Hot Potatoz is a new party game from Canadian cousins Steph & Jess Nguyen. We backed the game on Kickstarter so we busted it out for Compulsory Merriment as soon as the package arrived.
Players start with a hand of Potatoz and Action cards, which are full of pop culture references and puns. Each Potatoz is worth points. You might get the Basic Potato (zero points), or luck out with Pretty Fly for a White Fry (2 points) or even the Welcome to Flavortown card, which looks like a potato-fied version of Guy Fieri and is worth 5 points. Action cards are played to help you steal, scheme and sabotage your way to a better hand before somebody throws a Potato Party. What? Well…
Every turn, players draw a Potatoz card and an Action card, working to build a hand of the hottest Potatoz. There are aggressive Action cards like Mr. Steal Ur Girl, which lets you steal another player’s hottest potato, and defensive action cards like Nah, which blocks your action (and which turned out to be my doom.)
Potato Party is a special action card. When you play it, you roll the die to decide how many tokens the winning player will collect. Then everybody plays Potatoz from their hands face down. Flip the cards and whomever has the hottest Potatoz (most points played) wins the tokens. Unless somebody also plays action cards to increase their points or block yours–like Chris, who won by mashing every Potatoz with his Nah cards. In any event, five tokens wins the game!
We played with the Memes & Schemes expansion, which adds new Potatoz cards like Channing Tater and Corn Kid (5 points and, yes, the Millennials had to show me the video), new Action Cards like the deadly F*ck Off (which finally allowed me to win one), plus the Salty Fry Cone!
Chris deemed Mandi to be the Extra Salty Hot Potatoz so Mandi wore the Salty Fry Cone like a crown. She refused to let me photograph this glamorous occasion. When we actually looked at the package, we realized the Salty Fry Cone is meant to be worn around the neck but Mandi probably wouldn’t let me photograph that either.
Let me tell you, this is not a game for sissies and sulkers or, as the game designers say, it’s not for big babies! You can play a very hot hand of Hot Potatoz and think you’re going to grab the tokens, then somebody like Chris comes along with that maniacal “I’m winning!” expression he gets, and plays Action cards to give you a root awakening. Heh.
Hot Potatoz is quick, fun, punny and vicious! You can learn it in 5 minutes for a quick party game but there are lots of strategies to be discovered for plenty of replayability.
20-60 minutes playtime, 2-5 players, Ages 14+