Most of the five minutes you spend teaching Sushi Go Party! are spent on setup, not on rules. The rules are four sentences.
Below is the whole teach, in order, plus the three things to deliberately not mention on a first game.
Before anyone sits down, two minutes
Do this while people are getting drinks. It is not part of the teach and they do not need to watch.
- Board in the middle. Everyone takes a pawn and puts it on the 0 space.
- Pick the My First Meal menu. The rulebook describes it as a mellow menu that goes down easy for first time players, which is exactly the job.
- Find the menu tiles for those dishes and slot them into the board. This is the single most important setup step, and the reason is below.
- Shuffle that menu’s dessert cards into a face down pile to one side. Shuffle everything else into the main deck.
- Shuffle the right number of desserts into the deck for round one: 5 if you are 2 to 5 players, 7 if you are 6 to 8.
The menu tiles are doing your job for you. Once they are in the board, the scoring for every dish in the game is printed in front of everyone, all evening. You will never have to answer what is this worth, because you can point at it.
The teach, word for word
Deal the hands first, then say this. Hand size depends on how many of you there are:
| Players | Cards each |
|---|---|
| 2 or 3 | 10 |
| 4 or 5 | 9 |
| 6 or 7 | 8 |
| 8 | 7 |
Then, with everyone holding cards:
- “Look at your hand. Pick one card you want to keep and put it face down in front of you.”
- “We all flip at the same time.”
- “Now pass the rest of your hand to the left, and we do it again with the hand you just got.”
- “Keep going until the cards run out. Then we score what is in front of you, and ” “that is round one of three.”
That is the game. You have not explained a single dish and you do not need to.
The one sentence about scoring
Do not go through the dishes. Say this instead and point at the board:
“Everything in this game scores differently, and the tiles on the board tell you how. Look at them when you are choosing.”
Then add one example, because an example lands where a rule does not. Point at sashimi:
“This one, for instance. Three of them are worth ten. One or two are worth nothing.”
That single example teaches the whole shape of the game: dishes have thresholds, committing to one is a gamble, and giving up halfway costs you everything. Everyone works out the rest by playing.
That is also the part to keep, whatever else gets cut.
How I explain a game depends on the game and on the person. Some people cannot sit through more than a couple of minutes of rules, so I adapt and we learn as we play. A lot of people actually prefer that: playing and watching the ideas come together.
There still has to be a starting idea, though. Before the first turn, I say clearly how you win and what is usually the best thing to do.
If you skip that, new players chase goals that are not worth much. In Carcassonne, for example, they build very long roads when they should be closing cities, which score more.
The three things not to mention
- That there are eight other menus. The moment you say the game is customisable, somebody asks what the options are and you have lost four minutes. Play My First Meal and mention it at the end if anyone enjoyed it.
- How desserts work. They score at the end of the game rather than each round, and that distinction means nothing to someone who has not finished a round yet. Say it when round one ends and the puddings stay on the table.
- Chopsticks, in advance. If the menu has them, let somebody draw one and ask. Explaining a card nobody is holding is wasted breath.
The general rule: teach what someone needs for their next decision, not what they will need in twenty minutes.
What happens in round one, and what to do about it
- Somebody will take one sashimi and then stop. Let it happen. The scoring at the end of the round teaches it better than you can.
- Somebody will ask what they should take. Answer with a question: what is already in front of you? That is the whole strategy and it is better discovered than told.
- Somebody may forget to pass. It is easy to do when everyone is choosing at once, and it is not a sign the teach went badly.
- Round one will be slower than rounds two and three. Usually by a lot. Do not apologise for it or offer to stop.
If your table is very small or very big
The teach is the same at any count. Two things around it are not, and both come from the rulebook rather than from taste.
- Two players: spoon and edamame cannot be used at all. If you build your own menu later, leave them out. With My First Meal you do not need to think about it. The rulebook also removes the penalty for having the fewest temaki or pudding at two players, so nobody can go negative on those.
- Seven or eight players: menu and special order cannot be used. Hands drop to seven cards each, and more desserts go into the deck, seven in round one instead of five.
- Six to eight players: maki scores differently. Most is 6, second is 4 and third is 2, where at 2 to 5 players only the top two score. If maki is on your menu, flip its tile over to the 6 to 8 side.
That last one is easy to miss and it is printed on the back of the tile, so the board will tell the table even if you forget.
Practically: at eight people the teach gets easier, not harder. Smaller hands mean fewer choices, and the simultaneous turns mean eight people take exactly as long as three.
Why this game teaches so well
My take: this is one of the games that almost never fails, and the reason is structural rather than lucky.
Turns are simultaneous, so nobody is waiting and nobody is being watched while they decide. Nobody is eliminated. And the worst available mistake costs a few points out of a few hundred.
Most people who try it fall in love with the cards themselves, all those little dishes, and never notice they are playing a drafting game. That is the real reason the teach is short: you are not teaching a system, you are handing somebody nine cards and asking them to pick one.
One thing worth being straight about, because the title of this article says five minutes. The five minutes is the explanation. Setup is separate: unboxing, picking a menu, slotting the tiles into the board and shuffling the desserts in. Here is the honest end to end figure.
I have never timed myself, so I can’t give you a reliable number. I would say ten minutes at most from opening the box to the first card played. Call it fifteen to be safe.
It goes quickly because the core idea is so simple: you get a hand of cards, keep one and pass the rest. That comes from traditional card games, so nobody really struggles with it as a concept.
So: around five minutes of talking, and ten to fifteen from a closed box to the first card on the table. If the game is set up before people sit down, they only ever see the five.
FOTO: una mano de cartas en el momento de elegir
What to read next
- Sushi Go Party! scoring explained, for when round one ends and somebody asks.
- Sushi Go Party! menu cards explained, once they want to try a different menu.
- Easy board games you can teach in 10 minutes, where this game comes first of ten.
- Easy board games for beginners, the main hub.
How this article was written
The setup steps, the hand sizes, the dessert counts and the description of the My First Meal menu all come from the official Gamewright rules of play. The order of the teach and the three things to leave out are my own judgement.
I have played this game many times, physically and on Board Game Arena, though my original copy is Sushi Go, my brother’s version.
Using the Amazon links in this article helps me keep working on Board Game Newbie, at no extra cost to you.