Yinsh

Customer Reviews

Easy to learn, hard to master Review by Murray

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Yinsh is an abstract game that is easy to learn, but difficult to master. In this game, you get a number of rings. At the start of the game, you take turns placing the rings until you have no more.

After that, your turns consist of placing a chit of your own color inside one of your rings and moving that ring along a line to any other part of the board. The catch is, you cannot move past another ring. Any chits that you move over, you flip so that it shows the opposite color. Once you start moving over chits, you must place the ring down when there is a space available.

If you manage to create a five-in-a-row, then you can remove those five chits and one of your rings from the board. The player first to remove three of their own rings will win the game.

Since rings will disappear from the board as the game progresses, this gives the losing player more dominance over the board and a chance to catch up. This natural balance in the game is what makes Yinsh great.

Yinsh is a pure abstract game and requires a good amount of thinking and foresight. It is very easy learn, but players will often feel clueless about what to do, especially in the early parts of the game. Between equal level players, however, this can be a really fun game. Well recommended. (Posted on 2/18/10)