It’s cherry blossom season in Japan – the perfect time for wrestling! Use your skills, some signature moves, and a few corner slams to push your opponents out of the ring and bring home that championship belt! Ready – set – wrestle!

What Is It?

Dexterity / Pushing – Each turn players will choose a piece from their inventory and push it across the pushing platform in a straight line. The goal is to push an opponent off the sumo ring in order to win, but they also want to push other pieces off in order to add more options to their inventory, as they can lose if they run out of pieces as well

Variable Player Powers – Each wrestler has a unique signature move, and pieces to go along with it, which players can use to try and get an edge on their opponents

Who Is It For?

  • 2 to 4 Players – Scales well at any count. I like 2 and 4 the best.
  • Ages 6 & Up – You can play without signature moves for younger or less experienced players, for an easier game, so it’s good for a wide age range
  • Fans of dexterity games / pushing pieces
  • Players who don’t mind a little chaos and won’t get upset when pieces don’t push the way you think they might!

Expansions

Swarm – Choose 3 wrestlers for your team. Use the wrestler card for your active wrestler, and the swarm cards of your ringside crew. Play back to back games, switching wrestlers each game, until someone wins 2 – This was a cool expansion. Having the ringside crew gives you access to some additional abilities, and often some extra pieces, which can both be very useful. It’s also neat to make it multiple rounds, since the game is pretty short anyway, to let you try out multiple characters/abilities

PROS

  • Aesthetics – Looks great on the table, nice art
  • Components – Nice quality wooden pieces, cards are nice too, lots of unique pieces
  • Variety – Lots of different wrestlers/powers/pieces – swarm adds in move abilities for your ringside crew too
    • You can also integrate this with other Kabuto Sumo base games
  • Rules are well-written — short and sweet which leads to a quick teach
  • Ring stays assembled in the box

CONS

  • Can sometimes run a little long if players are overly cautious and trying to just keep themselves in the center
  • Putting together the ring the first time was rough, it would not slot together easily
  • The pieces don’t always push as you hope or expect, so there’s a fair bit of luck

Final Thoughts

I’ve never played the original Kabuto Sumo, so I can’t compare them, but I did think this one was fun! I thought the square ring and the pushing platform worked well mechanically, and I thought it was fun to weigh your options of which corner to push from, knowing there was an added bonus if you tagged all four corners. It’s light and simple, so it’s great for all ages and skill levels, but it also has a sprinkle of strategy to trying to position yourself just right for the perfect push, or really utilize your signature move at the best time, if you can. If you like pushing/dexterity games – check it out!

Additional Information:
My Final Rating – 7/10

Designers – John Brieger, Michael Dunsmore,
Tony Miller
Artist – Kwanchai Moriya
Publisher – Allplay
Sakura Slam MSRP – $39.00
Swarm MSRP – $19.00
Website

*I was provided a copy of this game to do this review*

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