YINSH is the 6th game in the GIPF series and might be Othello meets tic-tac-toe meets connect 4. But it might also be brilliant because there’s a feeling here that being ahead isn’t necessarily the best position to be in. There’s a hidden depth here that is rewarding combined with that othello like satisfaction of flipping tile after tile, which makes YINSH probably my favourite GIPF series game to date. Okay, I’ve spoiled my review in the opening paragraph, but let me tell you more!
How to play?
YINSH sees two players go head to head in an attempt to remove their rings from the board. At the start of the game, each player places 5 rings in their colour on the board and the first to remove 3 wins.
At the start of the game, players will take turns to place a ring on any intersection. Then the game begins!
On your turn, you’ll put a disc of your colour in one of your rings and then move the ring. The ring can move in a straight line to a vacant space. It can jump over pieces, or it can move and then jump over pieces and then stop. Rings block movement, you can’t jump over a ring regardless of who owns it.
Those pieces you’ve jumped over get flipped. Even if they are already your pieces, you’ll be conceding them and flipping them to your opponents side.
Should you make a row of 5 pieces of your colour, you’ll remove the 5 pieces and then remove a ring of course colour. That’s pretty much it.
The first to successfully remove 3 rings, wins!
Initial Thoughts
Our first game saw me taking an early lead, and my opponent felt like they were behind. But actually, they weren’t because I had become restricted in my options through the removal of rings. So they came back from the jaws of defeat to clutch victory. And that was the story of the first few games, a feeling of desperation that actually wasn’t really.
There’s an immense feeling of satisfaction as you jump over multiple pieces of your opponents and then flip them to your side. The pieces have a great weight, and the rings are of equal quality, too. My annoyance and it’s very much a first world problem is that there’s only one nice cloth bag for all the pieces. I’d like at least two!
More Plays, more thoughts
The rulebook says, “Can you find a bit or order amongst the chaos?” and I think I get it now. 6 games in, there’s actually a strategy here, which is beyond just being ahead isn’t necessarily best.
Your rings are as much attackers as they are defenders. See, rings are immovable objects to your opponents. They can hone them in and force them into moves whilst actually protecting yours. Can you see I’m struggling for negatives here?
Unlike TZAAR, which felt aggressive or GIPF, which felt slightly underwhelming. A game of YINSH plays out in about 30 minutes (the box says 45-60), and throughout that, there’s a balancing act of wanting to win, but balancing that with being behind might be better. And forcing your opponent into making a row could be beneficial, whilst you don’t want to completely enable them.
YINSH does have the same weird printed on colour but black and white rulebook, which to me still feels odd. And you might see in the pictures that our board doesn’t lie flat, I’m wondering if it’s to do with whatever the boards are coated in as that’s two games in the series where we’ve had this issue. Component wise the pieces are great. However, there was too much single use plastic, why pieces needed to come in multiple single use plastic bags to then go into a cloth bag seems odd and a waste. But I’m clutching at straws here.
Summary
Overall, you know I rate games on a scale of:
Buy or play
Wait for sale or play if you like game XYZ
Avoid
YINSH is brilliant, I’ve said that above and honestly, I want to just keep playing YINSH. If you don’t like abstract strategy games, you probably won’t like YINSH. If you don’t play two player games, there’s no point consider YINSH. But otherwise?
I feel like YINSH is a game that everyone needs to try, and potentially own. YINSH gets a Buy or play recommendation from me and I think might become one of my favourite abstract strategy games.
