Reviews

Hey PI-Fans, Lawmakers are cracking down on soda, and tight regulation has made way for lucrative smuggling. One bottle per person is the new law — thus bribes, suitcase inspections, and arrests are on the agenda. Only one will emerge the Soda Kingpin. Reiner Knizia's Soda Smugglers is a light three to eight player party game based on Knizia's own 'Heisse Ware: Krimi-Kartenspiel fur clevere Schmuggler', an absolute mouthful of a game loosely translating to 'Hot Merchandise: Criminal Card Game for Clever Smugglers'. Like it's contemporary, 'Sheriff of Nottingham', it draws a loose evolutionary lineage from a 1950s era game 'Contraband', but Soda Smugglers remains far more focused on light and accessible gameplay, making it stand out as a party game. Upon unfastening the magnetic clasp on a Soda Smugglers box, one of the first things to catch the eye is the quality of the insert and overall design. Bitewing Games [...]

Gamewright games have always amused me. With titles like Sushi Go!, Go Nuts for Donuts and Forbidden Island, they’ve proven consistent entry points for new players looking to start playing board games, providing their own spin on the card drafting, simultaneous action and cooperative genres.Now, Gamewright is putting their own twisted little spin on deck-building games with Abandon All Artichokes, a classy little two-to-four player ‘deck-destruction’ game that provides a wonderful entry point into the genre. TLDR: Abandon All Artichokes is a speedy deck-building card game where players draft vegetable cards from a central garden and use their respective card abilities to rid their hand and deck of artichoke cards. The first player to draw a hand free of artichokes cards immediately wins the game. Simple rules make this easy to learn, but the game also possesses a take-that mechanism that allows players to ‘sabo’* each other, and a surprising [...]

Hey PI-Fans, We’re back once again with another set of food themed reviews. This time, Games @ PI is taking Gamewright’s modern classic Sushi Go out for a spin.Distilling the game mechanics of card drafting to an easily understandable format, Sushi Go is a fast paced and fun game set in a conveyor belt sushi restaurant. Given his last review was Ramen Fury, perhaps, the man is hungry, but Wesley is back to talk about Sushi Go and the Games @ PI Webstore!- Kenneth, Games @ PI Manager TL;DR: Simple fun for all ages, Sushi Go pits two to five players against each other to see who can have a better meal. Everyone is given a hand of sushi cards at the start of a round, which they will pick one to keep for themselves, then pass the rest to the player on the left or right. The process repeats [...]