Matthew BaileyToday we are going to be looking at “Wok and Roll” played with Jack(.8.) and Toby(5).
“Wok and Roll” is an Asian restaurant-themed roll-and-write game centred around preparing meals based on the ingredients you receive.
All players start the game with exactly the same board, as shown in the photos, which lays out all the different actions you can take.
There are rice and noodle sections that require either two rice or two noodles and one other item. There are also meat/vegetable sections that allow you to gain other powers (more on that shortly), and the seafood (or the prawn as we called it) section, which gives you bonus points for completing sets.
On your turn, you roll six dice: two red and four white. The player rolling the dice is the only one allowed to use the red dice; everyone else must use the white. The player rolling can perform two re-rolls of any number of dice they choose, similar to Yahtzee, and this determines the dice they have to work with.
In addition to your dice rolls, you also have access to the Pantry, which allows you, once in the game, to use each of the different ingredients, even if they do not appear on your dice roll.
By building into the vegetables/meat section (referred to as the broccoli and chicken section by us), you can unlock extra items for your pantry, as well as extra credit cards to give you rolls. Credit cards in the game act as wild cards, and using two credit cards, you can unlock the ability to set one of those credit cards as a wild of your choice. For three cards, you can unlock extra scoring possibilities for the end of the game.
The game continues until the first player has filled three rows, and then the game ends. The player with the highest score wins.
There’s also an expert menu, which largely follows the same rules but has sections that are locked depending on the order in which you achieve things. This offers more depth but is a lot harder to build from. We played the expert version once, but the boys largely preferred the simpler version.
“Wok and Roll” is a delightful little roll-and-write game that we all really enjoyed. The components are of decent quality, with the nice, clean whiteboards working well and the dice being of good quality. The insert of the box also acts as a dice tray, which is a nice touch. I also really like the menu aesthetic as well as the overall look of the box itself.
There are quite a few parallels here to draw with a game such as Railroad Ink, and while “Wok and Roll” isn’t my absolute favourite roll-and-write game, there’s definitely a worthwhile place for it in collections, especially for people who are fans of the genre.
Annoyingly the game is very difficult to get hold of at the moment and is gearing up for a new print run. According to Origame the publisher, they are going to be stocking with Zatu in the UK shortly and will be at the UKBGE for those going.
Disclaimer: A copy of “Wok and Roll” was provided by “Origame” for the purpose of review. All of our thoughts and opinions are our own.
