Piña Coladice

• Designer: Yann Dupont
• Publisher: Iello
• Players: 2-4
• Age: 8+
• Time: 10 minutes
• Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/45FYiMm
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

Piña Coladice is a family party-game in which you roll the dice up to three times to claim one of the available combinations on coasters. Position yourself strategically with your cocktail tokens before your opponents. You will earn precious points that will bring you closer to victory… but the quickest way to win is to line up 4 of your cocktail tokens to make the famous Pina Coladice and win instantly!

To set up the game, take the 25 coasters and shuffle them up and build a 4×4 grid on the table.  Using the chart in the rulebook, you may flip some of the coasters over to the opposite side.  Designate a first player and give them the first player coaster.  Each player takes a score coaster and places a marker on the number that matches their starting position in turn order.

The active player takes the five dice and rolls them – trying to match one of the scoring combinations shown on the coasters on the table.  Any or all of the dice can be re-rolled twice, but after that third roll, the result must be accepted.  Of course the player could choose to stop rolling early.

If the result of the dice match one of the available combinations of a coaster, the player places a scoring marker on that coaster, scoring points as shown on the spot occupied on the coaster as well as one extra point for each orthogonally or diagonally adjacent scoring marker of that player.

If you are unable to place a scoring marker – well, sad panda, and your turn ends.  (There is a variant where you use a chart on the back of the first player coaster to roll a d6 and then do whatever your roll says).

Finally, to end your turn, check to see if the game end is triggered.

If someone is able to form a Piña Coladice – that is a row, column or diagonal line of four coasters in a row – then the game ends immediately and that player wins.

Otherwise, if the active player has scored 20 points OR has placed all 6 of their tokens, the end is triggered.  Play continues to the end of the current round so that all players have the same number of turns, and the player with the most points at that time wins the game.  Ties broken in favor of the player later in turn order.

My thoughts on the game

Piña Coladice is a game that will feel familiar to many people – in part because it is really just a Yahtzee / Yacht variant.  Because of that, this game is super accessible – you can teach the game in about 90 seconds.

When playing at 2 players, all the coasters only have one space available on each; as you increase the player count, the number of coasters which are flipped to the back side increases – and each of these has two spaces for scoring markers.  This gives more options to score combos as well as to form a Piña Coladice to automatically win the game.

The game plays quickly – rarely does a game take more than 10 or 15 minutes as it seems like someone is closing in on 20 points before too long.  There isn’t much to do when it’s not your turn, but as turns are so quick, it’s not a big deal.

As I mentioned briefly, there is a variant on the back of the start player coaster – it adds a random event each time a player can’t place a scoring marker.  Based on the rules read, it feels completely random, and my group(s) have not had any interest in trying it out.

So, I think the game will survive in the gaming basement, but not in its original form.  The game materials are actually paper coasters, and well, they now sit in a stack on a side table, and we’re also using them as coasters for our drinks.  The room is never at a shortage of bits and dice, so whether we use the pieces included in the box or just use things from the most recent game – we’ll be good to go.

For parties, it will also make an interesting conversation piece – as I am pretty sure my non-gaming guests will be fascinated to learn that I can show them a game that uses the coasters their drinks are on… (and as it seems like the majority of folks have already played Yahtzee in the past, there aren’t too many new rules to add on).

We’ll never base a game night on Piña Coladice, but I can easily see us starting or ending a game session with this coaster based game.

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

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

Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/45FYiMm