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Zen Master box art
2010 Ranked #5,640

Zen Master

A card game has players win light or dark tokens, then cancel matched pairs to keep a low score. Holding one card back each round creates flexibility when choosing which extreme to claim.

Family Games Card Game Set Collection Trick-taking Series: Matchbox Games (Helvetiq)

Players

3-5

Play time

Not listed

Age

8+

Complexity

1.3/5

Rating

6.37

Harder to teach Highly interactive Deep strategy

Overview

At a glance

Is this game right for my group?

ABG editorial scores on a 1–5 scale.

Teachability 2.4/5

Harder to teach

Replay value 4.0/5

High replayability

Interaction 3.8/5

Highly interactive

Player scaling 3.8/5

Scales well

Strategic depth 4.6/5

Deep strategy

See all 5 specifications

How it plays

How does it play?

Each round in Yin Yang, a.k.a. Fifty-Fifty or Zen Master, players play a card from their hand.

Core mechanisms

Key systems that shape the decisions players make.

Read the full game description

Each round in Yin Yang, a.k.a. Fifty-Fifty or Zen Master, players play a card from their hand. The highest card played on a turn receives light tokens, the lowest card dark, with the exact number of tokens determined by a scoring card revealed for that turn. Once the round ends, players eliminate pairs of light and dark tokens from their holdings, and their score for the round equals however many tokens remain. After a certain number of rounds, whoever has the lowest score wins. Yin Yang differs from its predecessor Relationship Tightrope in that only nine of the ten cards in hand are played each round — giving players some wiggle room when deciding what to play — and the scoring cards have differing numbers for the light and dark tokens received on a turn (whereas in the previous game the scoring cards were parallel — such as 9/9 or 8/8).

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Editions

Language and publisher variants currently recorded in the catalog.

Edition Year Language Publisher / Region
No editions imported yet.

Player resources

Rulebooks, player aids, FAQs, and solo resources.

No files imported yet.

Game and edition data

All specifications (5)

Play and group

Players
3–5
Best with
3–5
Play time
30 min
Age
8+
Complexity
1.3/5
Credits and catalog connections

Credits

Designers

1
Reiner Knizia

Artists

3
Charlie Bink Marek Bláha Lucas Guidetti Perez

Publishers

4
999 Games Eagle-Gryphon Games Egmont Polska Gen-X Games

Linked items

No published linked games yet.