How Does Painted Yahtzee Differ From Regular?
Yahtzee is a good, simple game with one basic mechanic and with just enough choices to make throughout the game that different players might play slightly differently depending on their circumstances during the game.
However, the major benefit of Yahtzee, it's simplicity, can also be its drawback. Good players might find that their strategy very rarely changes and they often play according to a simple set of guidelines that they have formed during their experience of playing and therefore gameplay could be almost automatic so the game becomes less challenging over time.
Happily, people are also incredibly creative, so they have come up with many variants of the basic rules, including golf, cricket, follow-the-leader, sequence, roulette, and two in particular that have become very popular worldwide: Triple Yahtzee and Painted Yahtzee.
How Does Painted Yahtzee Differ From Triple?
Triple Yahtzee is a game that is played across three rounds of scorecards simultaneously. Players may place their scores in any of the three scorecards but with a multiplier for each round: any score places in round 2's scorecard will be doubled, and any scores placed in round 3 will be tripled.
This mechanic has a slightly unexpected effect on the rules. The extra number of turns and possibilities of where to place scores means that those automatic instructions we form in our heads have to be extended. There are more guidelines to follow in order to score well. But, it actually makes the game more forgiving, much more forgiving, as it is much easier to score the big scores: high straight, low straight, bonuses. There is more space to make mistakes without ruining your scorecard. Often, games will still be decided by who has the most yahtzees, especially late on, or who had the best dice rolls throughout. It will be rare that a good player beats another good player by taking an unusual risk or by having a better strategy.
So I consider triple to be a more involved game but easier than regular yahtzee.
So Why Is Painted Yahtzee So Good?
Painted Yahtzee, however, is an entirely different beast. The scorecard is similar to regular yahtzee but has a few additional score slots and has had a few removed. And the dice have been changed from regular yahtzee to dice that also have colours as well as numbers. This opens up a huge number of permutations for dice rolls and the scorecard is far more restricted; there is much less space for error.
The game is therefore less solvable than regular or triple yahtzee, the number of possible dice rolls and possible outcomes is much greater and there is really no margin for error. You're almost always in a position where you need to set up your dice rolls to have two or three possible desirable outcomes and to calculate the odds for each, because not hitting a decent score on any one turn can really mess you up. Don't worry, you will have multiple turns throughout your round where you don't hit a score, that's almost certain, but the trick is to maximise your good turns and to score as much as possible and to limit the damage as well as you possible can.
I love Painted Yahtzee. I think it is by far the most challenging version of yahtzee and the most interesting in terms of decision making.
If you would like to try playing painted yahtzee online, or any of the other forms of yahtzee, you can click this link to: Play Painted Yahtzee Online now.