Yokohama Duel manages to distil the Eurogame play of Yokohama into a much faster game, while keeping most of the joy of the original
Big box Eurogame Yokohama arrived from OKAZU Brand in 2016 to great acclaim and is currently nestled just outside the Board Game Geek top 150 games of all time. Yokohama Duel followed in 2018, but the 2020 English edition proved short-lived and almost immediately disappeared, thanks to the sad demise of Tasty Minstrel Games.
Synapses Games reissued the original Yokohama in 2024 with new cover art and a few other tweaks, following it with a rerelease of Yokohama Duel at Essen 2025. As copies of the rare original were changing hands for £75 or more, having an easily accessible edition back in stores at less than £25 is a welcome relief and should allow a whole new audience to experience its charms.
The original Yokohama sees up to four players competing for victory points by collecting goods to fulfil orders, while also competing for unique technology cards, favour from the church, and profiting from imports. This is done through a clever caterpillar-like worker placement system, where you build up strength in areas of the board before triggering them to gain more powerful actions. This creates a great puzzle, with opportunities to block and pull off chain moves – two hallmarks of better Eurogames.
Yokohama Duel manages to distil all of this into a much faster game (45 minutes compared to 90+ minutes), with a much smaller footprint, while keeping most of the joy of the original. Those familiar with its big brother will find the same resources and order cards, foreign agents, church and technology cards (many with the same names), as well Chinatown, customs and the bank. But what you won’t find are the cubes and meeples.
In Yokohama Duel, each player starts with the same set of four power cards (which act like your President) and have strengths of 1, 2, 3 and 4 (as if you had assistants with them). The board has 10 spaces to place these cards, with only the Laboratory and Port allowing more than one card per round. Players take it in turns to place a card on a location, which means if you want a particular resource, you need to get there early – the twist being that you must always play your weakest available power card, giving you a weaker action.
Other than this, Duel will feel very familiar to fans of the original. Four-power moves allow you to place shops or trading houses, while five-plus-power moves give bonuses. Reaching certain criteria (completing three orders, having three technologies, etc) allows you to take a Foreign Agent card, which gives you an extra three-power turn that can be used in any location. Everything is there, with just the main mechanism replaced. Remarkably, I find it every bit as stressful and puzzly as its predecessor.
Production-wise, this edition of Yokohama Duel is far from stellar. Everything is basic, and it won’t wow people as they walk past your table. But at such a good price point, I’m happy to look past aesthetics, especially as everything is functional and the iconography and rulebook do a great job of easing you in, whether you’re new to the world or not.
I was really looking forward to both Yokohama Duel and The White Castle Duel, and while both are excellent games, if I had to keep just one, I’d go with this. It is closer to its original in both feel and weight, if being a little lighter in complexity. That said, thankfully, I don’t have to choose, and I can see both games (and the original) sitting on my shelves for the foreseeable future.
Review by Chris Marling
An excellent Eurogame in a small box, which sets up fast, is easy to teach and gets the mix of tactics and strategy just right.
The White Castle Duel
If you like tight, competitive, brain-burny two-player Euros, both games fit that niche.
Buy your copy of Yokohama Duel online at Zatu
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