Yomi is an expandable hand-to-hand combat card game created by David Sirlin for two players. There are ten unique character decks, each with different abilities and stats. Players pick a character deck and duel another player's character deck. The characters are based on a standard 52-card French (Poker) deck with Street Fighter-like art, and the standard TCG fare of rules text on the cards. The combat system is a triangular rock, paper, scissors type, or Attack > Throw > Block/Dodge > Attack.
Gameplay centers on combat and hand (resource) management. You play one card from a hand of cards. Lower value card have more flexibility, since they have two out of the four possible actions (Attack, Throw, Block, Dodge) but do less damage than high cards, which do more damage or set up combos. If there is a tie, attack speed is the tie breaker. Low value cards tend to have faster (lower number) actions. Thus, depending on the situation, both high and low cards have strategic uses.
Once you hit, you can play multiple cards to form a combo chain. The opponent then can bluff by optionally placing a card face down to reveal after the combo chain. If the face-down card is a Joker, then the combo chain is disregarded. Jokers also can be traded for Aces, the most powerful cards, in your discard pile. So it is not an easy choice if and when to use the Jokers.
Altough Yomi looks like a a fancy rock-paper-scissors game, it is a game of strategy and bluffing. You have to out-guess your opponent and manage your hand, bobbing and weaving between the opponent's maneuvers, while card-counting and waiting for the precise moment to strike fast and hard with a super combo. The triangular combat system is a simple but elegant abstraction of the bluffing and counter attacks of real hand-to-hand combat. Professional fighters study opponent's recorded fights, looking for patterns and rhythms, enabling them to predict and counter the opponent in the ring. Similar "predict-and-counter" tactics are realized in Yomi.
PS: Right-click cards to zoom in, when playing Yomi online. Click the character portrait to view the summary card that shows the opponent's card mix. The AI is easy, but there are people in the lobby.
