Wok and Roll

• Designer: Daryl Chow
• Publisher: Origame
• Players: 1-5
• Age: 10+
• Time: 30-45 minutes
• Played with copy provided by publisher

In this modern Asian dice game, you and your fellow players are developing menus to become the best zi char (Singaporean for Chinese restaurant) eatery in town. Every turn, the active player rolls all 6 dice, determining which to keep. Once locked in, all the other players have the chance to use only the ingredients on the 4 white dice to cook their dishes. There are lots of ways to score points, including keeping an eye out for special abilities as well as chaining combos to maximize your points. But above all, don’t waste your ingredients! Wok and Roll comes with two menus, Simple and Expert, so there’s lots of different ways to play.

Each player gets a menu board (all choosing to play either the Simple or the Expert side).  The starting player gets the 6 dice and the wok tray.

The active player rolls all 6 dice (four white dice and two red dice), examines them, and then may have up to 2 re-rolls where he can choose any of the dice to be rerolled.  After the third roll, all the results are locked in.  Now, all players use the ingredients shown on the dice to cook.  The active player may use all 6 dice while all the other players are limited to the four white dice.

All players also have access to the Fridge area on their menu which provides a one-time useable ingredient of each type. If you choose to use anything from the fridge, simply cross it off.  Looking at the options on your menu, make an X in the box underneath the type of dish(es) you create.  Depending on the area of the menu you are filling up, you might generate extra ingredients or recipe books.

Recipe books are useful as they can be converted to specialty skills.  Two recipe books can be used to make a converter – allowing you to choose an ingredient that you can use recipe books in lieu of.  Three recipe books can be used to unlock game end scoring bonuses.

Once all the players have finished marking their boards, the dice and tray are passed to the next player and the process is repeated again.  The game continues until the end of the round where at least one player has finished 3 dishes (all the boxes in a column) or dish platters (all the boxes in an outlined section).

Players now tabulate their scores

• Each completed dish has a point value
• Each dish platter has a point value if all boxes in area are ticked 
• Calculate all the end game bonuses from the 3-recipe-book area on the left

The player with the most points wins. Ties broken in favor of latest in initial turn order.

There is also an expert mode included in the rules, which uses a much larger menu.  There are many dishes which are locked – spaces with a lock icon in them.  You must spend recipe books to cross off those spaces, and you cannot proceed down a column until you have unlocked it.  Many of the recipe boxes also have ingredients in them, and as you tick them off, you circle ingredients in a new pantry area – this will trigger some scoring as well.  

My thoughts on the game

There have been many roll and write games in the past few years, and I’ll admit that it takes a certain special something to cause one to hit my radar.  In the case of Wok and Roll, it’s the chinese restaurant theme… and that hits pleasingly close to home.   This came out for the first time after a dinner party (where the actual menu was fairly Chinese-y), and it went over great with our non-gaming dinner guests.

For that group, it was an excellent introduction to both gaming in general as well as roll and write games.  The base game is quite easy to learn, and the board is set up nicely with good iconography and organization.  As with many RAW, I like games that give the active player a bit of an extra – here it is access to the extra 2 red dice.   One thing I noticed in my game is that since all players can use all the dice they can access, there often is not much diversity in the choices made by the non-active players.  Sure, everyone can choose to use their Fridge items when they wish, but at least early on in the game it feels like the decisions are mostly on autopilot.  Once you have a few turns where you have rolled and have had the extra dice, you might then have opportunities that your fellow non-active players would not.

The two modes offer quite different experiences.  As I mentioned above, the base game is a really good starter level game.  The expert menu is a much more complex game, both in rules and game length.  It is certainly the version I’d play with my regular game group, though there is a bit of RAW fatigue amongst them now, and while the expert game is solidly designed, I honestly don’t know if I’d say there was anything groundbreaking about it.

Thus, the bulk of my plays have been of the base game, and honestly, I really enjoy it for what it tries to do.  It’s not overly complex, it’s quick, and it’s been great as an introductory game.  I might even try to set up a dinner party one night just as another excuse to eat good food and play games!

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it!
• I like it. Dale Y, Jim B
• Neutral
• Not for me…