Pente and Othello, Meet YINSH

Playing the Strangely Named YINSH

YINSH is a two-player abstract (meaning, it has no theme like a Euro game does) board game that has elements of Pente, where you try to get 5 of your tokens in a row, and of Othello, where you flip your opponent’s token from his color to yours.

There’s more to YINSH than first meets the eye, but what first meets the eye – the bits – is pretty nifty in itself. The rings and disks are quite nicely crafted. They could almost be used as coffee table conversation pieces – though I’m not sure what kind of conversation you could have about them apart from the board game.

After initial setup, your task is to get 5 disks in a row of your color. When you do, you take one of your rings off the board. Your ultimate goal is to get 3 rings off the board.

The problem arises that, as you remove your rings, you have fewer options on the board and thus become weaker for the remainder of the game. Fortunately, that happens to your opponent too.

YINSH is one of a set of board games from an effort called Project GIPF. The other games in the group include DVONN, GIPF, PÜNCT, TAMSK, TZAAR, and ZÈRTZ. Don’t ask me why they capitalized every letter or where they got the names from.

Check the price of YINSH on Amazon.

Fun Meters (out of 5)
Party: 1
Strategy: 5
Family: 2