Yinsh: Othello, for grownups!

YINSH is one of the games in Project GIPF, a series of abstract combinatorials (a fancy word meaning "there is no luck") designed by Kris Burm. I've been really impressed with the ones I've played so far, and in limited play, YINSH is my favorite so far.

As in Othello, players are placing reversable pieces on a board and flipping over each others pieces. In YINSH, the goal is to create rows of 5. The catch is that players can only place and flip tokens using one of 5 rings they have on the board, and the movement of these rings is restricted. In addition, every time a player completes a row of 5, they remove one of their rings, and the game is played until one player has removed 3 of their rings. This means that every time you score, you have fewer options for placing and flipping pieces.

I introduced this to Hilary in the evening when she was a bit tired, and in retrospect, that was probably a mistake. She usually likes abstract combinatorials of the "simple to learn, hard to master" variety, and in fact she usually beats me at them the first few times we play - witness our earlier foray into Stick Around. However, in this game, she just felt like she had no idea what she was supposed to do. To be fair, I felt like I had no idea what I was supposed to do either, and in the battle of ignorance, I came out the victor. This time.

Scores:
Chris - 3
Hilary - 1

Game time: 20 minutes