Yardmaster (pré-joué) (EN)

The games in the L'As des jeux Bazar are pre-played games. They have been inspected by one of our game experts and are certified "Complete." You may find some minor imperfections, such as light wear on the box or on certain game components.

In Yardmaster, you put on the yardmaster's cap and sort the railcars rolling into your train yard to build the highest-value train before your opponents. Each turn, you draw cargo cards - coal, wood, oil, livestock or automobiles - then spend them to hook a new railcar onto your train. The catch: a railcar can only connect to another of the same cargo type or the same value, so a railcar sometimes has to wait in your yard until it finds its proper spot. An exchange token bails you out when the cargo you need is missing, and the Yardmaster token grants a bonus action each turn to whoever holds it. The game ends as soon as a player reaches 16 points (in a 2 or 3 player game) or 18 points (in a 4 or 5 player game), for a card game that wraps up in about twenty minutes.

You will likely fall for Yardmaster if you enjoy short card games with a dash of hand management and that delicious tension of deciding whether to grab an imperfect railcar right away or wait for the right piece of this train puzzle. It is a great party game to kick off a game night, just as comfortable around the family table as with friends who love optimizing every card in hand.

Fun fact: before becoming Yardmaster, Steven Aramini's game was known under the working title Payload and won the Ion Award in the Light category at the SaltCon design contest. That win caught the eye of several publishers, and the game was successfully funded on Kickstarter in 2014 under its current name.

The mind behind this freight train is Steven Aramini, a regular at game design contests who has signed several other light games since. The artwork comes from Mathieu Leyssenne, Darrell Louder and Dan Thompson, who give the railcars and cargo a colorful look that is easy to read from your very first game.

BOX CONTENTS
50 Railcar cards
70 Cargo cards
5 Engine cards
5 Exchange tokens
1 Yardmaster token
Rulebook

Number of players: 2 to 5
Duration: 20 minutes
Age: 8+