And I'm not entirely certain how much more human judgement of who is winning (judgement which is historically notoriously bad, by the way) determines the shape of these games. Especially because the last time I played it in person with someone was pre-pandemic and there were only two of us. VERY different dynamic. But other than that, I've been playing solo.

Get it? Playing SOLO! Get it, y'all?

.....

But seriously, did you get it? I can't tell.

Don't Group Your Leaders

This is counterintuitive for some of us. When I first started playing, I thought it made sense to keep my leaders together because it would be easier to defend against war from other players, plus it would let me throw my weight around against other states. I suppose that's a thing that could work, but I don't think it works when one tries to build that superpower state from scratch. The bigger the state, the more weaknesses there are to exploit. Additionally, the bigger your state, the more spoils there are to gain for opponents who decide to sabotage it and rifle through your pockets. Basically, throwing all your leaders together makes them a big ole' target. And you simply won't always have the black and red tiles to defend yourself from folks looking to take advantage.

Breaking up your leaders so they exist in other places spreads you out and can make it tougher for opponents to deal devastating blows to whatever you've built. Sure, I may hate to lose my Trader leader off of a state that features a green pagoda, but I'd rather lose just that one then 3 different leaders from a state upon which some other player declared war. That's especially true if you don't have the black Governor tiles in your hand to consider starting a revolt in the state you've lost. There isn't necessarily protection in numbers in this game, so be careful about the proximity of your leaders to one another!

Don't Forget About the Peasants!

This is, I think, a damn easy rule to forget about until you're the victim of it. For anyone who is unfamiliar with the rule, as an action, a player can discard two blue Farmer tiles from their hand in order to remove a single tile from the board and return it to the box. Sometimes, you can use this to your advantage by removing a single tile and breaking up a single state into multiple states or removing a pagoda. More devastatingly, you can remove a black Governor tile from the board and if it was the only Governor tile tethering an opponent's leader(s) to the board, those leaders are sent back to that player's hand. A well-timed Peasant's Riot can do so much work for you. Especially if the water spaces on the board are mostly full and you don't really want to incidentally connect multiple states, triggering war. Of course, everything I've listed above can also be used against you...

Attaching multiple leaders to a single black Governor tile is a pretty tenuous situation. I'm not saying never do it, I'm just saying keep an eye on that. Because if you build that out too much without addressing that tenuous connection between your leader(s) and the board, someone will absolutely torpedo you and you'll be sad about it. I know I am when it happens to me.

You Can (and sometimes should) Move Your Leaders

Another thing that can be easy to forget is that just because your Leaders are somewhere on the board doesn't mean they need to stay there. If you know someone is going to bring a revolt or a war to your state and you're not in a position to fight them off, there's nothing wrong with a tactical retreat! Sure, you're ceding ground. But you're denying your opponent the point(s) they'd gain from booting your leader out the hard way. Additionally, the board evolves with each passing turn: the best placement of your yellow Artisan leader five turns ago isn't necessarily the best place for that leader to be now. One of the toughest things for me to do in games is abandon positions I worked for earlier in the game; I'm the kind of person who likes to "set it and forget it." The *problem* with dynamic games is that such a strategy doesn't age well and often costs you more than if you keep an eye on it and make periodic changes to positioning. Don't forget that you've got more moves at your disposal when it comes to your Leaders than simply placing them on the board and then fortifying their positions.

Don't Be Afraid to Trash Tiles

This is a bit of a dropdown menu from what I wrote above: I wrote about having difficulty abandoning strategies and positions that I worked toward in the early and mid-games, even when those strategies and positions become untenable. It's easy to fall in love with a plan and then hold onto tiles in one's hand, hoping that the next tile one draws is the one that puts said plan into play. But how many turns are you willing to invest in waiting for that plan? At what point are we effectively passing up opportunities for diminishing returns? Trashing your hand if it's simply not helpful in the moment is part of the game and an important one. I've definitely found myself expecting someone to start a war and then sitting on 3-4 red Soldier tiles in my hand, anticipating the inevitable attack...

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...several turns later, and the attack still hasn't come. Now, admittedly, maybe I had other things I was able to play during those intervening turns and it wasn't a bad decision to hold onto those Soldiers. On the other hand, it's also totally possible that if I'd just trashed them after a turn of being ready for war, I'd have drawn into a superior hand that afforded me more options for those two or three turns. Plus, it accelerates the game. If you're in a position where you think people are going to come after you, it's possible you anticipate that because you're the frontrunner. In which case, hastening the end game trigger might very well be better than any tiles you can place on the board. Cycling your hand isn't always the move, but when it is, don't be afraid to make it. Is your hand really so good that whatever you draw is likely to be worse than what you have? The only times I've been disappointed while trashing tiles is not drawing into exactly what I wanted or drawing something very similar to what I already had. If I'm disappointed at drawing into what I already had, then my hand couldn't have been that good in the first place.

Life is change, MF'ers.

Start Black. Unless You Can Start Blue.

This is not blanket advice because it can't be. If you're not the first player, you're responding to what other folks are doing. If you don't have black and blue tiles in your hand, this doesn't mean I'm advising you should dump your whole hand and draw a new one. But this is my personal preference and I doubt I'm the only one. Let me begin with the latter part of that little subheading: blue Farmer tiles can sometimes be difficult to unload because they need to be placed on water and there are only so many water spaces on the board. And even if you've got a place to put them, is it a place where you can score them? Since the Farmer tiles can chain, if you're fortunate enough to start the game with three of them in your hand, I find it difficult to begin with any move other than placing your Farmer leader in a place where you can also play those three Farmer tiles and start the game with a pagoda. How much energy do your opponents want to spend in the very beginning of the game stealing or destroying your pagoda? Unless they're spoiling for a fight or are simply set up for it, the answer is: not a lot. It's rare that successful players start a game of Y&Y by expending a lot of actions on sabotaging an opponent.

But if you don't have the luxury of setting up that blue pagoda on your first turn, starting with your black Governor leader is a good way to go. Why? Because there's not a lot of reason early on for other people to contest your Governor leader. Especially if he's not connected to any pagodas. That said, the advantage to starting with your Governor leader is that they will score any color tile connected to their state so long as there isn't a leader of a color that matches said tile also connected to the state. No need to spend actions playing other Leaders when you're trying to expand a state. It's not something you can (or want to!) do all game, but in the beginning as the game is unfolding, it's a way to "wait and see" while still scoring VPs.