A good board game should be a perfect marriage of game design and graphics. You could argue that the game design is more important, but in today's world where desktop publishing makes graphic design and layout relatively easy, there is no excuse to skimp on the graphics (I'm looking at you, The Expanse Board Game). At the same time, great artwork and graphics will only take you so far before the reality of a mediocre game design starts showing through (Grimslingers, for example).
Often a game will rely on excellence in one of these areas to make up for shortcomings in the other, but that is not the case with Yamataï, a terrific board game graced with some truly gorgeous artwork. I will admit that the artwork is what immediately caught my attention, but there is a good, solid game underneath, with an interesting combination of resource management, drafting, and board placement elements.
The board depicts a densely packed collection of islands, upon which players must build structures such as palaces and trading posts, strategically placing them to best advantage. Placing the structures involves moving ships of various colors into position around the island you want to build on -- each structure requires a particular combination of ships to be adjacent. At the same time, your opponents are trying to build their own structures, moving ships around or worse, building on an island you were planning on using on a future turn.
The game's complexity is heightened with a drafting mechanic. At the start of each round, players choose from a selection of tiles that give you different ships to use on your turn as well as a special ability such as rearranging ships on the board, blocking particular islands to prevent others from building there, or allowing structures to be built with fewer resources. There are ten different tiles, but only five available on any given round, so players can't repeat the same moves over and over. These tiles also tell the players what order they'll go in on the following round -- generally the better your tile is, the closer to the back of the line you'll be on your next turn.
Additionally, there are specialists that can be hired (payed for with the game's currency) that give more specific special abilities tailored to particular strategies, usually offering different ways to gain more currency to spend, or more points for scoring at the game's end.
The game play is interesting, with a lot of decisions to make, and even though there isn't much direct conflict between players, there are still a lot of reasons to keep an eye on what the other players are doing, which eliminates tuning out when it's not your turn.
And did I mention that the artwork is gorgeous?
The game play is fairly abstract and there isn't much in the way of a story, so the Asian theme is largely painted on -- it could just as easily be set in the wild west or ancient Greece. The artwork, design, and components are there to hold the players' attention in the place of an immersive story or setting, and it does its job extremely well.
Rating: 5 (out of 5) A great game design without being too complicated, with fantastic artwork and graphics.