I'm in love with Pickomino. Everyone I know who plays games loves Pickomino. Everyone I know who doesn't play games loves Pickomino. Risk taking, games that turn on a die (sic), lots of laughter... what more can you ask from a filler? We play it every single lunchtime here at work, have done for well over a year now. So you can imagine how excited we got when we heard about Sushizock. And thankfully we had reason to get so excited, Sushizock is blooming marvellous.

You've got 24 tiles (24, yes?). 12 of those are sushi tiles of plus values ranging from +1 to +6. You shuffle those and then arrange them in a line. Then you've got 12 bones tiles, ranging in minus values of -1 to -4. And you arrange them in a line too. Then you start to play.

You take all five dice and roll them. If you aren't happy with what you end up with, you take at least one aside and roll again. If you still aren't happy with what you've got then, you take at least one aside and roll a third and final time.

Each dice has two sushi sides, two bone sides, a red chopstick side and a blue chopstick side. Sushi lets you take sushi tiles, bones help you take bone tiles, red chopsticks help you steal bone tiles from other players, blue chopsticks help you steal suhsi tiles from other players.

Let's say on your first roll you get two sushi symbols, two bone and a blue chopstick. You could take the second sushi tile from the left - two sushi dice, count two from the left end of the sushi row. You could take the second bone from the left, same system. So at any given time, only five tiles from the left end of a row are available (you have five dice, right?).

At the start of a game everyone peers at the unavailable end of the line, where maybe the high value tiles are sitting (you shuffle and arrange tiles differently each time, remember?). But as the game progresses, tiles get taken and the line shortens, and previously unavailable tiles come within reach.

Back to our example. Maybe the second sushi tile from the left (the one you could take now) is a +1 but the third sushi tile is a +6, a great tile. So you take the two sushi dice aside and roll the other three dice again, hoping for a third sushi symbol. You get two more sushi symbols and a bone symbol. Damn - you have four sushi symbols now and the fourth tile from the left is another +1. So you take only one of the sushi symbols aside to make three in your bank, and roll the final two dice one more time, hoping that they will come up with anything but sushi so you can get that +6 tile. And they come up with two more sushi symbols darn it, but the fifth tile from the left is a +4, so it could be worse.

And that's how it goes, rolling and rerolling, taking risks here and there to get what you want. Grabbing bone tiles from the bone row is just like grabbing sushi tiles from the sushi row, you collect bone symbols for the tile you want and try to ensure you get exactly what you want. Of course, it can backfire and you end up having to take a bone tile you didn't want because you have too many or too few bone symbols, and there is no other alternative legal action you can perform from the dice you've got. To illustrate that, maybe I wanted two bone symbols and I end up with three after three throws, which would mean taking a -4 tile instead of the -1 I wanted. But I also have two sushi symbols, so I can take the second sushi tile from the left instead, not so bad.

'So why take bone tiles at?' all I hear you cry. Because as you play you build two piles of tiles, one for sushi and one for bones, and when all the tiles are taken and the game ends you need one bone tile per sushi tile for that sushi tile to score. I can have the world's biggest pile of sushi, but if I haven't got any bones to match them then that pile is totally worthless. So it's a game of balance. Bone tiles that don't have an accompanying sushi tile still count mind you - nasty.

And what about those chopsticks then? They are used for stealing, snaffling, pinching, generally being mean to your fellow players and causing uproar. Get three blue chopsticks, you can steal the top tile from an opponent's sushi stack. Get three red chopsticks, take the top tile from someone's bone stack. Get four or five blue ones or four or five red ones, take ANY tile from the relevant stack of someone. You can't peek though, you have to remember where their good tiles are!

And ladies and gentlemen, stealing is at the heart and soul of this game, SO much more than it ever was in Pickomino. You steal to bash the leader. You steal to get a better sushi tiles for yourself. You steal to get that -1 bone tile from your opponent, both improving your own situation by allowing another sushi tile to score and scuppering your opponent by maybe reducing their final score by one sushi tile. And those low value bone tiles are serious currency. You steal for spite, when it can't possibly improve your situation but want to reduce your opponent's overall score, like taking her +6 tile and add it to your towering stack of sushi for which you have no bones. You steal for fun and laughs, your fun and laughter that is. Evil laughter. But going for a steal is risky too, because if it all goes wrong and you don't get anough chopstick symbols you might end up having to take something from the table that you didn't want. And if you end up with no legal action at all, whatever you were trying to do, you have to take the lowest value (ie worst) bone tile from the table, which could mean taking that -4!

Knizia hits and Knizia misses. When he hits, he hits hard and this has knocked us off our feet. There's a lot of game and a lot of fun in here for ten to fifteen minute's play (that's all), and it is full of the classic Knizia subtleties that I'll leave you to discover. This comes highly recommended by gamers and non-gamers here and is no doubt about to replace the mighty Pickomino as our lunchtime game of choice.