Card game · 2013

Sushi Go!

Three rounds of drafting: pick a card, pass the hand and build the best sushi set before the cards run out.

2–5 players
10–20 min
1.3 / 5 · Light

Set up the game

0 of 4 steps

Tick each step as you complete it.

1Shuffle the 108 cards and deal one hand per player depending on the count: ten cards for two players, nine for three, eight for four and seven for five. Everyone looks at their hand without showing it.
Box and cards
2Leave the rest of the deck face down in the middle: it is not used until the next round. Get paper and pencil ready and pick someone to keep score.
Cards
3Before starting, go over what each card scores: tempura in pairs, sashimi in trios, dumplings by quantity, nigiri at face value, wasabi tripling the next nigiri and maki competing for the most icons.
The card types
4Remember that pudding is the only card not discarded at the end of a round. It stays in front of each player until the end of the game, when it is scored all at once.
Cards

What it is about

Sushi Go! is the kind of draft game you explain in one sentence and play in a breath. Each turn you pick a card from a hand that keeps rotating, so you are building your set and deciding what to leave your neighbour at the same time.

The charm is that cards are worth little on their own. A tempura needs another, sashimi needs two more, wasabi needs a nigiri and maki needs comparing with everyone else. The whole game is a race to close sets before the hand runs out.

And then there is pudding, the card that scores nothing until the end and punishes whoever has the least. In the last rounds a single pudding can be worth more than any sushi combination: it is how the game reminds you that not everything is about adding up.

BGG page Official rulebook

Source note

The official seven-page rulebook covers contents, the deal for each player count, how a round runs, wasabi, chopsticks, scoring for every card type, the end-of-game pudding and the alternating-pass and two-player variants.

Reglamento EN (Gamewright, 2014) · Reviewed: 24 Oct 2026