Gustavo Vazquez
Brazil
Curitiba
PR
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(Image from Suryoyo. Thanks!)
 - Intro
Yspahan is one of my favorite games. But I always tought it has a problem: basically, the game is about "placing cubes on buildings", or, in other words, it's an "area conquest" game. It has some other mechanics that adds to the flavour: you can buy certain advantages, you can buy camels and gold, you throw dices…
And, unfortunately, one of these "flavours" - placing the cubes on the caravan instead of placing them on the buildings - is so strong that a player can do only this and win by a great margin. I have wrote about that a lot, you can check the forums for Yspahan itself - there's a session report, variants, etc. In short, the "caravan strategy" is so good that placing the cubes on the Souks (the original intent of the game) is almost useless. Everyone uses only a small portion of the board to send as many cubes to the caravan as they can. 
I've tried to change some rules here and there, but I couldn't find a good solution for this problem. I've asked Ystari, and they told me I should check the expansion, "The Souks", and give it a try. Does it work? Oh hell, yes. A lot. As the name implies, this expasion brings the game back to the souks, and away from the caravan. Let's see the changes.
You get 3 new rules and 18 new cards.
(The new cards are bigger. Thanks to Liggur for the picture!)
 - Rule #1
You must really move the Supervisor if you want to send cubes to the caravan. The Supervisor, after moving, send the cubes in front of him to the caravan. A usual strategy for the "Caravan Commandos" is to take a "1", "2" or "3" dice, pay some gold (or use the Hammam) to reduce the movement to 0, and, by moving the Supervisor "0" spaces, "activating" his power again. It's very useful, because you can spend almost every day of the week moving without moving, and sending a lot of cubes. In a week you can send 10, 12 cubes if you do a good planning. Unbeatable, boring… for me it's seems like a mistake of the original rules they didn't noticed on the playtesting.
Now, this is not possible anymore. You must really move him, and then, on the next turn, you can return him to his last place. It weakens the "Caravan Strategy" a good deal. 
 - Rule #2
If you have the Caravanserai and send 2 cubes to the caravan, you get just 1 card. In the past you used to get 1 card/cube… so, using the strategy of moving without moving, not only you could send many cubes, but for each one of them you would get 1 card. Cards that would help you send more cubes… Although not as strong as the first new rule, this one weakens the "Caravan Strategy" a little bit more. By now, it's not so terrible. But there's more to come.
 - Rule #3
When you buy cards using the tower, you buy 2 and discard 1. At first glance this seems to help the caravan, as you will have more chance of getting good cards. But the last improvement will redeem that.
 - The new cards
In the basic game, there were 9 cards x 2. Among these 9, I can say 7 could help "Caravan Commandos" in a way or another. Some of them ("place a cube on any shop", "get 3 camels") were just perfect for the strategy. Now we have 18 different cards. Among the 9 new cards, I believe only 3 ("take a new action", "buy a card just dicarded" and "trade cubes for camels/gold") could help the caravan - but not as much as the original ones, anyway (i.e., not always the discarded card will be one that could help the caravan; a player trying to win using the caravan won't have that many cubes to trade for camels). Every one of the other cards are for reward people placing cubes on the Souks. So, now there is about 9 in 18 cards that can help the "Caravan Strategy". So, from 14/18 to 9/18…
And what about buying two cards at once and choosing one? Wouldn't this be helpful for the caravan? Not really. It is very usual to buy two cards that could help the caravan at the same time… in this case, as you can only take one, you must discard the other. For it to return to the deck you must wait the deck to be emptied, shuffled again - it will take a long time. In the past, there were always 2 of each card, so in case one was lost, sooner than later another one would show up.
(Some of the new cards. Picture from Suryoyo. Thanks!)
 - Conclusion
I have played this game many times. Before the expansion, the "Caravan Strategy" was always a safe bet. The players using it would win. and that's that. Now it's not possible to win just sending cubes there - you will loose to a player placing cubes on the souks. You can (and should) use the caravan to improve your VP - it helps a lot. But you can't bet all your eggs on it.
For me the game is fixed. It's an amazing game, but it used to have this loop… now everything is as it should have always been. Yspahan is one of my favorite eurogames, and for sure the best of the short ones (45 minutes). 
[Edit: one of the images was removed by the user, so I had to place a new one...! Edit 2: Probably I was drunken when I wrote this - the title was wrong...] 
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Lee Ambolt
Sweden
Lund
Skåne
Ingen Reklam Tack!
Linus Per Ambolt 13.12.2010
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Re: Review of the Ystari: The Souks portion of the Ystari Box
When you say sending many cubes, do you just mean someone is sending 2 cubes (next to supervisor), using camels to leave the cubes on the board, then doing that with each dice group they choose, and repeating? How does that work, are the other players not moving the supervisor away to their spot that has cubes next to it? I suppose the 2P variant which blocks the caravan works, we don't seem to bother that much with it, and the points available dont seem more than the souks with bonusses from the buildings.
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tom moughan
United States
Rochester
New York
ahh....I love the smell of a stack of sketchily placed animals in the morning!
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Re: Review of the Ystari: The Souks portion of the Ystari Box
I am sure its possible -- though I have never had the experience of having someone only caravan and win the game. Sure you MUST if others ARE to stay competitive, but I have not seen it win the game on that alone.
What I enjoy most about the souks expansion in the Ysari box is the double card draw. It makes drawing cards a more attractive action and I think adds a certain speed to the game it did not have before. You now can get some very different and powerful card functions (and some of the same) to really advance your gameplay...and a better choice when you do. I believe its a nice addition to the game but Yspahan is quite good all on its own.
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Gustavo Vazquez
Brazil
Curitiba
PR
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Re: Review of the Ystari: The Souks portion of the Ystari Box
ldsdbomber wrote: When you say sending many cubes, do you just mean someone is sending 2 cubes (next to supervisor), using camels to leave the cubes on the board, then doing that with each dice group they choose, and repeating? How does that work, are the other players not moving the supervisor away to their spot that has cubes next to it?
Yes. But about other players moving the supervisor: First, the "Caravan Commando" will probably have the Hamman before the others. Even if other players move it away, he could easily bring it back. And this, in fact, will even help the "Commando" - with the new rules, he would need to move the Supervisor away himself, and them bring it back. I mean: with the new rules, it's better for the opponents to left the Supervisor where it is, so the player will need to move it away himself (and then losing a turn doing that).
Second: okay, other players could combine to send the Supervisor to the farthest space on the board (extreme left). It is 11 spaces away from one of the perfect spots for the caravan combo (the ones with 2 buildings). If the player can get a dice of value 5 or 6, plus 3 from the Hamman, plus 2 or 3 from the coins itself, he could bring the Supervisor all the way back! Ok, he will loose coins, but the other players, meanwhile, will loose the whole turn just to take the Supervisor away (while they could instead be placing cubes in the Souks, buying cards, etc.) So, the damage, imho, is greater for the non-commandos.
I used to play with some variants myself, but you see, I always prefer to play the game "as it is". With the expansion, I can do just that!
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Gustavo Vazquez
Brazil
Curitiba
PR
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Re: Review of the Ystari: The Souks portion of the Ystari Box
lengthtoavoid wrote: I am sure its possible -- though I have never had the experience of having someone only caravan and win the game. Sure you MUST if others ARE to stay competitive, but I have not seen it win the game on that alone.
I have - many times! And winning by a great margin. Of course you need to place some cubes on the board and buy camels... but I repeat: with a good strategy, you can easily send in the last week 10 or even more cubes to the caravan (don't forget that you will be buying cards, and could get the one that allows you to send cubes directly to the caravan. In fact, it's not impossible to send 14 cubes to the caravan in one week if using the old rules! It would give you about 52 points...)
The only option is every player playing the caravan, and this is the reason of my complainings... instead of placing cubes on the Souks, everyone will be sending cubes to the caravan, otherwise they would loose. But, if one player is playing stricly for the caravan, and the others just once or twice send cubes, they could be even helping the commando player...
lengthtoavoid wrote: What I enjoy most about the souks expansion in the Ysari box is the double card draw.
Yes, it's a nice addition. I forgot to mention: the cards on the expansion are a lot better! I think they were too small...
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Maarten D. de Jong
Netherlands
Zaandam
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Re: Review of the Ystari: The Souks portion of the Ystari Box
The strength of the caravan strategy the OP speaks of only makes its appearance in the 2 player-game. In the 3 and 4 player-games the power of the caravan is diminished considerably to the point where it is simply competitive. In fact, in the 3 player-game I've yet to discover any inherent advantage to using the new cards. In the 4 player-game I expect the new cards and rules to be more useful, as there is more contention for scarce resources and things can get rather tight.
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tom moughan
United States
Rochester
New York
ahh....I love the smell of a stack of sketchily placed animals in the morning!
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Re: Review of the Ystari: The Souks portion of the Ystari Box
Say it is 2 player -- if someone starts to do that...you do too and cause the caravan to top off and empty out, no?
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Lee Ambolt
Sweden
Lund
Skåne
Ingen Reklam Tack!
Linus Per Ambolt 13.12.2010
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Re: Review of the Ystari: The Souks portion of the Ystari Box
my wife has WAY too much fun building buildings and throwing cubes round the souks with gay abandon to ever worry about sitting in the middle collecting camels and tossing cubes onto the caravan, so I'm lucky not to have seen this issue I guess!
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Brett
United States
Clarkston
Michigan
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Re: Review of the Ystari: The Souks portion of the Ystari Box
The Souk cards and the Caylus additions are the only reason I would buy the Ystari box. I don't understand why the company does not offer the Souks cards alone. 
Anyway, Yspahan is truly EXCELLENT game and you wrote a great review for the new cards.
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Juanlu Bermudez
Spain
Málaga
Málaga
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Re: Review of the Ystari: The Souks portion of the Ystari Box
vazquezramos wrote: I've asked Ystari, and they told me I should buy the expansion,
These guys really know how to do business. 
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Gustavo Vazquez
Brazil
Curitiba
PR
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Re: Review of the Ystari: The Souks portion of the Ystari Box
To be fair, re-reading the e-mail they just told me to use the new rules, not to buy the expansion... (what I did eventualy)...
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Posted Tue Nov 23, 2010 1:05 pm
