Yashima: Legend of the Kami Masters in Review

Yashima: Legend of The Kami Masters is a pitched battle...

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My one game (so far) of Yashima left me fairly cold, but it took way longer than 45 minutes and was made frustrating for me by one thing that I thought would be one of the better things about it: the attack diagrams. The easy ones are easy, but when they involve ranges (especially ranges not including an adjacent hex) and they have "weird" shapes, it's hard for me to figure out whether my target's in the area of effect or not. Our firs/only game was a slugfest as well. Unfortunately, I don't think either of the two expansions in immediate development, both of which were offered through the Kickstarter, will do more than add more of the same. Still, it's a valiant effort and a good production and deserving of more than one try.

Yeah, you know, that part of it kind of made me think of Tash-Kalar (or, "Vlaada game nobody likes")...it's a similar kind of cognitive speedbump. I got used to it, mainly because I was turning the cards and kind of holding them over the board like some kind of old dude or something trying to sort it out. I think that having painted miniatures with very clearly defined "front hexside" coloring would help a lot too, especially since these figures are all over the place, twisted around and such.

I think you're right about the first expansions it looks like each just adds environments and a couple of new fighters.

Michael, how does this compare to something like Summoner Wars? It seems like that game gets rave reviews (including from me) and it's just a mano-a-mano battle with no other meat, but you seem to be lamenting that this is just a mano-a-mano battle. Is it that there's not as many options or something?

No no, that's a very different kind of game...you've got units involved there. In this you have ONE unit. It's something like Yomi or BattleCON but with a hexmap. Or a Heroscape game with two extremely powerful characters with decks of ability cards. There are only four units in the game right now, typically you take one (or two) and that's it. So it CAN become more limited, especially in terms of movement.

WHen I mean mano-a-mano, I mean literally mano-a-mano.

Yeah, I can see that getting stale.

Well, it kind of does at first but when you sort of learn to move around and maximize your attacks it gets more compelling...it really HAS to be played either three on one or two on two to get the most out of the abilities and the attack patterning. One character versus one other one is really not very interesting at all.

Yashima sounds like something I've always wanted to play. There is a really fun premise at the heart of that title that definitely appeals to me. It's too bad that it sounds like they don't really pull it off.