Of course „Yunnan“ had to receive our „Game of the Month“ award, eventually. After all, it had to pass our quality gates already several times during its years of development. And even without our partiality the game’s values are all too obvious: few but very well interleaved game elements, straight and predictable gameplay without being solitaire, tension-filled competition and interaction combined with an overall playful feel. And the theme doesn’t appear as being pasted on, either.
For a game of this genre it is surprisingly short: it doesn’t last for a whole night, instead it tempts players for weeks to accept the challenge and delve into its secrets.
Few know that New York nearly became Dutch and that the cigarette name Stuyvesant does not come from nowhere. In the game we trade (historically correct) in furs, build up fields and try to control the growing city politically. All this plays in a logical and fluid manner, is balanced, only mildly competitive and offers a lot of material for the testing of various winning strategies. That the game is also optically convincing is an additional reason to visit Nieuw Amsterdam, the game!
Dwight Sullivan is one of us: a hobby gamer who has worked intensively on a game design without ever believing it would be published (read about it here: 
„Discovery“-Games have always been one of the holy grails of game design – how can one design such a game without putting through much stress on luck (when one doesn’t turn over the „right“ discovery tiles)? The new game by Marcel-André Casasola Merkle tries an interesting path here by making the victory conditions variable through cards, but also makes these same cards available for drafting, which can turn the luck of one player against him/herself in the next round. Through this there is more interaction and competition than in other “discovery” games, and also the game length hits a good and comfortable mark. For us this is one of the real “discoveries” of the current games on offer!