Yokohama

Readiness

ready (confidence=0.88, rules=0.90, fun=0.85). BGG rank: 155; year: 2016; weight: 3.28; playtime: 90 min

Core Loop

Yokohama is a worker placement / area expansion game set in 19th-century Yokohama. Players place their president token and trader tokens (meeples) on the district tiles that make up the modular board. On your turn, you move your president to an adjacent district and may perform that district's action — but only if you have at least one trader already in that district. Traders are placed in advance using a separate action, so you must "set up" districts before your president can exploit them.

The districts each have a unique action: Church (foreign contact cards), Trade Hall (sell goods for money/VP), Store (buy goods), Dock (buy goods from ship), Post Office (complete orders), Construction (build your personal infrastructure), Port (advance harbour), etc. Your personal infrastructure board has slots for buildings, assistants, and foreign contacts — these provide ongoing bonuses whenever the corresponding district is used.

Orders (from the Post Office) specify a combination of goods to deliver for VP. The game runs until one player completes a set number of orders (count depends on player count) or certain supply piles exhaust.

Turn Structure and State

• BGA tutorial is present; useful for exact turn flow and implementation gotchas.
• BGG description anchor: Once Yokohama was just a fishing village, but now at the beginning of the Meiji era it's becoming a harbor open to foreign countries and one of the leading trade cities of Japan. As a result, many Japanese products such as copper and raw silk are collected in Yokohama for export to other countries. At the same time, the city is starting to incorporate foreign technology and culture, with even the streets [...]

Win Condition and Arc

Most points at game end. Points come from completed orders, harbour track position, buildings on personal board, and end-game bonuses. The arc: early game establishes trader networks in productive districts; mid-game chains together production and delivery; late game races to complete the trigger order count.

Decision Primitives

BGG mechanisms: Contracts, End Game Bonuses, Grid Movement, Modular Board, Network and Route Building, Set Collection, Variable Set-up, Worker Placement, Worker Placement, Different Worker Types

Memory-derived primitives:

• Worker placement (president + traders, setup-then-exploit pattern)
• Area expansion (modular board, district adjacency movement)
• Resource management (goods, money)
• Order completion (set collection / recipe fulfilment)
• Engine building (personal infrastructure board)
• Network building (harbour track advancement)

v4 controlled primitives: action_blocking, engine_growth, shared_objective_card, variable_setup_per_game, tech_tree_unlock

Why It Is Fun

The president/trader setup creates a distinctive two-speed planning problem: you must think at least one "move" ahead, seeding traders in districts you plan to exploit next turn. Timing is tighter than it looks — a district with no traders is dead to your president no matter how good its action. The combination of personal infrastructure growth and order completion gives the game multiple scoring paths.

Player-voice evidence:

• And Achievements and Free Agents promo; TMG orange box version
• Thoughts are based on my minimal experience with worker placement games: The Good: +Rudimentary Worker placement mechanics meaning it is not too convoluted. +Variable game board setup is fantastic for longevity. +The multiple platforms...
• Gran bel gioco. Quasi inaspettatamente. La prima visione del tabellone fa lacrimare gli occhi, in realtà Yokohama e un gioco interessante e profondo ma al tempo stesso semplice, seppur la prima spiegazione richieda tanto tempo. Si tratta...
• at first glance its look like a heavy game but its a simple game: 1-place your assistant 2-move your president 3-do your action that`s it all is left is to decide what to do its a game im gladly play everyday its quick game . our first 2...
• This is one of those games that will never be the same twice. The layout of the boards and tech card choices make for great replay-ability.

Friction and Failure Modes

• Treat Sonnet-memory edge rules as draft until confirmed by manual, BGA, or transcript.

Translation and Design Hooks

• Use this card to ask: which primitive carries the fun if theme/licensing is removed?
• For iOS, look for short-session compression, clear state visualization, and a digital-only twist.
• For new tabletop design, look for the tension source and decide whether to preserve or invert it.

Edge Rules and Gotchas

• Moving the president costs nothing; placing traders costs a trader token (finite supply, returned slowly)
• Some districts allow up to 3 actions if you have 3 traders there — stacking traders amplifies one district's output
• Foreign contact cards (from Church) are persistent abilities that upgrade specific district actions
• Assistant tiles (from Construction) are personal bonuses triggered whenever you use specific district types
• Harbour track gives end-game VP for position; some harbour milestones provide immediate bonuses when crossed
• The modular board setup changes each game — district arrangement alters optimal paths

Sources Used

[
  {
    "kind": "bga_tutorial",
    "path": "data/bga_tutorials/196340.md",
    "quality": 0.85,
    "note": "BGA implementation rules summary"
  },
  {
    "kind": "bgg_comments",
    "path": "data/bgg_comments/196340.txt",
    "quality": 0.75,
    "note": "positive/player-voice sample"
  },
  {
    "kind": "llm_memory",
    "path": "data/llm_memory_sonnet/196340.md",
    "quality": 0.65,
    "note": "sonnet-self-rated-7"
  }
]