How to play Sushi Go Party!

2–8 players Very light — card drafting

What is Sushi Go Party!?

Sushi Go Party! is a card-drafting game by Phil Walker-Harding in which you build a tableau of sushi dishes over three rounds, passing your hand around the table one card at a time. The Party edition expands the original with a customizable menu — before each game, you choose which nigiri, rolls, appetizers, specials, and desserts enter the mix — and includes a scoreboard that keeps the game smooth with up to eight players.

Turns are simultaneous and brisk, but the drafting tension is real. Every card you take is a card your neighbor can't have, and the shifting hands mean you're always reading what your opponents are collecting and deciding whether to race them or cut off their supply.

Setup

Build the menu by choosing cards from each category and placing their tiles on the menu board — a starter menu is printed in the rulebook if you'd rather not choose.

Assemble the deck. Shuffle only the card types on the menu into the deck, setting desserts aside for now.
Prepare desserts. Divide the dessert cards into three roughly equal piles. You'll shuffle one pile into the deck at the start of each round, so desserts trickle in gradually across all three rounds.
Deal starting hands. Deal each player a starting hand — the rulebook's chart gives the exact size for your player count (hands shrink as the group grows; for example, 10 cards for 2 players and 7 cards for 5 or more players).
Scoreboard and first player. Set up the shared scoreboard and give each player a scoring token. The player who most recently ate sushi goes first.

How to play

Sushi Go Party! is played over three rounds. Within each round, all players draft simultaneously:

Choose: Look at your hand and secretly select one card, placing it face-down in front of you.
Reveal: All players flip their chosen card face-up and add it to their personal tableau.
Pass: Pass the rest of your hand to your neighbor — to the player on your left in rounds 1 and 3 (clockwise), to the player on your right in round 2 (counter-clockwise).
Repeat until all cards in the hands have been played.

After each round, score the cards in your tableau according to the menu's rules, record the total on the scoreboard, then clear your tableau (desserts/puddings stay in front of you across all three rounds). Re-deal for the next round. After the third round, score desserts/puddings across all players before tallying the final total.

How to win

The player with the highest cumulative score after three rounds wins. Scoring varies by menu selection — classics include: Maki rolls (most icons scores 6 points, second-most scores 3); Tempura (2 cards = 5 points); Sashimi (3 cards = 10 points); Dumplings (score 1, 3, 6, 10, 15 for 1–5+ cards); Nigiri (1, 2, or 3 points each — a Wasabi underneath triples the next nigiri placed on it); Puddings/desserts are scored only at game end, and exactly how depends on which dessert is on the menu — the classic Pudding rewards the most and penalizes the fewest.

Watch the Maki majority — a lead there can be denied cheaply. Play your Wasabi one pick before you expect a Squid or Salmon Nigiri to come around. If two strong cards appear in the same hand, use Chopsticks to snap both. Don't over-invest in Puddings early; one or two at the right moment usually suffices.