Card Game Review: Yomi
Yomi! It's a new card game by David Sirlin. Some of my friends know I'm a long-time fan of Sirlin's work. He's a competitive fighting game player, and he studies game theory and how to become a better competitor. I have a hard copy of his book, Playing to Win, and now I have all three of his board games. But Yomi is the game I'm most interested in.
Yomi is a Japanese term for 'reading your opponent', which is what seperates a good gamer from a great gamer. In the context of a fighting game, it's knowing when your opponent is going to jump, when they will attack, when they will retreat. In action-oriented games, you don't have time to react to what the opponent will do, so you have to guess. The concept of Yomi is that you get into their head, and then do the thing that beats whatever they were going to do.
Unfortunately, there is a physical barrier to playing fighting games well--you have to be able to pull off the special moves with 100% accuracy and with good timing to even play the "Yomi" mind game. I suck at that.
Sirlin created Yomi so people like me can enjoy the high level strategy of fighting games. Each deck represents a fighting game character. The deck is marked with standard playing card notation (3 of Diamonds, Ace of Hearts, etc.), but each card has two sides (top and bottom). Most cards have a different top and bottom, so you have two options with each card. Those options are attack, block, dodge, throw, and joker. Attacks beat throws, blocks and dodges beat attacks, throws beat block and dodge, and jokers beat attack and throw. Essentially it's rock-paper-scissors, except that different moves are better in different situations.
Successfully blocking allows you to build up your hand. Successful attacks and throws become the first card in a combo, allowing you to string together lots of attacks--but depleting your hand. Dodges let you get off a single, powerful attack. But the mind game doesn't stop at rock-paper-scissors: The loser can play a face-down joker to cancel all additional damage past the first card. He plays it face down because he could be bluffing. Finally, each character has a few special abilities and a different deck makeup which makes certain options better for them. Jacks, Queens, and Kings are special moves like fireballs and uppercuts. Aces are "Super Moves", powerful abilities that you wish you could play every turn. There are various ways to pull Aces from your deck and discard pile--of course, when you do that your opponent knows you have them!
The game is beautiful, it's fast paced (~15-30 minutes), it's pretty easy to learn, and it is elegantly designed.
The biggest downside is price: All ten characters in a box cost $100. If you are willing to have only two characters, there are $25 dollar two-packs available. The full price is pretty harsh even if you are used to buying big-box Fantasy Flight games. Sirlin compares Yomi to a competitive Magic the Gathering deck, which is kind of like saying a paper cut is better than shutting the car door on your finger. On the other hand, you can play Yomi for free online at his website--but that's an intimidating first step for a lot of people, too.
The other downside to the game is the written rules--as I said, the game is elegantly designed, but it needs an editor who is not a competitive fighting gamer. He throws around terms like hit, combo, counter, pumping, and gold burst--terms that are not intuitive unless you have a background in Street Fighter and Guilty Gear.* It doesn't prevent you from understanding how to play, but it makes it take longer than it should. Of course, there is only one (smooshed up) page of rules and four pages of special case FAQs, so it's not like it should take a long long time to get over that rule hurdle.
So far Stephanie and I have played seven matches of Yomi. I love the game, and Steph seems to really like it too. Naturally, I got the complete version, so if anybody is interested in learning the game, give me a call.
* ("Hit" means to win the rock-paper-scissors exchange, which isn't intuitive when talking about dodges and gold bursts. "Combo" refers to all the attacks and throws you play in the same turn, not just the ones that follow the r-p-s exchange, but the rules are ambiguous. "Counter" means to CANCEL an opponent's ability; in boxing a counter involves hitting the opponent back, more like Yomi's dodge mechanic. I would have just used the word cancel myself. "Pumping" means optional discards to increase the damage of a single attack. "Gold burst" is an ability from Guilty Gear with no real-world equivalent, an offensive shield that turbo-charges your super meter)
Yomi is a Japanese term for 'reading your opponent', which is what seperates a good gamer from a great gamer. In the context of a fighting game, it's knowing when your opponent is going to jump, when they will attack, when they will retreat. In action-oriented games, you don't have time to react to what the opponent will do, so you have to guess. The concept of Yomi is that you get into their head, and then do the thing that beats whatever they were going to do.
Unfortunately, there is a physical barrier to playing fighting games well--you have to be able to pull off the special moves with 100% accuracy and with good timing to even play the "Yomi" mind game. I suck at that.
Sirlin created Yomi so people like me can enjoy the high level strategy of fighting games. Each deck represents a fighting game character. The deck is marked with standard playing card notation (3 of Diamonds, Ace of Hearts, etc.), but each card has two sides (top and bottom). Most cards have a different top and bottom, so you have two options with each card. Those options are attack, block, dodge, throw, and joker. Attacks beat throws, blocks and dodges beat attacks, throws beat block and dodge, and jokers beat attack and throw. Essentially it's rock-paper-scissors, except that different moves are better in different situations.
Successfully blocking allows you to build up your hand. Successful attacks and throws become the first card in a combo, allowing you to string together lots of attacks--but depleting your hand. Dodges let you get off a single, powerful attack. But the mind game doesn't stop at rock-paper-scissors: The loser can play a face-down joker to cancel all additional damage past the first card. He plays it face down because he could be bluffing. Finally, each character has a few special abilities and a different deck makeup which makes certain options better for them. Jacks, Queens, and Kings are special moves like fireballs and uppercuts. Aces are "Super Moves", powerful abilities that you wish you could play every turn. There are various ways to pull Aces from your deck and discard pile--of course, when you do that your opponent knows you have them!
The game is beautiful, it's fast paced (~15-30 minutes), it's pretty easy to learn, and it is elegantly designed.
The biggest downside is price: All ten characters in a box cost $100. If you are willing to have only two characters, there are $25 dollar two-packs available. The full price is pretty harsh even if you are used to buying big-box Fantasy Flight games. Sirlin compares Yomi to a competitive Magic the Gathering deck, which is kind of like saying a paper cut is better than shutting the car door on your finger. On the other hand, you can play Yomi for free online at his website--but that's an intimidating first step for a lot of people, too.
The other downside to the game is the written rules--as I said, the game is elegantly designed, but it needs an editor who is not a competitive fighting gamer. He throws around terms like hit, combo, counter, pumping, and gold burst--terms that are not intuitive unless you have a background in Street Fighter and Guilty Gear.* It doesn't prevent you from understanding how to play, but it makes it take longer than it should. Of course, there is only one (smooshed up) page of rules and four pages of special case FAQs, so it's not like it should take a long long time to get over that rule hurdle.
So far Stephanie and I have played seven matches of Yomi. I love the game, and Steph seems to really like it too. Naturally, I got the complete version, so if anybody is interested in learning the game, give me a call.
* ("Hit" means to win the rock-paper-scissors exchange, which isn't intuitive when talking about dodges and gold bursts. "Combo" refers to all the attacks and throws you play in the same turn, not just the ones that follow the r-p-s exchange, but the rules are ambiguous. "Counter" means to CANCEL an opponent's ability; in boxing a counter involves hitting the opponent back, more like Yomi's dodge mechanic. I would have just used the word cancel myself. "Pumping" means optional discards to increase the damage of a single attack. "Gold burst" is an ability from Guilty Gear with no real-world equivalent, an offensive shield that turbo-charges your super meter)