Thread: Sushi Express - A Light Review

Neil Thomson — 2007-10-14T09:28:31+00:00

All of my 'Light Reviews' aim to offer a brief overview that allows people to get a good feel for what the game may offer them. I feel that other reviews can be sought if detailed game mechanics is what you are after.

Summary

Game Type - CardTile Game
Play Time : 20-30 minutes
Number of Players: 3-6
Mechanics - Card play, Risk Assessment, Set Collection
Difficulty - Pick-up & Play (Learn in under 10 minutes)
Components - Excellent

Theme

In the cut throat world that is Take-away food, speed of delivery and timing are of the utmost importance...So what are you waiting for?! Get yourself into that delivery truck pronto and deliver some sushi!

Ok this isn't the first or last game on the market to offer a sushi wrapper thin theme. But hey, I like saying the word sushi, so it's fine by me. Sushi

Components

Sushi Express packs a fair amount of components into its small sized box. The action and customer cards are small sized (think original Ticket to Ride cards) and the guess markers and delivery trucks are wooden to offer that nice tactile feel.

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Good quality tiles (good thickness) are used to depict the city and the dice are of above average quality with a nice textured background (think Talisman 4th Ed.). The final component is the Guess Board and this is really neat as it is shaped in the style of an old style telephone, the ones with the holes at each number that need to be turned around. This is really a cute touch as it fits the theme of your customers dialing up Sushi Express for a home delivery.

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The rulebook is also very good. Colour pictures are used, each section is laid out logically and a summary section outlines the effects for the Action Cards. In all I was able to learn the game in under 10 minutes.

The Aim

The aim of Sushi Express is to earn the most points (surprised you eh?) To do this each player is trying to deliver sushi to as many different customers as possible. Each unique customer (to a given player) that is collected by the end of the game is worth 3 points. Any duplicate customers are worth 1 additional point each. The final scoring mechanism is the collection of Tips. The player or players that collect the lowest number of tips will lose a number of points equal to the number of tips held by the player who collected the most tips.

The Set-up

The city is set-up by placing the 12 hex tiles in the shape of a ring or circle. Ten of these tiles depict houses and they are simply tiles to pass over. The starting tile is the Sushi Express shop and all players start with their delivery trucks located here. The park is the remaining tile and it is placed 6 tiles from Sushi Express or the halfway point of town.

Each player chooses a colour and takes a matching delivery van card of that colour to let everyone else know who they are. Each player receives 2 Action Cards and a number of customers (equal to the number of players) are placed face up on the table.

The Guess Board is then placed centrally to all of the players.

The Game Play

Sushi Express offers a nice concise system of play that helps keep the game moving at all times. In short there are 4 phases -

Place Guesses - In turn, each player must place their guess marker into one of the holes in the Guess Board. Each hole corresponds to a value ranging from 2-12. Once a player has taken a number, it cannot be chosen by subsequent players unless they play an action card that allows it. Once all players have made a guess it is time for...

Roll Dice - The player to make the highest guess gets to roll first. Taking the 2D6, they are hoping to roll a total that is equal to or higher than the guess they made. How this fits the theme I am not exactly sure, but I guess it is replicating the chance of a customer calling your Sushi Express store to place an order (can you hear me draw that bow)?

If successful, the rolling player gets to move their delivery van but so do all other players that were on a number of lesser value. More on that in phase three.

If a player's first roll is unsuccessful, they get a 2nd chance. But if that 2nd roll fails they are out of the action for this round. They do however get to draw an Action Card to help them in future turns.

The dice then move to the player occupying the next highest number on the Guess Board and so on.

Move Delivery Vans - Starting with the player making the successful roll, each player gets to move around the city. Each player can move a number of tiles equal to the number they selected on the Guess Board. This is just one way in which the risk of a higher number is rewarded in the game.

When vans move, tiles are not counted that contain another player's delivery van. So multiple tile skipping is possible in a single go if a high number was selected on the Guess Board.

The point of all this movement is to deliver your sushi and there are 2 benefits that can be gained. As soon as the Park tile is reached or passed by a player, they can take another Action Card from the draw deck. Once this deck is exhausted, no more Action Cards can be gained.

Reaching or passing the Sushi Express tile though is the 'main goal' as this means you have delivered your order.

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Make Deliveries - Anyone passing the Sushi Express tile (shop) has earned the right to take a Customer Card from the face-up cards in play. Player's will generally always try to take a unique customer (one they don't already have) but not always, depending on who owns what. Sometimes it may be more beneficial to take a Customer that someone else needs, or indeed a Tip Card.

Once all eligible player's have taken a Customer Card and added it to their score area, new Customer Cards are drawn, ready for the new round.

However there is a possible choice to be made. The player who made the lowest guess on the Guess Board has the option to discard any Customer Cards that were left on the table at the end of the 'Make Deliveries' phase. This gives them a reward for going last, allowing them the potential to remove customers that they already have, but are sought after by other players.

The starting player for the next round will also be the player who occupied the lowest number on the Guess Board the previous round. Play continues clockwise from the starting player.

Game End

The game will end as soon as there is not enough cards to replenish the face-up Customer Cards to begin a new round. At this point scores are calculated and the highest score wins.

The Strategy - Whats to like?

There is surprisingly more strategy here than meets the eye. The key mechanic is of course the selection of a number on the Guess Board. But the implications of this choice are felt throughout each other phase of the game, making it a hard choice indeed.

Taking a greater risk is frought with danger but the rewards are substantial. The key benefit is the potential for moving first and passing the Sushi Express Store before anyone else. This in turn allows a player to have the first choice from the Customer Cards on offer. This can be crucial if their is competition for a particular customer. It is also critical when you consider that there are only 2 cards for 6 of the 8 customers in the game. So if they are up for grabs, you can be sure the competition will be fierce.

What Customer Cards are on offer should always be carefully considered as it may be that you cannot be hurt by taking a card after other players. In this instance, taking a risk is not really beneficial and therefore a lower number on the Guess Board is wise.

The inclusion of the Tip Cards in the Customer Card deck is also a nice inclusion as this gives the players an ongoing objective to aim for that can change as the play unfolds.

Then there are the Action Cards that can mix up the play.

Action Card Summary

Each Action Card must be played in the appropriate phase but there is no limit to the number of cards that can be played at once. All played cards are discarded from the game.

Same Guess (12) - Allows a player to make the same guess as one that has already been made. The player places their guess marker on top of any other markers in that spot and the top most marker gets to roll first, going down in turn.

Place Exchange (4) - Can be played at any time in Phase 1 (guessing on the Guest Board) and allows the player to exchange markers in any 2 positions. If one of these positions contains a stack of markers, the entire stack is exchanged. Nasty.

Re-roll (4) - Possibly the most powerful cards in the deck, these allow a re-roll of 1 dice if a roll is unsuccessful. This can improve the chances of rolling a 10, 11 or 12 result and allows the players to take calculated risks when making a guess.

1 Tile Further (6) - Allows a player to move their delivery van 1 additional hex tile for each card of this type played. Playing multiple cards here will result in multiple extra moves.

I did find these cards somewhat limited in their benefit, given that delivery vans can skip tiles occupied by other players.

Tip (2) - These add 1 point to the total number of Tip cards collected. These can help surprise other players and avoid ownig the smallest number of Tips at games end.

The Final Word

Not having played any of the games in this line of Abacus Spiele games, I wasn't expecting too much from Sushi Express. I should clarify this by stating that I expected them to be good for kids but limited for adults.

But I was pleasantly surprised with the depth that the game offered and I found the choices to be difficult and interesting.

Sushi Express feels like a 'push your luck' game but it offers a little more scope for decision making and planning than Can't Stop or Incan Gold.

I think this is the perfect kind of light filler game to kick start an evening with novice gamers or non-gaming friends. The time frame is spot on and it can accommodate up to 6 players.

Is there enough here for 'gamers'? Well perhaps not on a weekly basis but I could see our club pulling it out 2-3 times a month as a filler.

May your customers be varied and your Sushi fresh.

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Capitaine Grappin — 2007-07-01T05:21:08+00:00

Game in progress

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Capitaine Grappin — 2007-07-01T05:20:47+00:00

placing the bets

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Capitaine Grappin — 2007-07-01T05:20:20+00:00

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Capitaine Grappin — 2007-07-01T05:20:06+00:00

Box Back

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Capitaine Grappin — 2007-06-26T12:56:56+00:00

The dice

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Capitaine Grappin — 2007-06-26T12:56:30+00:00

The 6 delivery vans

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Ceryon — 2007-01-31T00:39:47+00:00

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Verti — 2005-11-23T13:45:57+00:00

Being played in Japan

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vetinari7878 — 2005-11-14T15:38:15+00:00

Game cover

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puppi — 2005-11-13T19:29:33+00:00

Thread: For 5-player & 6-player games - Clearing the customer cards

pschwar — 2005-10-19T07:26:33+00:00

One suggestion I have when playing 5-player and 6-player games to avoid the ending gaming to soon and too abruptly...

When the player with the lowest "guess" gets to decide whether or not to "clear" the entire board of customer cards, don't simply discard these forever. Rather, put them face down at the bottom of the draw deck.

-OR-

Just remove this option to clear the board each round, always just fill in the empty slots.

WHY?

With 5-players or 6-players, there's not enough cards to go around. And the game can end prematurely if people keep clearing the board.

Thread: First impressions

SteveK2 — 2005-10-17T10:00:24+00:00

Sushi Express is a fun filler where you bid for move order (& distance) to circle a board and collect cards.

In each round, everyone who passes the Sushi shop gets to pick a coloured customer card – from a one-per-player set revealed each round. Previously collected cards are visible, so everyone can see how valuable the revealed cards are for each player.

After bidding, highest bidder rolls 2xd6 to match his bid. If successful, everyone who bids less than or equal to roller gets to move the amount they bid. If unsuccessful, roller takes an action card and doesn’t move – next highest bidder then rolls.

Bidding therefore reflects how far you want to move, how much risk you want to take, and (importantly) what order you want to move/choose customer cards in. Sometimes you want to “stretch” for first choice of cards this go, sometimes its best to bid low to set yourself up for a better choice next go. Lowest bidder also gets to decide whether remaining customer cards are retained or discarded before replenishing to reveal the next set.

Action cards, which are obtained through failed bids and by landing on a particular tile, allow things like “permit equal bids”, “swap adjacent bids”, “+1 to movement”, etc.

You score 3 points for collecting customer cards of different colours, and 1 point for collecting duplicates. Some colours only have a couple of cards so prove quite valuable. There are also “tips” cards which are used at game end to deduct points from the player with lowest tips (amount deducted equals highest tips collected).

As for the “sushi” theme, my 11y.o. son (who has played plenty of Knizia games without comment) said “so … this has got absolutely nothing to do with sushi, has it”.

AbacusSpiele version. Components language-independent, rules in English, German, French, Italian.

Game: Sushi Express

Thread: Sushi Express - A Light Review

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Thread: For 5-player & 6-player games - Clearing the customer cards

Thread: First impressions