Ringyo - Rules Overview. Gorgeous Forest, Manage Growth and Risk. Board Game Preview and Tutorial.
Transcript
Cultivate forests, command samurai, satisfy the shogun, and manage your province to minimize the rainstorm's damage in Ringo.
And today we'll show you a quick how to play or overview of Ringo. We are using a prototype copy of the game, and so the rules and components are not final. And do check out the project page of the game. We'll put the link to that in the video description below.
And hey everyone, it's Stella.
And Tarrant. Welcome to Meeple University.
And hey, if you enjoyed this video after watching, like, subscribe, and comments. You know what to do. Now let's get to the classroom.
Ringo is a bonus drafting and combo chaining game in which players compete to manage their hillside Japanese forests. It was designed by Charlie McCarron and published by Paverson Games. The game plays one to four players in 45 to 90 minutes and is of medium to heavy complexity. In Ringo, players are Daimyos of their own forest provinces in feudal Japan, and the aim is sustainable forestry. Using their workers, players will tend to their forests by planting trees, growing them tall, studying them for knowledge, cutting them down, and using them to build.
The problem is the shogun has granted you a province on the side of a rainy mountain where rain can be your friend, but floods will be your foe. Make the best out of your province and best please the shogun to score the most points and win. The game plays over five rounds.
And each round begins with a brief draft.
Each player picks and sends a diplomat numbered from one to six to visit the shogun. This sets a bonus that you'll gain for the round and resets the turn order from highest to lowest in which players pick from the Shogun's gifts. Each diplomat is one use per game, so choose carefully.
Then players get to work taking actions in their provinces.
The open-air and remote work of forestry comes with a sort of quiet solitude. And in this phase of the game, all players will take any number of actions simultaneously and independent of their opponents.
This stage is a personal puzzle to get the most out of your province.
There are two types of permanent worker which players take back to use every round,
yellow and green samurai. And there are two types of temporary worker who are used once and then discarded. And these are artisans and villagers. To take actions, place a worker on an empty intersection in your province to take actions in the adjacent spaces. That will be one, two, or three actions depending on the worker with at most one action per adjacent space. Not only can your better workers take more total actions, but those better quality workers are also the only ones who can take the strongest actions. Many actions relate to sustainable forestry. A worker can plant a new tree or grow one already present.
Or by placing next to exactly the right size and color of tree, may study it to move up their research track for bonuses. Workers can cut down entire trees for wood. You'll ultimately be spending wood in specific combinations to construct structures. And so, once you've cut down those trees, you can continue cutting them for free. Or you can join pieces together at a cost. This is the core the game, puzzling out to make sure that you have the right trees in the right place at the right time to maximize your research, your building, and ultimately your points. Some areas of your rainy hillside forest begin the game partially flooded.
Perfect conditions for a rice paddy.
Your rice is your food and a key resource to balance. You can spend it to hire workers, spend it when you join wood in building, spend it when you build structures higher up the mountain, and more. Managing your rice all comes back to finding the right partially flooded plains in which to cultivate it. Through this feudal era, players can also invest in military, one of several ways that they can expand their territory, and increase their capacity for forestry.
Stella, Stella, the rains are here.
Our watery frenemy, Tarrant.
Draw and resolve all three rain cards. Each one will show one type of space which will see rain. And you can see for each round what's most likely, but you won't know what's drawn until it falls from the sky. Rain is a double-edged sword. If a tree sees rain, it grows. And if paddies see rain, they yield rice. If empty land sees rain, then it floods. Not too bad. But when flooded land sees more rain, that's when deforestation has its consequences. The flood cascades down the mountain, destroying anything you'd built or grown in its path.
And herein lies your most important decision. Do you manage the flood plain by planting trees or paddies, which will prevent a cascade. Or do you gain a knowledge of forestry, which you can spend to peek at the weather ahead and plan around it? Or do you just run your forestry economy and hope for the best? It's your appetite of risk against reward, which becomes the main source of tension in Ringyo.
After the weather comes the Shogun's demands.
He granted you a province and now he wants his return on investment.
Rice torrent, not corn.
Players take turns in turn order to claim objectives by paying resources to the Shogun. A major source of points and thus another important reason to jostle for turn order at the right time. Now set up for the new round by revealing new Shogun demands and resetting the weather and player boards. After five rounds, players score their Shogun demands, their leftover trees if they've invested in knowledge, their constructed structures, and their secret Shogun's favor objective cards, and the highest score wins.
Ringyo is a game for puzzlers and optimizers.
A game unambiguously suited to players who love to focus on finding the best solution on their own boards. But be clear that this game has its high-stakes collective moments. How much you choose to tempt the fate on the floods, or when you choose to swoop to the front of turn order for the perfect reward, or your pick of the Shogun's demands,
can be game-changing moments. The game's table presence with its sustainable stackable tree cones is lively, and there'll be a solo mode for independent Daimyos.
Thanks for watching, and if you like this video, maybe you'd like to watch this next one. Have a great day. Bye.