Rio Grande Games Yinsh

This game has a great build quality of bakelite & metal for the pieces, and a standard cardboard game board. The box is oversized for its contents, but that means you could possibly store other Gipf games like Zertz in this. Also, the pieces and board are reusable for other games, such as Backgammon, Checkers, & Gipf, so that is a nice bonus (though you will need the right boards for Backgammon and Checkers, but the Yinsh board is big enough to play Gipf without any modification). Gameplay is easy to understand but there is a lot of depth that is easy to miss the first time around. Your rings are critical for blocking and offense, and in the former case could become pinned. Adjacent rings or those aligned in the same row are considerably weaker, and if you have your rings clumped together, you are in a weak position. Ideally, you want to build your rows of markers in such a way that is is impossible or exceedingly difficult for your opponent to convert them. This game, unlike Othello/Reversi, allows for a much more offensive play, but the consequence is that as you progress, you get weaker with less options to place pieces. Gameplay can quickly pivot, with the person with a winning setup suddenly usurped by the underdog that converted the enemy pieces into their own. You will commonly find yourself having to possibly break up your own lines, or create forks in order to defend against the opponent and build out your longer term strategy. The nature of the game does make it harder to predict many moves ahead, as the board can look so different so quickly. This makes it easier for beginners to compete with more experience players, which I think is a plus when introducing the game to new players. Unfortunately, this game is commonly hard to find in the US, and scalpers sell the game for over $100, When the game has a MSRP of about $35. Fortunately, the German Amazon, Amazon.de, is able to ship this game to the states, for a total cost of around $30-35, which is totally worth it IMHO, as you are buying from a trusted seller a a close to market price. This is definitely the first game of the Gipf series I would start with, both for the aesthetics and the gameplay.

By far the most played game that we have. We have over 60 board games and this one has been the one played the most. We like to play it on teams of 2v2 just like Sequence. Epic game!

Love this game! You can really create your own strategy.

This is a very simple game, but contains depth. High replayability and the game mechanics put both players on the same playing field.

Bought this for my 11 year old granddaughter who loves board games. She has played it with her dad and says she really likes it. I’m happy.

I am only in the last three months getting into some of the newer Euro games. In our house, we have Dominion and Carcassone: Hunters and Gatherers and I have played Ticket to Ride a number of times at the local game store on board game night. It seemed like a good idea to branch out a bit, and I had heard about the Gipf project on that game geek website. So, I took a chance and bought it. Yes, you can play it online, but it is definitely more fun to play it live with another human. The game is an abstract strategy game like Chess or Go. Since I have never played any Gipf games before the game seemed odd at the start, but took only about 15 minutes to Grok the rules. The game plays quickly -- usually a single game lasts less than twenty minutes; so, in that sense, the game is more fun, at least in my opinion that Chess or Go. However, how one develops a strategy for this game is still a mystery to me. Because the markers get flipped or change colors every time a player jumps over them with a ring, it is very difficult to anticipate the future. Overall, I find the game to be fun and fast paced. It makes for a very nice two-player game. Bought this at a local game store -- trying to support small businesses and the local economy -- although I paid full retail plus sales tax that I would not have paid if I had bought the game from amazon.

But im not good at it!

Very nice piece strategic board game for beginners.

Really fun game. Great seller.

I bought and played this game a fair amount about 16 years ago. It had gotten forgotten about until a couple weeks ago. I started playing again with a buddy and we both LOVE it. I have now played with two other friends since, and they both stated that they were going to buy the game themselves. SUPER fun and infinitely re-playable.