The period of the Warring States (475-221 BCE) describes a time of endless wars between seven rival states: Qin, Chu, Qi, Yan, Han, Wei, and Zhao. These states were finally unified in 221 BCE under the Qin dynasty to lay the origin of today's China, with its two main rivers: the Yellow and the Yangtze.
Yellow & Yangtze, the sister game to the highly acclaimed board game Tigris & Euphrates, invites you to replay this eventful period and to lead your dynasty to victory.
In Yellow & Yangtze, players build civilizations through tile placement. Players are given five different leaders: Governor, Soldier, Farmer, Trader, and Artisan. The leaders are used to collect victory points in these same categories. However, your score at the end of the game is the number of points in your weakest category. Conflicts arise when civilizations connect on the board. To succeed, players' civilizations must survive these conflicts, calm peasant revolts, and grow secure enough to build prestigious pagodas.
- High player interaction and compelling tension
- Interesting trade-offs between tracks and territories
- Rich, thematic flavor with strong conflict
- Can be polarizing; not for everyone
- Complex teach to new players
- Conflict and resource management
- Ancient river valley with competing factions
- High-conflict, strategic area control with tension
- Root
- Gloomhaven (analogy to heavy conflict design)
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- area control / conflict — Players vie for control and scoring through conflict and placement
- Card-driven actions — Card play influences actions and conflict outcomes
- multi-track advancement — Players progress on multiple tracks with different rewards
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- the dynamic map element, which that's unique to Catacombs, the other ones just have a static board, is a huge part of the fun of the experience.
- it's a game that allows as much thinking as you want.
- there's nothing like it.