New game for the pub – Wazabi

Well, it came too late for this week’s game night, but I’ve just picked up a very interesting looking dice game from Gigamic (the people behind the gorgeous wooden abstract games like Quarto and Pylos) called Wazabi.

The idea of the game almost couldn’t be simpler – you have to be the first player to get rid of all your dice.

Each player starts with 4 dice and 3 action cards – these action cards let you do certain things (get rid of one of your dice, take more cards, reverse the direction of play, get a player to miss a go etc)

You roll your dice, and dependent upon the result, you get to pass a dice to an opponent, draw more cards or play a card from your hand. It looks like a fun game, with a heavy ‘screw your neighbour’ factor – which is the ideal sort of game that we want for playing down the pub after club on a Wednesday night.

If you’re interested, you can play it online at the official Wazabi Online website.

On opening the packaging, the thing that really struck me was the production quality of the game – it’s gorgeous!

You get a heavy cube-shaped box (really nice, if somewhat impractical in shape) which eases open to show off the rest of the components – 24 custom black and white etched dice, a drawstring dice bag to put them in and a pack of large cards. The cards are fantastic – big, colourful, and of a quality that is stunning…probably the highest quality cards I’ve ever come across in a game – I kid you not!

This hasn’t had a great reception on BGG so far, but having seen the components and played the game online, I think this is a title that will see a lot of play in our group.

Certainly worth the money, IMO.