I did a live chat with Emma Larkins, the designer of Abandon All Artichokes, over on Instagram (replay below). It was fun learning about the development of her family-style deck-building game. And tonight I’m playing Abandon All Artichokes with my family as we continue our Facebook Live at Five series of gaming streams.
gamewright
November Writing Challenge Day 10: Sushi Roll Again
I’m blogging every day this month. Some will be game-related, but this challenge is different than my most recent play-a-game-and-blog-about-it challenge. I’m writing a single post every day: no topic guidelines, with some posts being a collection of random thoughts. Click here to read yesterday’s post.
A week ago I wrote about my newfound love of Sushi Roll, the dice version of the modern classic card game, Sushi Go! After a few more plays I’m not as enamored of it (it’s ripe for an expansion, just like the original needed Sushi Go Party! to freshen things up), but it’s still a go-to for a quick and fun dice chucker.
Today my brother and his family stopped by for a surprise visit. My niece is a big fan of Sushi Go! so I made sure to introduce her to Sushi Roll tonight. She learned quickly and throughout our game we kept talking about how it was making us hungry.
Of course, we had to have sushi for dinner.
We went to the local revolving sushi restaurant, where the sushi is on a conveyor belt and makes its way around the dining room. We enjoyed putting in our special orders, which arrived on the “express lane” conveyer belt above the regular sushi.
And when it was all done, we were stuffed beyond our gills, ready to roll home. I may have won Sushi Roll, but I was no match for my niece’s appetite for the real thing. I’m ready for a rematch, though.
November Writing Challenge Day 4: Sushi Roll
I’m blogging every day this month. Some will be game-related, but this challenge is different than my most recent play-a-game-and-blog-about-it challenge. I’m writing a single post every day: no topic guidelines, with some posts being a collection of random thoughts. Click here to read yesterday’s post.
Sushi Go! was one of the first “hobby” games I bought when I first started getting into tabletop gaming. I put hobby in quotes because even though you can easily find Sushi Go! at Target and other retail outlets, back in 2015 I didn’t know that. I thought only gamers would buy this game of odd-looking cards.
I’m glad I bought it and will always play a quick game of it or its bigger brother, Sushi Go! Party, which has a lot of new cards for a different gaming experience every time you play it.
Recently, Sushi Go! publisher Gamewright released the dice version of Sushi Go!, the appropriately named Sushi Roll. Instead of the cute cards of the original game, it’s all dice in this version.
After a half-dozen plays I have two main things to say about Sushi Roll:
- It’s not as pretty as the original . There’s no way to transfer those gorgeous drawings from the cards onto the dice. But the dice do contain the familiar icons of the dumplings, shrimp tempura, and desserts.
- I now prefer it to the original in terms of set-up (which can be way too long with Sushi Go! Party) and play time. Sushi Roll is a quick game: roll dice, pick one to keep, pass to your neighbor, rinse, and repeat.
Like the original, you’re trying to collect sets for more points. For example, whoever has the most maki rolls on their dice will score six points at the end of the round. Same goes for halibut, etc. It’s fun rolling all of the chunky dice and trying to get what you need to complete a set such as shrimp tempura. If you didn’t have a lucky roll of the dice, you can still turn in a menu to re-roll any number of dice.
You can also use chopsticks to steal one die from another player. Just turn in your chopsticks token, take another player’s die, and put one of your dice onto their player board. After three rounds, victory points are added and the most points wins.
Sushi Roll is another winner for Gamewright for both fans and non-fans alike. And maybe it’s just me, but I’m totally craving sushi right now.