I am a huge fan of food-based board games, so I was delighted when I saw Sandwich Masters at Tabletop Gaming Live, as it was a new food game I had not seen before, with neat looking art. In this game, you are racing against the other players to create sandwiches with the aim being to make the most money possible.
You start out with seven cards from the ingredient deck. In the middle of the table four orders are displayed, with a deck of ingredient cards and another deck for orders, sitting there too. On your turn, you can place down as many of the same types of ingredients as you have, including bread, which needs to start and finish each order.
You will be racing against other players, in an attempt to fulfill orders faster than they are. However, within the ingredients there are some things that are, well, not quite right. Some of the bacon might be made of Zebra, or instead of beef, you might be adding in a whole cow. The ham could be wrapped in barbed wire. These ingredients aren’t above board, but they will fill that need for the customer and can be given to them if you fill up your sandwich. And, if you are putting out normal ham on a sandwich, you can also place your contaminated ham as well, helping you move closer to completing multiple orders at once albeit with a little risk..
Though these ingredients can complete a sandwich, they do come at a risk in Sandwich Masters. Other players can play health inspector cards on any contaminated sandwiches.These inspectors can be bribed with money, but if you chose not to (or can’t) then you have to throw away your sandwich or worse. Even if you are making perfect, clean sandwiches, other players can play cards like sneezes and ghosts into your sandwich, which will then cause your sandwich to become contaminated, opening it up to a visit from the health inspector.
You can, on your turn, instead of placing an ingredient move the top ingredient to another sandwich, to either move something gross off of your high paying sandwich or to rearrange your sandwich in the case that somebody else completed an order you were going for.
Sandwich Masters is a really fun game, and the orders are interesting too; sometimes they are common sandwiches, sometimes they are chef specials where you get five dollars for each ingredient from a displayed list. There is even a Secret Sauce card, which can take the place of any ingredient.
The game either ends when someone hits a predetermined amount of money or at the end of a timer, in which case the person with the most money wins. I really loved the fast-paced feel of Sandwich Masters, and ended up grabbing a copy, the expansion pack and a play mat, so keep an eye out for a review of the expansion in the coming weeks!
You can purchase your own copy on Big Punch Studios’ website.
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