Yomi: Shadows (and Second Edition) on Kickstarter!

The physical card game versions of Yomi: Second Edition & Yomi: Shadows are currently on Kickstarter and I highly recommend this game! You can also try the game out digitally for free at Fantasy Strike!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sirlin/yomi

I've been obsessed with modern designer board & card games lately (I now host a weekly Boards, Cards, and Thai Food night now in Portland)!

Surprisingly, David Sirlin's "Yomi" (and "Puzzle Strike") has really impressed me and has impressed my group too! The core mechanics of the game were in fact inspired by VF (Sirlin played a good amount of VF3 in his MIT days). I would say the essential skills of Yomi are the following:

* Mindgames (at its core is: Block/Dodge > Attack > Throw > Block/Dodge)

* Valuation (What makes me want to do certain options more than others, how much damage does my character deal and how, how do I setup my win condition, how do I execute my win condition).

* Managing WIn Conditions (This is probably where the game is inspired by Street Fighter).

* Hand Management (hand building, disciplined decisions for actions each turn, what are "good trades?")

* Matchup Knowledge (every character has their own deck of cards with strengths/weaknesses/optimal gameplans)

* Yomi (READING YOUR OPPONENT! all the valuations, management, and knowledge are awesome but ultimately they are feeding your ability to outplay or outread your opponent--or to make calculated gambles).

As usual, I could go on and on, but I am serious--Yomi is a great game! It is self-published so it isn't a mainstream thing, but the game has earned a great reputation despite that. I honestly didn't expect Sirlin to make great games

I linked to the Kickstarter at the top, but I will link where you can try the game out for yourself for free. It follows a freemium type of model (or you can get it on iPad--which plays on the same servers as PC/Mac/Linux ie Unity in browser), but it is a generous freemium model--I play with friends who have never paid a dime and are having a blast.

You can play Yomi and Puzzle Strike at http://www.fantasystrike.com

 

Highly Recommended: A Beginner's Look at Yomi
http://www.twitch.tv/sirlingames/b/503734927

You can watch competitive tournaments of Yomi and hear some good commentary on the mindgames being played in the game on Twitch. Here is the most recent (as of this post) tournament!

http://www.twitch.tv/sirlingames/b/539186905

This is a review by Tom Vassal of "The Dice Tower" which is a popular board game review site.
http://youtu.be/0AlAQnz0wJw

 

Also, if (like me) you benefit from the audio formats like podcasts (I listen to them a lot while driving, some listen to them while at a desk)--then here are a couple good listens with Aphotix (a tester and streamer for SIrlin Games) and Sirlin explaining Yomi and the upcoming expansion (which is available digital):

On Yomi
https://soundcloud.com/aphotix-1/yomi-discussion

On the new characters in Shadows
http://soundcloud.com/sirlin-games/sirlin-aphotix-discuss-yomi-shadows

 

Anyhow, even though I'm playing lots of amazing board games like Race for the Galaxy, Eclipse, Caverna, Terra Mystica, etc... I'm currently obsessed with both Puzzle Strike and Yomi. Not kidding and not just pumping the game up, they are really good! I'll post more about Puzzle Strike after the Yomi Kickstarter ends, but I have a whole lot of good things to say about Puzzle Strike!

For the record, I'm not even that good at Yomi, I just started playing it a couple months ago, but it is excellent. Very simple to learn, but it really does have depth--most of all, it has mindgames!