Tips yokai

Phase of the game

This game is about optimizing the moves and informations given in order to win (as fast as possible).

The game has three main phases:

- the early game (turn 1/2 of each player) where few information are available for each player ;

- the mid game (turn 2/3/4 of each player) where players start to understand exactly where all the final colors will be ;

- the late game where players finish the job by moving the last few tiles.

General

The most important thing to understand is during the early game, the goal is to give informations to others players. More the game advance, and less what you check is important, and more the movement is.

During early game, you want to be obvious in what you did. During late game, you want to be effecient. This is less true at high level table becauve you can understand more easily what a tricky move does (and so be more effecient even in early game).

During mid game, the goal is to optimise the deplacement by trying to gain one turn by moving a card which will link cards of same colors. Per example if you got 4 cards put as a L, and the one in the up and the two in the down of the L are the same color ; you can try to move the middle one, and replace it with a card of the same color of the three others.

Hints meaning

If a red hint is available, and a red/purple hint is available, you can assume using the red/purple hint for red is straight up bad. That mean you can use red/purple to said it's purple.

For the same reason, if a red/purple/green hint is available, and a red/purple is available, you can use the red/purple/green hint for 100% green.

Hints placement

Putting a hint block the tile which can't be moved anymore. Which mean if you block a single card which is red/green/blue, the other players will not be able to know what it is during a very long time. So it's very bad. Without the level 2 variant, the main rule is to only lock a card if you got 2+ cards of the next color next to it. If the hint you want to put is clear on what it is (=at lower level, a hint with only one color), you can lock a single tile on it, especially if it's very early, because it will give lots of early info which is very valuable.

Example of a 2 player start

Here is my personnal start for 2 players if the other player doesn't interfere with what I do and nothing special is going on (like a draw of a single red hint while I already know a red): https://www.zupimages.net/up/21/31/w4c6.jpg . (it's a great one for effeciency, but far from optimal)

That start is done to first, have an okay start if you first four peeks are differents (path 100> 80V 46< 11^), that will let you have two pairs next to each other (or one triple) turn 3 all the time.

And it let you turns 3/4/5, check the 'in-between' tiles, which have higher chance to already be next to another color compared to 'simple' start. Since you can very regulary have 2+ moves to do during those turn, that has an higher chance to have cards already good placed.

Another interresting path is the 100> 80V 17s. You can see the forth peek is really weird. He is done in prevision of the 11 path. The plan is to regroup the color with the 11 path, but if one of the two first color is seen instead. the plan will completely shift, and isntead of putting a into b, i will put b into a. If you know your teammate is using that kind of reasonning, that can convey lots of informations.