Yspahan: If you can pronounce it, you can have it

I've heard that some parents will play a little educational game whenever they give their children a treat. The game goes like this: "If you can spell it, you can have it" and the child has to spell the name of the treat correctly before he/she can have it. Yspahan is a game that, if ever given to me, the giver better not ask me to pronounce or spell it because I'd never get it right.

Yspahan is a game I played over lunch at work. We played it at two or three different lunches. The first round of the game was just to learn how to play it, and the second game we played was a actual play session. My initial impression is that the game is good; not great, but good. First of all, it is a worker placement game. So, in that way it falls in with a lot of German board games like Agricola, Puerto Rico, Pillars of the Earth, and etc. However, the difference in this game is that one rolls dice to determine what is available for placement. One player rolls dice and those fill out a grid... it will be easier to understand via a video. (This is not my video. Credit goes to Scott of Board Games With Scott.)

I do really like the way the dice rolls fill out the board/grid and players must adjust their strategy given what they have available to them. That is a clever mechanic I had not seen before. Moreover, it is balanced well (rolls didn't feel crushing or too powerful for any one player in the sessions I played). In fact, I think it is safe to say that the dice rolling mechanic is implemented well. It certainly was my favorite element of Yspahan.

I am not sure I like how complicated the game is. For example, I never could wrap my head around quite how the camel trail board could be played. I understood it well enough to follow when someone else did it, but I didn't understand how it worked well enough to where I could incorporate it into my strategy. Instead I just forgot about that camel trail board and focused my strategies elsewhere. I would like to say the game is over complicated and that is a problem with it, but the truth is I haven't played it enough. Maybe after a few more plays, it would all make sense, and I could see how to utilize all the different aspects and/or mechanics of the game.

So, as of now, I can't really evaluate the game except to say: I liked the game and would play it again, but on the other hand, it was just another worker placement game. The dice roll board is interesting, but it isn't enough to set Yspahan significantly apart from other worker placement games. If you get a chance to play Yspahan, I suggest giving it a try. Assuming you are lukewarm on worker placement games, you can go into the game session with a similar, lukewarm expectation that the game will be good but not great.