Buffet Boss

• Designer: Daryl Chow
• Publisher: Origame
• Players: 1-5
• Age: 6+
• Time: 20 minutes
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

Buffet Boss delivers up a delicious mix of light strategy and dexterity in this stacking game for the whole family. In Buffet Boss, pick your food from the buffet and gain points by stacking food onto your plate. But beware – the food with the tastiest point values are also the hardest to stack! Players will also have Character cards that give them bonus points for stacking specific types of food. Buffet Boss also comes in many different modes to suit all diets – a solo/co-operative mode as well as a mode for kids aged 5 and up.

To set up the game, give each player a wooden plate, 2 character cards and 1 menu card.  Form the Food deck based on the player count, shuffle it and place it on the table, leaving space next to it for the Buffet line.  All of the wooden food pieces are placed nearby and the box top is put on the table as the Trash Bin.

A round is played in 3 phase:

1] Reveal Food cards – from the deck, flip up N+1 cards into the Buffet line

2] Pick and Stack (in turn order) – starting from the Start Player, each player chooses one food card from the Buffet line and put it front of them, then take the corresponding wooden food piece from the supply and then stack it on their plate.  The last player must choose one of the final two cards, but that player also has the option of taking BOTH cards.

When you place your food pieces, you may only use one hand at any time.  You may not place the food piece on its side. It must be placed parallel to the plate.  If any food falls off the plate, you have 3 seconds to pick it up (or half rounded up if multiples have fallen off) and then replace it.  Food not picked up gets thrown in the Trash Bin.

3] Rotate Start Player – the next player becomes the start player.

The game continues until all the Food cards have been drawn from the deck – 7 rounds.  Players now calculate their score:

• Food cards – points on the card for each piece of food still stacked on the plate
• Character Card – choose one of your two character cards and score based on the criteria on that card
• Tallest plate – 5 VP bonus to the player who has the highest stack of food.  A ruler is helpfully included on the inside box.

The player with the most points is the winner, ties broken in favor of the player with the highest stack of food on their plate.

My thoughts on the game

When I first read about it, I thought it would just be another stacking dexterity game.  However, after reading the rules, and then even moreso after playing, there is definitely more going on here than just stacking.  The character cards really give you some motivation to pick certain pieces of food – even if they’re not the easiest to stack – and this added dimension in the decision making process elevates the game.

The little plates are surprisingly small and slim, and when we first unpacked the game for the first time, I thought that there was no way we’d be able to stack seven or eight pieces of food on them!  However, with some practice, it’s not uncommon to have six or more wood bits on the plates by the end of the game.  

The wooden pieces are nicely crafted and they have a good heft to them – which allows you to balance them on each other, and you can even use the “limbs” as counterbalances to get them to stack in surprising ways.

Thematically, I really love the 5 second rule.  Everyone in my group really bought into it, and it was hilarious to watch us actually pick up the wood bits AND blow on them before restacking them on our plates!

Though on a much smaller scale, this game reminds me of Tier auf Tier, an old Haba stacking game that I love.  That one lets you do a bit more on the creative side with the stacking, but Buffet Boss adds a little bit more thinking into the decision of which card to draft and therefore which piece of food to stack.  It’s a gem in a small box, and one that stays in the permanent collection for sure.

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it!
• I like it.  Dale, Mark J, Ryan P
• Neutral.
• Not for me…