Welcome to Replayable, where we go into depth on our favorite tabletop games that keep us coming back again and again. I'm the start player Todd, and today I'm joined by Greg and Paul. For our eighth episode, we take a look at Yunan, the home of delicious Pu'er tea. It was designed by Aaron Haig with artwork by Dennis Lohausen and published in 2013 by Argentum Verlag. A new version is being published this year by Spillworks with artwork by Daniel Schreiber.
Are you two ready to sit down and enjoy a cup of tea? I am hard boiled. I am ready to spill the tea. All right. In Yunan, players are controlling a tea trading dynasty. Each round starts with an auction for one of five production buildings, getting an extra worker, gaining an extra border crossing point for use later, moving your horse forward along the trading trail, increasing your influence within the emperor's court, or being able to build an improvement.
Workers are placed in these buildings to represent your bids. Unused workers in the auction are available to extend your trading network. Your network can extend as far as your horse has traveled, and your workers can move as far as you have border crossing points. Players with more influence can send another player's worker back a step, while the inspector, a vainglorious and spiteful individual, shows up in the most profitable province and can send a worker back to the Puer markets.
At the end of the round, you decide whether you want more yuan for the next auction or victory points. The game ends after a player has earned 80 victory points or more. What do you guys like about this game? Because this one is a favorite for most of the people in our group, but it hasn't yet struck a chord with me. Tell me on Yunnan, why is this a good game? I love it because it is a relatively simple game that's completely deterministic. The players control everything in the game.
There's no randomness. And it is something though that has enough complexity, just enough complexity that it can go off the rails for somebody if they're not careful. And it requires everybody to kind of be playing the top of their game, watching what other people do, managing their turn order, managing their income, and watching for that moment when they're ready to strike and try to end the game in their favor. Okay. Paul, what do you like about the game so much? So I made a list. Uh-oh.
First off, it has two characteristics that I absolutely love in any game I play and I look for, go out of my way to look for all the time. Those characteristics are path dependency, meaning the things you do early matter a lot later on in the game, and deterministic chaos, which was popularized by chaos theory. And I'd like to read a definition of chaos in that respect. Sure. Go for it.
It is when the present determines the future, but the approximate present does not approximately determine the future. So if you mostly know what the current state is, can you predict what's going to happen? No. You have to know exactly what the current state is and everything that's going to happen to be able to predict it. It's completely chaotic. It can just, like Greg said, go off the rails from what your expectations were.
Also on my list, I love the fact that the game lets players determine its duration. The number of rounds is not set. We normally play from six to seven rounds, but it could go eight or nine if the players are so inclined. I love auctions in a game and I love how wide open the strategic space is where the winning strategy is determined by your opponents as a collective collaboration.
Like, you might have an idea of what you want to do and your opponents might try to stop you, might not try to stop you, but as we've seen a lot of the time, they will mistakenly stop you not through their own intentions, but because they're playing their own strategy. I love the bank action, which I think is super special. I don't know another game that has something like it, so I'd like to talk about that more.
And I actually like influence, even though it's a take that element a lot of people probably dislike about the game. And most importantly, it plays in 60 minutes or less. Okay. On the strategy side, what you described sounds great, but that has not been my experience with this game. You spent a lot of time off the rails. Right. Well, that's true too. When we decide on the strategy that we're going to pursue, like, let's say you start out and you're going to do a mob strategy.
You're going to get a lot of workers. They're not going to advance very far down the trading path, so they're not going to get to the more lucrative provinces, but you're going to be getting a lot of benefit from having that many workers on the board. If someone doesn't do influence and doesn't have an opportunity to kick some of those back or if you're able to build a tea house and therefore protect them, it's like the strategy that wins is the one that's left alone.
I don't feel like there's enough time in the game to say, well, I started out with guys and that's not working. So now I'm going to segue over to a different strategy. Like let's call it either sprint or just extending the trade route. I'm going to get to Tibet or I'm going to go to Qinghai. I agree 100% Todd. If you're playing the game we play it, which is a six or seven turn game, then there is not enough time to change strategy. What you decide in the first few turns is what you're set to.
Yeah, but I actually would say that part of the game is seeing what other people are trying to do and stopping them from doing it. Not reactively in the sense of like, well, they've already got a huge mass of people, so now I'm going to try to get influence to pull them to grief them, but actually seeing, oh, they've already gotten the trader action twice.
I'm going to make sure that I get the trader action before them and hopefully somebody else will to make it really expensive for them to keep doing that so that they have to shift gears. Right. You want to stop the butterfly when it's flapping its wings to prevent the tornado later. Yeah. That's one of the things that's great about the game. That game as an example, I almost can't take credit for the win.
I mean, I set myself up for it and I took advantage when there was a moment that people left me the opportunity to get a little extra from the auction houses and that snowballs. It was a blowout win by me in that case. Oh yeah. I can't. So it was. Yeah. Well, to me, the beauty of the game is building that intuition of like when to do things. And certainly it goes wrong for me in the very next game.
I think I lost the game on turn two, you know, because I had overextended myself in the auction house and didn't make enough income and had the bank snowballed in the other direction. I like that you brought up the game with your blowout win, Greg, because that actually opened my eyes due to a conversation I had with Todd after the fact. And it was because Todd was getting influence and he was basically slapping down Dave and I, which prevented us from hindering Greg.
So Todd's making sure Dave and I are in last place and Greg just runs away with it. And so what we decided was, you know, sometimes it's better to help each other so you can all tackle the leader together. Build some temporary alliances. Yes. I definitely think that's a part of the game. One of the things that we'll talk about later, if you don't like an aspect, you may not like Yunnan. I think the actions are very nuanced in their results. If I go ahead and get that influence, that's great.
And now maybe Greg can't send me back a step because we're equal or I have more. But if I make it a point to always step on people and keep them from getting further along the track, then they may miss out on not just getting to Greg to stop you. Like let's say Dave had more influence and he might be able to send you back. But it also meant that there weren't enough traders in Sichuan, the next province beyond, that would have lured the inspector there.
So he might have kicked one of Greg's workers all the way back to Pu'er. If I had allowed other traders to get past me to build up, what's the terminology that we come up with? Is it just income or? Yeah. Well, what's the determination for where the inspector goes? We add up. It's the total income generated by a province. OK, that. That exactly. By preventing Paul and Dave from advancing past Yunnan to get to Sichuan, the inspector never went there and never kicked Greg's guys back. Right.
I never had to mitigate that issue. Right. And so oftentimes the game feels opaque in the moment because the decision you're making, you're not quite sure what the result of it is going to be. And that's another issue that I kind of have with it, because when I make a decision, I'm expecting some kind of quantifiable benefit from it and I'm min-maxing doing my thing for it. But when it's done, it's a lot more nuanced and maybe Paul or Dave aren't advancing to Sichuan anyway.
So I would be hoping they would, but there's no guarantee they will. Your issue is my feature. OK. Nuance. I love it. The nuance of that, where it isn't just a straightforward, well, yeah, I have to get more guys. You really have to develop an intuition for the game.
And even then, based on what other players doing, that intuition can lead you wrong, you know, because there's so much interaction on what happens between the players, especially when you add influence into the game, that it's really hard to predict. I almost find it better to not build for this turn, but build for a turn or two for now. Where do I want to be now? What will I need to do to get there and buy those things?
Don't buy what's going to improve your income for this next round, because that doesn't get you where you need to be the following round necessarily, because maybe it's better for you to earn a little less, get earlier in turn order, which is another thing we need to spend time talking about. Let's take it on right now. So let's talk about the importance of turn order. Turn order does two main things. It determines who gets to bid first on the auction houses.
So who gets what they want at the cheapest price. And it determines in the opposite direction who has to move first in the provinces. And moving first is generally a bad thing. It's more unpredictable. Yes. Because if you move first, you're, you know, especially if you have low influence, you're at the mercy of other players to determine your income for that round.
And potentially they can really hurt you and they can manipulate where the inspector lands and a lot of things based on going later in the turn order on the movement. So that turn order and the fact that the next round's turn order is based entirely on the income of this round, it's a really fun and interesting part of the game to me.
Kind of reminds me a little bit of power grid in that sense, but it's so much more nuanced because in power grid, even though yeah, earning less gives you some benefits and you know, you get a leg up as a catch up mechanism in Yunnan, you have a lot of control over what you earn round to round and can really leverage it. It's hard.
I've been really trying in the past few games to try to get just under people and it's hard to do either I'm over earning or I'm under earning most of the time, but it's a fun part of the game to me. I would like to point out the fascinating decision every turn of how much income should you convert into points. It's not easy because you really want to use that income as money to better your position to make more income.
But if somebody decides, you know what, I'm just going to blitz the victory point track. They could end the game in round six, maybe even round five if everybody leaves them alone. And that is a big surprise to everybody. I don't know if we've ever seen a round five and I know we've seen a few round six wins. I would agree with that, Craig.
I don't know if we've seen a round five victory, but I know Dave got like a round six victory three, four games ago where he just had a bunch of workers in Yunnan and decided he was going all points and suddenly we all looked up he's sitting at 36 points. In round four, he's at 30 points all of a sudden and it's like, okay, by round six, I was earning almost 50 points or 50 income and if that had gone to round eight, I'd have been way up there, but it was too late.
It wasn't too little, but it was certainly too late. Right. And so Paul, talk about the bank action. You said that it was unique. You really liked it. It was unlike anything you'd seen in another game. Yeah, I can't think of a similar mechanism where you can at any time in your auctioning turns, if you haven't passed yet, say, you know what, instead of all these bids I have out, I'm going to cancel them and just take a bonus income based on how much all of my opponents spend.
It's a really interesting decision point that you can make because it allows you to forgo building your infrastructure and just focus on points since you're going to use what everybody else spends to be your income. And when you do that, you get that as money, right? Correct. But what you do get is you get freedom from at the end of the round when you have to decide whether you're going to take points or money, you can just take it all as points because you have presumably plenty of money.
Exactly. Yeah. You have not only the income that you get from the bank, but you also didn't spend any money that round, which means you have whatever income you earned the previous round. So you have a lot of money going into the next round and you get to start converting income to points at that point, at least for that turn.
The other thing that I will say is I think that that really comes alive and we haven't had a chance to play a five-flare game recently, but it really comes alive in a five-flare game. I think it adds a whole extra press your luck element to it where you start trying to help push the bids up on it. And the second person, two people can take the bank action on any round, but the second person to do it gets almost half of what they get, a little more than half of what the first person gets.
So it adds a really nice tension to the game when people are bidding up the auction houses really high and it's like that bank looks really sweet, but maybe I want to push it a little bit further. So take that $9 spot somewhere so that somebody else has to bid 12 and then I get more bank income, but somebody else make bank before you. Yeah. But as you said, that's only in the five-player game. Well, we'll talk about what my favorite player count is later, but spoiler alert. Foreshadowing.
Foreshadowing or five-shadowing? I guess we'll find out. All right. For a game originally released in 2013, it feels very much like what's called an OG game. It feels like a callback to the late 90s, early 2000s. There are no asymmetric powers. There's a high level of conflict in this game and you have fairly basic wooden components and basic colors. I have to say there is something about this game just the way it presents that I find very appealing. Likewise.
What do you guys feel about the artwork and the components of the game? I love it. I love the graphic design. I can't remember off the top of my head the name of the graphic designer, but there's some other games he's designed and I really like his style. Yeah. Dennis LaHousen for the 2013 version and then it's being reworked by Daniel Schreiber for the Spielberg's version that's coming out later this year. Yeah, I agree. I like the isometric perspective we have on the board.
I think that all of the key gaming elements are clearly visible and they're not muddied by the extra graphics that are put in for theme or setting. I mean every time Greg moves a horse, he makes horsey sounds. I mean that's because that's in the rule book, right? Yeah, well, it's in my, it's one of my house rules. Oh, there you go. Yes. I like it. So yeah, the artist is, I mean he's done a lot of games I like the design of. He even contributed to Arc Nova recently.
About the map, one of the items that is in the game, the idea that you can win an auction that enables you to construct something. You can build a tea house and there is room for one tea house in every province and whoever builds a tea house is basically immune from the inspector coming in and kicking one of their workers back to Pu'er. And then there are the trading huts and the benefit about the trading hut is a trading hut cannot be sent back to Pu'er. It's a structure.
There's the idea here of trading chains or trader chains going from the markets in Pu'er out to your most distant outpost and a trading hut basically acts as a worker in that chain, but it's not one of your meeples. So your meeples can advance beyond and the trading hut left in the wake will still maintain the chain for you and that can become pretty critical.
And then the third item that you can build is a bridge and there are places on the map where you can build a bridge from one province to a more remote province and it will only count as one border crossing to cross over the bridge even though you're hopping over a couple of provinces in between. How do you guys feel about the buildings, the needs and then I'd also really like to spend some time on what we think are some considerations for where to build your bridges.
I really like the interpreter between the buildings. As you said, the tea house is not only immunity from the inspector, but it's also worth 12 points. So there is definitely a contest when we play on who gets those early tea houses in the first two provinces. The trading huts are nice additional income, but they are far more important in their immunity to being inspected or influenced by other players and allow you to have that supply chain without disruption.
And then the bridges are what makes moving the horse so good. I think at least in our group, there is often a race to Tibet so that you can build a bridge to Tibet, which would allow your traders to move to a 15 point or 15 income per trader scoring region with a mere two movement steps. Right. I don't know. I'm trying to really think Comdo is stronger, but yeah, it depends. I think if you want to try to end the game early for that strategy, it's probably like around around seven at best.
But if you want to be like pushing everybody else, I think Comdo is a stronger place to try to build that. But I mean, to do it right, you have to get your tea house into Comdo and get that bridge to Comdo and then have been getting enough people. You know, I mean, so there's a lot of dependencies on it like any other attempted strategy. I mean, that's that blowout game I had. That's what I did is I didn't try to get to Tibet. There was too much fighting over the horse.
And so I got a couple more people and they all went to Comdo with a trading hut in Yunnan. So I had nobody in Yunnan, which no big deal because trading hut covers the gap. And, you know, I was able to earn 40 points a turn when everybody else was still struggling to get a little over 30. Right. OK, that could definitely be something. We don't see bridges to Comdo done that often. Just in our meta, we seem to build, as Paul said, we go from Yunnan to Tibet.
But I'm also interested to try in the next game from the second province, Sichuan, you can get to the farthest province away, which is Qinghai. And you can do that with a bridge. And granted, it takes one extra border crossing. You're going to have it takes at least three to get there. But it does seem like if you can get past the madness in Yunnan and you can get to Sichuan. Now you have just one border crossing to get all the way to Qinghai. And that's 18 points per trader.
It's a revenue of 18. Whether you take it as Yuan or you take it as points is going to be made later. I think you're right. By the time you're in Qinghai, you're taking points. Right. Yeah, you absolutely are taking points. If you've got anybody that that far, you better be taking points. Just one correction I do want to note. Yeah, go for it. On the trading huts. So you said it protects you from influence and inspector.
And it's probably worth noting that it's specifically it doesn't give you protection from them. It just means you don't have to worry about having people in that province because you can ignore the province entirely with your traders and the trading hut maintains your chain. Yeah, that's fair. You can still be kicked by player with greater influence or by the inspector. But that won't disrupt the supply chain because the trading hut will still persist. Exactly. Which can be a devastating thing.
Yes, it can be. So that's a good clarification. Thanks, Greg. One of the things that I mentioned was that there was a high level of conflict in this game. And I think it really boils down to two components. The first one is the idea of influence. So if you have won a step of influence in that production house during the auction, you now have the ability each time you move one of your workers in the province in which that worker ends, you may send any other player's worker.
If that player has less influence than you do, back a step. And that can be fairly disruptive. The other area that results in high conflict. And this is one more of those nuanced things is the total production value of a province determines where the investigator goes. Inspector. The inspector. That's it. A lot of times we'll sit there and say, well, if I move my guy to the next province, that province is now going to have the highest production total and the inspector will go there.
And if I have more influence, it'll kick one of my workers all the way back to poor. But if, say, Greg has more influence than I do, then it's a way for me to be able to sabotage Greg because I can go ahead and move my guy up there and create that higher production total. And now the inspector sends Greg's worker all the way back and Greg loses that production between that. And obviously the auction house and auctions by nature are adversarial activities. This game just has it at every turn.
Right. Auctions in Yunnan are not as adversarial as most games because the auction houses have two bid placements where you will be removed from the auction house. But then they also have three bid placements where you will not be. So everybody wins if you spend enough money. Yeah. Yeah. Multiple people can win.
But I think there is that contention there that you can deliberately bid something on something that you don't want, knowing that you're going to force somebody to pay at least nine for it, or at least seven, because they want it a lot more than you and they have the money. Especially on the first turn, right? Well, yeah, especially in the first turn, but even in later turns.
And I think also, this is again, where turn order comes into play, where for both of these issues where trying to manipulate that turn order with your income, if you have high influence, you want to go last in movement. And everybody wants to go first in the auction house, but you want to go last in movement because then you have the best opportunity to control where everybody ends up.
It's that beautiful chaos that, you know, if there are times that you're going to earn the most and you're going to hopefully, and you're going to be stuck having to put yourself at the mercies of everybody else. I totally agree about the conflict, Todd. I think that the conflict is perceived as a lot because you're having something taken away from you. It's like we talked about in raw. Yeah. It's a negative, I believe our brains fool us into thinking it's a bigger deal than it actually is.
Well, and it also feels very personal when you have your guy kicked back because you'd have to choose somebody to pick on. And so it makes it feel personal. And I think our group is pretty good at not taking these things personally. And so we can have fun with it. But certainly when you're behind and you're the only one that can get kicked out and people keep stealing your tea house foundations. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, hey, it's a race, man. It is. It is. You should have taken those promise cubes, Todd.
Do not dare mention that game on this podcast. So with that, let's get on to the prompts. The first prompt is weight and complexity. So on board game geeks scale of one to five, which also aligns with board game arena's version called complexity, how would you rate Yunnan for its complexity or weight? So complexity, it only feels like a three to me, but I think the way we play, I think and playing at high level, especially when you play.
Oh, this is something we didn't talk about the pro mode where you can take a loan. It goes up to a four because there's just so much nuance and like player chaos that you can't really predict what's going to happen in the next turn. Because even how much money somebody has doesn't tell you that they can't bet on things. Hold on, Greg. So the debt track is printed on the board. But are you saying it's a variant? It is the pro mode of the original game. Like for professionals only.
Yeah. Well, it's the expert mode. I don't use expert mode because that's something else in the new version, but they call it pro mode. Aaron Hague called it pro mode in the original game. And yeah, so that's something we didn't talk about. It allows a player to, if they don't have enough money to bid on an auction, they can still place their bid and they can place as many bids as they want, assuming they have the traders to do it.
But if they can't pay for their bid and they don't go to the bank action to pull their traders out of the auction houses, they have to pay points for every amount of money they're short. So that point value is very high in the beginning of the game and gets much lower towards the end of the game. And we've seen a lot of games where that's leveraged by a player to get something that they couldn't afford. They pay the points and then they're 16 points behind everybody else.
But then they come back later and win the game because they got that momentum early on. Yeah, I love that. And I didn't realize it was not part of the basic game. Yeah, I didn't either. Yeah. So anyway, when you include that, it bumps it up to a four for me. Okay. Paul, what did you have it down as? Like Greg just said, I rated a three. I think it is easy to learn and difficult to master. Okay. I also have it as a three. It is not that difficult of a game.
The fixed bidding increments requires a bit of math because while most things are a multiple of three, I mean, the winning bids traditionally, or at least the assured bids are nine, 12 and 15 yuan, you might get stuff for five or seven. And so determining how many points you want to take versus yuan for auctions is one of the harder things to gauge appropriately in this game. And getting stuff for cheap isn't always a great thing.
For example, if you were to get influence and a border crossing advancement in the very first round, which you could get for maybe 10 yuan, which would be the absolute cheapest you could get two things, you would think you were getting ahead of the game. But at least in our versions, that's like the death knell for your engine because you're not growing fast enough. Absolutely. I made that mistake. Right. And that's taking into consideration.
And so for that reason, I think it's a three as far as complexity goes. Well, and I think that that highlights what you just mentioned. One of the key factors that you have to weigh into your bids. It's not just the money you have. It's the number of traders that you want to spend because if your traders are in auction houses, they're not out on the road making money for you. Right. Moving on strategy. How much do you think strategy plays a part in this game? And we've talked about it already.
So on a scale of one to five, Paul, what would you say the opportunity for strategy is in this game? So as you both just mentioned, it is possible to lose this game on turn one. And because of that, I rate it a four. It locks you in to your early choices. And so the strategic decision space is extremely important. That's why I rated a four. There are pivot points, but unless you're playing with one of the expansions, it's going to be extremely difficult to change your strategy mid game.
Right. So I was on the other end of the spectrum. I said that it was a two as far as strategy goes, because I will admit over and over again during the course of this podcast, I am terrible at this game. I feel like you pick a strategy at the beginning and then you just pursue it. And you hope that yours is the one that doesn't get beat up on, or you're able to execute one step better, but you're not changing it.
You don't have to gauge the board to the point where, gee, I really need to shift gears here. I'm doing this from the get go. And so for me, I feel like, sure, there is strategy to apply to it, but it's decided early and then you're locked into it. So for me, that's a two. Greg, what do you think? I rated a four as well. I mean, to me, there's a lot of levels to the strategy. There's of course the basic, how are you going to try to earn income? Are you going to try to earn points?
Are you going to try to get it through moving fast down the road and building a bridge to try to get high points from a later province? Or are you going to build traders early and maybe just try to get to commdo with them? Or not even that in some cases. So that's one way of looking at it. But I also think there's a lot of planning and a strategy in, am I going to try to maximize my income every round?
Or am I going to deliberately go under earned so that I can go earlier in that auction house and get better deals? And then further than that, when do I try to use the bank? Am I going to try to set up a situation where I can bank and start point rushing the game to end it early? Or am I going to try to build that better engine and hope nobody else brushes points? I mean, I think there's a lot going on that is maybe a layer deeper than just what your basic strategy is.
And you also have to be paying attention to what other people do and try to slow them down. Right. So with that in mind, luck, how much do you think luck plays a factor? So same scale, one to five. Zero is not an option, so one. This is a completely deterministic game. It's the players that decide the outcome. There's no luck in this. There's a lot of chaos. You can't always predict what's going to happen, but that's trying to predict what the other players are going to do. Right.
There's no luck. Paul, what did you have for luck? I said one. I think it's about the same as most abstract games. Any luck involved is based on your emotions or how other people feel about you, or maybe if a newbie inadvertently helps you. Right. So I also had it down as a one. You're lucky if someone makes a less than optimal move during their turn or if they forget to boot you with influence when they can or they choose someone else to boot other than you.
So I had it down as a one, but I don't consider that to be a problem with luck in the game. I don't think there's a lot of opportunity for luck here either. So I had it down as a one. So Paul, you mentioned you thought it was commensurate with other abstract games. So what do you have it down for theme? How well do you think the theme has been integrated with the game? I enjoy the theme. I gave it a three.
I'm sure there's other themes that could work, maybe like the Wild West, but with the border crossings and the influence and the tea theme, I think it's like a shoe. I don't know. I like it a lot. All right. Greg, would you have it down for theme? It's a four for me because I agree with everything that Paul said. And this game certainly could play with other similar themes.
I think the trading and having to manage your workers, whether you send them out on the road or whether they're doing work in your hometown, I think that that all resonates for me. And then what really elevates it to the four for me is how much we get into giving that inspector a tea party or when we get top level influence and, hey, you can't tell me what to do. I'm the emperor's buddy. I mean, those kind of things just, you know, it feels like we're getting into the theme of the game there.
And I have a lot of fun with that. So, well, and then there's the horsey running down the road. Oh, you've got to make the horsey sounds. I also had it down as a four. And I was surprised by that result because at first I was like, no, it's just a two. It's an abstract game. And I thought, well, no, actually, I really enjoy the artwork. It's a three. And then I started thinking about each of the mechanics and they all made sense.
It was like, OK, I get that if I've moved my horse farther and created a longer network, then I'm going to reach more lucrative provinces and more remote markets. And the idea of being limited in the number of boarding crossings I'm going to be able to make or how well respected I am within the emperor's court, everything made so much sense. It didn't just feel like a name that was laid on top of a mechanism. It really felt like it was well designed and engineered together.
So for me, it is also a four. And I was looking at some of the history behind this today, and it meshes up really well when you actually look at the Song Dynasty and the tea trade at that time. And it evokes that feeling of dealing with that feudal system of government and having to appease people and being able to boot people off that don't have as much influence as you all that. Just yeah, I love it. Now we're down to what player count do you think the game is best played at?
And so we were foreshadowing before. And let's see how many other words I can come up with that say the word four in them, because I have the number as four for my favorite. And I would say the reason why I like it is because it's still possible to not get what you really want in a four player game. If the three people take the extra worker and they're at nine, 12 and 15, you on spaces, you're not getting an extra worker that round period.
And maybe you think about going to the bank because so much money is being spent at three players. You're always going to have the option of going where you want, whereas five is even more chaotic. So I feel like four has got risk, but it's the happy balance between risk and control. What do you guys think, Paul? I very much prefer the full house of five players. I don't mind playing with four.
Four is still a good game, but it really weakens the bank action and it makes plans a lot easier to execute. So for the exact same reasons you listed, I prefer five players. All right. What did you have? I agree. Five is my favorite as well. Yeah, it's more chaotic in some ways, but you get more of a balance in the game because of that. I think because you have enough people at that point that you don't have to watch out constantly for, well, is somebody getting something too cheap?
Everybody just can focus on their own self interest a little more and it kind of auto balances a little bit because it's very hard. There's too much going on for somebody to get away with murder. In a four player, everybody has to be really watching out to make sure somebody doesn't get a great deal or to make sure somebody's not hitting that trader auction house every turn and getting too many traders. Make them pay 15 or they're going to run away with the game. Things like that.
It just naturally happens in the five player and that doesn't mean that there's not opportunity for exploitation. It just means it requires a little more clever play because we've seen games end in six on a five player game too. But again, the bank action is just so much stronger and that's part of what enables that. Right. So five is your favorite player account. What is your least favorite remembering that the game supports from two to five?
I'll say three, but only because I haven't played it at two. The two player game is a very different thing in this version of Yunnan. You actually play two colors, but you can use a combined score anytime you do scoring. So I haven't even bothered playing it because it sounds unappetizing. I'd rather play something else than two players, but I'm going to say three though, because I think there's too much too easy to get away with things and bank is completely worthless of three player.
For me, it's three players. I think three player Yunnan is a very heads down game. There's hardly any chaos and you don't even have to worry about what your opponents are doing. And I agree. I had it for the same reason. The two player game with each player managing two colors, there's still the opportunity for one of the colors not to get the thing that they most need.
And maybe you plan around that, but at least there's interest in that decision to decide which color you're going to prioritize. And in the three player game, I'm going to go do my thing. And as long as I have enough money coming in, which as long as I can afford 15 yuan, I can get whatever I want. And so I think three players is probably the weakest entry there. So then how much time would it take to play? What's the actual playing time of the game?
Because boxes can lie and the box says that the playing time is supposed to be 90 minutes. In my experience, it's about 60 minutes. As we've been saying, our games almost always end in six or seven turns. Right. Yeah. I think when we first started playing it, we were seeing games that clocked in 90 minutes to two hours. But once everybody became fluent in the game, it's one of the few games where we were regularly beating the play time, even at five players. Right. I did the same thing, right?
I got the history through BG stats and you're right. We were playing around an hour 40, hour 50. And now we are coming in at an hour and small change. So an hour, four, an hour and five minutes at four or five players. Number of players has not been indicative as to game length. So that part's actually pretty good. We're beating the playing time as advertised on the box. So this next question is going to be interesting because which edition is the best?
And as of today, there's just the 2013 edition, but there is one is going to be released potentially here in July of 2023 by Spielwerks with new art and some rule changes. So why don't we talk about that? What are some of the updates to the rules that are coming in? What are your thoughts about them? There are a few changes. I have a list here, so I'll just quickly try to go through them.
In the original version, if you get kicked back to Pu'er, your guy's still going to earn three bucks no matter what. In the new version, if you have more than one trader, you're still only going to earn three bucks for Pu'er regardless of the number of traders. So it's not three per trader like it is in the original version. So that strengthens influence a little bit. It makes it a little bit more punishing if the inspector kicks you back, if you've already got somebody in Pu'er.
It really makes it undesirable to have too many guys that might end up in Pu'er unless of course you're trying to manage turn order, but that's the whole time. The next thing is T-house scoring. The T-house scoring is completely revamped. In the original version, you get 12 points for T-house regardless of where it is. In the new version, you're going to get an increasing number of points based on how far from Pu'er you are. So it starts at one point, it's pure middle. So it's 1.361015.
Until you get to the last two provinces, it's not even comparable to what you would earn in the original version. So it really, it weakens that early game T-house, which I think it might be a good thing, but it encourages players to try to travel farther more often, which I think is one of the big themes of the changes they made. Because the next one is horses. The big change there is you earn points for horses. Right now, it doesn't matter how far your horse travels.
The only way you get points from it is by getting traders to wherever your horse is or building a T-house where your horse is. In the new version, your horses earn points the same way you earn points for influence or border passes, which is... Wow. For the first step, you get one point, for the second step, you get four, then nine, and then 16 if you make it all the way to the final province. Just moving your horse is a valuable thing to do, regardless of whether you move traders along with it.
It's not very often that people go to that final province. And even when they do, they're not sending a ton of traders there. They're maybe sending one or two at the very end of the game to try to grab some gifts, but maybe not even that. And so this is a way to really encourage people to get their horse down there, which then more points and more opportunity to get traders up there. The next thing is the bank. They've changed the bank so that both players get the same amount of money.
I don't have any strong feelings about this one. I think that it kind of removes some of the push your luck element to going to the bank action. It doesn't matter whether you're first or second, but I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. Then they've included the Dianmu temple in the base game now. So in the original game, there was an expansion that was called Dianmu temple.
It allowed you to bid in another auction house, the temple, where in this auction house, it's the same bid increments, but only the top bidder stays there. Everybody else gets kicked out and that person gets to place a storm token over one of the gorges. We talked about how powerful those bridges were. Well, this storm token stops those bridges from working for a turn.
So it's a way to disrupt the game of people who are trying to get those shortcuts and maybe don't have enough traders to fill out the long road back to where. So does that become a part of the base game or is that also a module that can be added? It's included in the base game. Of course you could decide not to use it as a house rule, but it's part of the base game now. So it's printed on the board and everything? Yeah. And so those are the changes to the base game.
They don't have the pro mode in the rules or any tracker on the board. Yeah. There's no more debt. Made me cry. Yeah. And then they have added an expert mode, which is basically the long game. It allows somebody to bid in the same auction house twice. Normally you can only have one trader in an auction house that would allow you to kind of catch up on something that you may be lagged behind in an earlier rounds. It adds guards to the game, which basically are something that you build.
You have one guard that you can build. And for that round, you can place your guard in a province. And for that round, you can't be kicked out by other players. You can still be kicked out by the inspector, but you can't be kicked out by other players for that round from that province. I don't know how I feel about that, but what I don't like is the game end only ends in the expert mode by gifts. You have to get down to at least two gifts on the board for the game to end. Oh, it's not zero.
It's two. I believe it's two. I can double check that, but I believe it's two. How many gifts start in Qinghai? Two. Two are in the final province. So it starts with five in Sichuan, four in Khamdo, three in Tibet and two in. Qinghai, but you said it only ends when you get down to those gifts. So 80 points is no longer the trigger. Nope. Normally there's two triggers, either 80 points. Somebody reaches 80 points or there are no present tokens left on the game board.
And that's in the new version as well. But in the expert mode, the only way it ends is when there are no more presents on the game board. I don't know why I thought two. So I was just wrong. All right. So the influence player who hangs their horse back, even if they get to 120, they're not ending the game. That's curious that they call it an expert version.
Yeah, I think it's expert in the sense that it allows everybody to fully develop their game so you don't have that feeling of, well, I was building a better engine, but you just ended the game before I could exploit it completely. I think there's a lot of that in the game design of like those exploits that end the game early were kind of discouraged in the game. Going really heavy into traders.
Well, you better have the movement to get them out of poor and maybe the influence to keep them from being kicked as well. Right. It feels like they're taking away player agency and making the game take a longer duration of time with those changes. My guess is that they saw that the end game in higher level play, people weren't using that final province and they wanted to have the game fully developed more often. It's kind of dictating how players should play to me. I agree with you.
It's taking away a little bit of agency. Okay. Yeah, I'm surprised to hear that. The only other thing probably worth mentioning is it is a completely new board, nothing really game changing there. I think they did a good job of incorporating some of the key player aids on the board, just like in the original version. Mostly being that the phase tracker for the round, which is a great job of like teaching the game and helping the game run.
I love it in the original game and they've kept that in the new version. Rest of it is probably just more a matter of taste. Right. For me, it feels more cluttered, but I'm sure other people love it and think it's better. All right. So expansions. And Greg, you mentioned one, the Dianmu temple, which allows you to blockade a canyon or place a storm token there. And then the other one was the Tudigong shrine, which it's another place to bid on.
And if you win, it doubles the contribution from another progress building. So that was a promo and you didn't mention it as being included in the new version. So is that? No. Well, what they did instead, I think, is that expert mode.
They allow you to get twice in the same, which actually has a better mechanic, I think, than having a separate building because it keeps pressure on those living in spaces of the auction houses and forces you to pay more if you want it again, rather than getting something twice cheaply. We've played the shrine expansion a few times and I thought it made the game a little too easy. I haven't. Well, before you played with us, Todd, I did feel like it made the game a little too easy.
Todd, you might like it because being able to double move your horse or double jump and influence is a way to completely change your strategy and react to what the other players are doing. Yeah, I personally don't care for that. In my mind, the thing that I don't like about either one of these expansions is that they give you more places to put your workers in a worker placement game. And I personally like it when those spaces are hotly contested.
So giving me more options isn't necessarily a better experience. Right, right. The Dianmu Temple, I think it's interesting.
I think that it puts some risk factor into using a bridge strategy because potentially you could lose all your traders in a distant province if somebody blocks a bridge to them, if you can't backfill those workers or if nothing else, you're going to lose a lot of income from those people because you don't have to, which means you have to save money every round to potentially bid on that temple. It's a change to the game.
I don't know if it's better, but it seems like it could be interesting from time to time. I think it's one more factor as well as the poor traders not earning that will force the game to go longer, probably be an eight round game. Yeah, agreed.
One other thing worth mentioning on the Shrine expansion, they also added a alternate rule for the banks that I hadn't noticed until I was doing research for this, or it suggests the option of for the second person to go to bank, they still get half the money that the first person does, but that trader after they've gotten that money from the bank gets to go to Puer and earn the income as well. It balances out a little bit. It doesn't go to what the new version of the game did.
I don't know if that's making the game better or not, but it makes it a little less painful to be the second person in the bank. Interesting. Okay. All right, so most recognizable comparison. What is the highest ranking game that makes you think of Yunnan? Paul, why don't you go first? Well I skipped an obvious one and ended up picking Chicago Express, otherwise known as Wabash Cannonball.
Okay. And the reason is because in my opinion, both Yunnan and Wabash Cannonball have similar amounts of path dependency. They are similarly deterministic chaos and they have very similar play times. All right. I can see that. And hey, you have basic wooden components and for recognizable or easy colors. So tactically it feels similar. I'll go ahead and instead of trading tea, I'm going to be trading beer. And for me, that's brass Birmingham.
The idea of building out your network and expanding your abilities to get better payouts to me feels similar and better done in brass. What did you have Craig? So I'm actually going to say my choice is Steam, number 258. Not age of steam, steam. I thought that was the obvious one. FYI. Okay. To me, the obvious one was Power Grid, but I already mentioned that. Yeah, you named off that one earlier. That was my back up. Because of the turn order and snowballing income, but whatever.
So to me, one of the most interesting aspects of this game is that decision of when to earn points, when to shift gears from taking income to earning points. And that's something I also love about steam. It's the first game I played with that mechanic in it. And it's one of the reasons that I was excited to play Yunnan in the first place. Steam also has auctions every round and the path building and yeah, I totally agree Craig. Nice. Less recognizable comparison.
Go ahead, Greg. What did you have for the less recognizable comparison? I'm going to say Vegas Showdown. It's a game that predates this by about four or five years, I think. And it's similar in that it's an auction game where you have limited spaces to bid on. In Vegas Showdown, you only get one thing to bid in a turn, but in the cheapest auction items, the auction amounts are the exact same amounts as in Yunnan, the 5, 7, 9, 12, 15.
So it seems like this, it was an inspiration to Yunnan in that sense. But it's also you have to snowball your income and there's a couple factors that affect your income. In the case of Vegas Showdown, it's how much money can the rooms that you've built earn and how many people do you have actually in your casino? And then the point mechanism is completely different, but just those two elements of having an auction where you can outbid somebody and kick them out of that auction.
And then the fact that it is such a similar snowballing income where the more you earn, the better you can bid on things later in the game to build up your economy. Nice. That's a good one. Paul, what did you have? I have been thinking about a game that is economic and causes a lot of conflict. And that game is Pantamax. And I bring it up because Todd, I know you dislike Pantamax as well.
And I think it's because of the interdependencies of the game and how you have to rely on other players either being nice or being mean to balance the game out. It's not very similar, Yonan, except for the fact that you're trying to form alliances and you're really hoping other players do the thing that you want them to do. And if they don't, you get really upset. Yeah. Well, one of the things that is going to come out later too is also playing late.
So I can tolerate that if the game is over reasonably quickly. And at least the game of Pantamax that we played, that one took us over two hours. And so, yeah, at the end of it, it's just like, that was a lot of time invested in something that really ended sourly for me. I'll pick one that is actually a long throwback here. It won the Spieldiars in 1989. It's a game called Auf Auxi, which was later released as Convoy. It's roll and move.
Although there was a version that was released in 2007 that helped to mitigate the randomness. They basically added another die and you rolled two of them and you got to pick one. And then you bid on the contracts for delivery in a very similar style to Yunnan or Amon Ray, where the bid values were pre-printed. And so it was fixed bid on each one of them. And it's actually an awesome pick up and deliver game that's probably due for a reprint at some point since the last version was 16 years ago.
So that was what I had as the less recognizable comparison. And no, Paul, that wasn't the one I thought you were going to pick. I thought you were going to pick Homesteaders. Same here. That was my backup was Homesteaders. Well, I mean, Homesteaders has the same auction or similar auction to the Vegas showdown as well. Right. I already used Homesteaders in our Amon Ray episode. OK. Yeah, that's true. Amon Ray is the granddaddy of them all.
Yep. All right. So House Rules, how would you improve this game? And I don't have an answer, but Greg, it sounds like you do. Well, I mean, horsey sounds. You're absolutely right. It's a must. That was it. I was waiting for the horse sound. There it is. If you're playing the base game, play with the Pro Rules, the original 2013 version, play with the Pro Rules. I think it's a great game.
I'm interested to try if next time we play a five player game, playing it with that bank variant that was on the Shrine expansion. But other than that, I don't really have House Rules for this. That might change if I get the chance to play the new version. Maybe there will be some things that I really like about it. Maybe I'll see the value of having points for the horses or changed points for the teahouses or whatever. But as of right now, I love the game as it is with horsey sounds.
Paul, did you have anything? You can't improve perfection. Okay, that's a little thick, but okay, sure. If this is a game that's being played, what is the one that you play afterwards? What's the double feature game that you play along with it? Paul, what did you have? Steam or Age of Steam? I just figured let's do more of the same, right? Solid. Greg? I actually was thinking brass.
While I don't feel like they feel similar in mechanics, they do have a similar, like you said, they have a similar feeling. Just kind of like what you're trying to do in the game and how you're trying to go about it just is nice. I feel like the mixture of mechanics would be great that they don't play anything like, but you're still building little empires. Yep. And I went with a newer game.
I went with Furnace because you still have auction in productions, the strategy is a little easier to manipulate and it has a shorter playing time. So typically when I think of the double header game, I think of Yunnan being the main course and if I'm looking for something a little lighter to finish off with, I would suggest Furnace as being a good pairing. By the way, I have to say it.
My first answer to that was going to be Yunnan because a double header of Yunnan is just a great thing in my book, but for your sake, Todd, we'll try not to do that anymore. Thank you, Greg. That's usually the one who says that. Yeah, Paul, that's usually Paul's response. More Yunnan would be great. So if you like to own the blank, then you're going to like Yunnan. What did you have there? What are the elements of this game that might be an indicator that you're going to like playing it?
What I put is if you like deterministic play with player driven chaos, you're going to like this game. This is a battle of wits. It's trying to read what other players are going to do, trying to get the best out of every round. Paul, what would you have? Same thing. I basically said if you like Wabash Cannonball, I think you'll like Yunnan. So if you like pain and frustration, then you're going to like Yunnan, but really it's says the outwitted. Yeah, 100%.
Look, I'm not saying I understand this game at all. I keep saying it's opaque to me, but if you like the fixed auction types and so like another one that makes me think of this is like Keyflower, right? Because you could be all set up to do something and then someone comes in and sets the auction to a different color than the meeples you have in hand. And suddenly you can't get that thing.
If you like that kind of conflict, especially in the auction when you're doing either action selection, then you're going to like Yunnan because it has that in spades. Yeah, it's interesting. There's a lot of games that I don't like that kind of thing in. Yunnan is one of the few games that I relish it. It's like you curse you. You took what I wanted.
You know, I mean, I love that element of the game where you're like now I have to rethink my whole turn because you outfitted me where I really wanted to go. Right. But it's literally putting it out of reach because sometimes I don't know what it is. I guess in every auction it comes down to it, right? I bid more money than you can. So fine. You're out. But there's something about Yunnan that feels so much different because I just don't even have the opportunity.
I might have 21 yuan available, but if all three spaces are filled, I can't get it. Period. Right. Yeah. So there's just that being denied no matter how well I plan to head for it. Yeah, that's true. Well, and that's all right. If you don't like fill in the blank, then you're not going to like this game. Do you guys want me to take this one? Since I'm the one that has the biggest beef with the game. Yes, please do. Yeah. Well, I've said it before closer to the top of the pot.
And Paul, you said it actually is why you relish it. It's the idea of having nuanced results from the action selection. If I move my trader into Yunnan and I can kick you, I might prevent your trader from affecting the leader in Sichuan, you know, getting the envoy to go there or by them being able to kick the leader out of that province. But there's no guarantee that you're going to do that. If I go to Komdo, I think it's safe. But then someone takes extra border crossing and ends up in Komdo.
And now I'm getting kicked out. If you don't like not having as much clarity into what's going to happen after you have dedicated your resource to make a selection, you may not like this game. What do you guys have? I would say something similar. The way I put it is player managed balance.
If you don't like player managed balance, it relates to what you're saying, where it's you have to kind of foresee how other players are going, what other players are going to do and how that's going to affect you. And also it's bouncing. This game is an easy game to teach, telling people what they can do on every turn, telling people how they earn income. That's all easy. Telling them how to play the game, though, is difficult.
And especially when it comes to the kind of stuff you're talking about, because it is very nuanced. And it's like, well, you could do this, which would bump that guy back here, which would change this effect and make the province inspector come here. And that would mean that he would get kicked out because he has, you know, it just gets so convoluted so quickly and it's confusing to new players.
And even somewhat experienced players easily make mistakes there and or don't see the full consequences. Yeah, but it's an essential part of the game because to some degree, you have to keep an eye on what other players are doing and balance it out. Stop them from getting too far ahead. Don't leave them cheap things in the auction house that are going to let them get two or three things in one turn and then just leapfrog ahead of you.
If you don't like player managed balance and having to keep track of all those different nuances, then yeah, you won't like this game. I said, if you don't like having your workers slapped around, you won't like this game because that's a big part of being on. Right. Yeah, I was going to teach this game to my family this weekend.
And for those are the reasons that I decided not to is having the moment I thought about teaching, oh, you're going to get kicked around and it's going to be for everybody's best interest except for the person getting kicked. And it's OK. You know, right. Oh, it's fair. So has this game since been replaced? And if so, by what Paul, would you have? I have no idea. It's just a flat no. Just flat. No, that's fair. No, no, no. It's just my collection.
It will stay there and I will want to keep playing it because it's a niche that nothing else does. OK, so I wrote it's been replaced by fun and specifically. Space Station Phoenix. Did I hear you call out Space Station Phoenix? You did. Yeah. Nice. I would much rather play Space Station Phoenix.
And I find the the player interaction to be much more interesting, like the game we have going right now on board game arena where it's just all been brinksmanship about how long we can go without taking taking income, the income and then descending and just I destroyed one of my buildings to make sure you guys couldn't use it. Right. I mean, I literally use somebody else's building and destroyed mine just to keep it going. I think the game's a lot more enjoyable.
So I would choose to play Space Station Phoenix. Awesome. Yeah. Great. What music would you want to listen to while playing? Do either of you want to proffer an answer on this one? Well, you know, this is one of the few games where we have played to a soundtrack, at least I have. And I basically searched for a Chinese tea house mix on Spotify and it was very enjoyable. Yes. Yeah, I think this one for me would need a custom playlist.
I think maybe the their G-Ling Limited soundtrack might fit a little bit, but I would probably do a custom playlist. And the album that I would put in there first is a album called Princess Shook Her Head with the Sounds by One Way. It has a track called Puer in it and it's got a good vibe. So and I'd add some other things in there. And I agree with Paul, you know, you could look up Chinese tea house music. There is a historic or traditional style of music called Jiangnan Sizhu.
You can look it up and you can find a YouTube video that goes on for an hour and five minutes, which coincides with our playing time. So I would probably just put that on in the background and let it roll. Oh, nice. Now the fun one, rating. On a scale of one to ten, no decimals. Polarization here. How would you guys rate this game? You want to say it or me, Paul? I rated a ten. Same here. Are you kidding me? A ten. Wow. I've had it as a ten for about eight years, I think.
When we first played, it wasn't that high. But after about ten plays, yeah, it's a ten for me. I can't imagine unless there's something comes along that is just does everything that this does and more or better or faster. I don't know why this would go out of rotation for me. Wow. OK. Well, foreshadowing, I had it as a four, which by BGG's definition is not so good, but I could play it again. Right. By definition, I could be talked into it on occasion if I've repressed the previous memories.
I have the same ten plus plays of this game and I just feel like I'm beating my head against the wall every single time. And the thing is, I have such faith in you guys. Look, I get it. I get it. I didn't get the opportunity, but I think I'd be on this page with you. If we talked about Dune Imperium, I'd be the one saying, no, it's not worth playing. Don't do it. It just sucks.
You're just going to set yourself up for having lots of good plans that you think you're doing good and then somebody will come along and just screw you over and you wasted an hour. Yeah. All right. Is this game replayable? And if so, how soon would you want to revisit it? I am happy to play this game every single week. OK. Greg, what do you have? I can't quite say that, but it certainly is pretty replayable. I don't say that about any game.
I value variety and novelty too much to say I would play it every week. I certainly wouldn't say no, but any game, any game, all my 10s I feel that way about where it's like if I had to play them every week, I would be begging to play something else. But I can't think of any other game that has stood the test of time that this one has. I keep wanting to come back to it and keep finding new things in it.
Wow. So because I'm a glutton for punishment, I do think the game is replayable and I keep wanting to play it because I feel like I'm missing something. As I was saying, I have faith in you guys. You guys have good judgment. I can't be this far off. And yet I am completely out of the loop on this one. And I would play it again tonight if I knew that I would finally understand its secrets. I've done that as well. I wasn't hot on Great Western Trail and it's still got a high score.
It's probably maybe a six or seven for me now. But it's something that I won't run away from anymore because I played it after that. Okay, I get it. I see the appeal. I still feel like I'm incompetent at the game. And so it makes it hard to be excited about playing it, but I see deeper now. I hear you. Next week's game may go deeper still. So Todd, during this conversation, I feel like we have made the exact same points to represent completely different feelings and perspectives.
So ultimately, I'm afraid this game is just not your cup of tea. And without revolving kickback to poor Aaron. Thank you for listening to Replayable. Support for our podcast comes from listeners like you. Thank you for your support. You can find us online at Replayable.fm, on Twitter as Replayable FM, and on Instagram as Replayable FM. We're all new to this. We're only going to get better with your help and your feedback. You can get in touch with us via email at Todd at Replayable.fm.