Hello everyone! I'm back for a new post, this time on another dexterity game. Hibachi is very unique, however, in that in includes both dexterity and bidding elements. It also resembles Splendor in that players must collect sets of ingredients to acquire cards – which, in this case, are recipes.
The game's cover, which showcases its premise: cooking meals in a chaotic kitchen.
In a given round of Hibachi, players do three things. Once the setup is complete (six ingredients and three recipes are set out at random and each player gets 1600 yen) the first turn can begin. All players choose six of the chips of their color that they would like to toss towards the illustrations of ingredients laid out on the board before them. How should they choose? The player with the highest total of the values printed on those chips which land on an ingredient has first crack at that ingredient.
Instead of targeting the ingredients, though, players can also go for any of the four special actions printed at the center of the board. These let them throw again, take a free ingredient, take a free recipe, or gain the first player token (a wooden sauce bottle). To determine who gets to perform those actions, players flip up the chips that landed on them, and whoever has the highest total when the numbers printed on the back are added, gets to use that action.
Here is a board after each player has thrown all of their chips. In this case, each player has gone for a different ingredient and no one has hit a special action. Blue can choose to buy an egg. Since no noodles or mushrooms were drawn in the setup for this turn, they aren't available for players to buy. Players whose chips landed on the red area between ingredients get chili peppers – two chilis can be used as any one ingredient when making a recipe.
Next is the buying and selling phase. Once all the special actions have been resolved, the player with the starting player bottle chooses the order in which the chips on each ingredient are revealed. For each player, the sum of the numbers on their chips is the value of that ingredient. The player with the highest sum gets to make the first purchase though, so there is a devious trade-off between first dibs and cheap ingredients.
They can choose to sell an ingredient of that type for the price they have set, or to buy a new one for that price. Once a player buys or sells an ingredient, they discard their chip with the highest value on the ingredient and then the player who now has the highest sum total on their chips has a chance to do so. This continues until no ingredient cards remain or until the players decide to stop. Players repeat this for all ingredients where there are available cards; chips on the other ingredients simply go back to the player who threw them.
In this example, blue has a chip with a value of 600 on the bowl of onions, while red only has a chip with a value of 400, so blue gets to buy an onion first for 600 yen. Red can then buy the remaining onion card for 400 yen.
In the final phase, players determine whether the ingredients they have collected can be used to make any of the three recipes open to all players to cook or a private recipe they gained from the "free recipe" special action. If so, they discard the ingredient cards required and place the recipe face up in front of them. Once a player has cooked three recipes, the game is over, and they win! If the game hasn't been won, the current round is over, and the three recipes available to everyone are replenished. Six new ingredient cards are set out next to their corresponding bowls. Then, a new round can begin.
Here is an example of the set of three recipes that are open to all players. Every recipe requires three ingredients.
This game is full of interesting choices. Which chips should you choose to throw? Do you want to outbid players for an ingredient that has only one card, or are you hoping that you can get it for a low price and leave enough money for another one? Do you want to use some of your chips to go for special actions? Or do you want to knock players off actions and ingredient bowls (which gives the game a delightful take that element)? And, of course, you've got to decide whether you want to buy or sell ingredients – you might need money for that onion card, so giving up the noodle card you have in exchange for 500 yen might be worth it for you!
It can be played in only half an hour and in addition to being full of intriguing strategy, throwing the chips is a blast. They have a lovely heft to them and throw very well, but as you get more skilled, you'll be able to knock other players off of their ingredient bowls! I highly recommend this game for fans of dexterity and take that games, as well as for fans of Splendor or even of Japanese food!
What game would you like to see reviewed next? Would you like to see another food-themed game, another game in the take-that genre, or maybe something with a different mechanic, like a word game? Let me know in the comments and please do check back for new reviews! If you found this one interesting, please do tell your board game loving friends – this site is still in its infancy, and the more viewers it gets, the more it can grow!
Thank you everyone and happy board gaming!
Looks like fun!