It’s not often you come across a board game that’s hard to compare to anything else you’ve played. Kabuto Sumo is one of those games. At its simplest, this beetle sumo wrestling game is all about pushing pieces out of an arena, but looks can be deceiving. The game is exciting and unpredictable, just the way you want a wrestling match to be, and we had a blast with our special guest Petrana Radulovic in our latest episode of Overboard.
In a match of Kabuto Sumo, players try to push their opponent’s wrestling piece out of the arena, alone or as a team of two. They do that by shoving pieces (in small, medium, or large varieties) into a full plate of checkers and beetles. This usually causes one or more pieces to be ejected from the arena. If it is a player’s beetle piece, he is eliminated and his opponent wins! But it’s more likely they’re just pushing out a few regular pieces, which will be added to that player’s supply for future turns.
The closest comparison we could come up with to this “disc pushing” gameplay wasn’t even a board game. Rather, it was those coin-pushing games you see in bowling alley arcades and Chuck E. Cheese locations.
Although these “games” are very different from Kabuto Sumothey have one thing in common, they both make you think it will be pushing discs in a straight line simple.
It turns out that if you push two or three discs in a row, they can move in all sorts of unpredictable directions. But it pays off just now often enough that it can be worth the risk if, say, you can push a particularly desirable piece (or maybe even an opponent) out of the ring from across the arena. That means you (and your teammate) have to decide at every turn whether you want to play it safe or go broke. These kinds of high-risk, high-reward decisions make the game feeling like a thrilling struggle – even if you’re just pushing small discs.
Adding more color and chaos are the wrestlers themselves. At the beginning of one Kabuto Sumo match, each player gets to choose a wrestler with two signature moves. One of these moves will add a tactical wrinkle to your playstyle.
Maybe you steal pieces from an opponent that touches your wrestling piece, or you get an extra turn if you’re on the edge of the arena.
The other signature move usually gives you access to your special piece, which you can push into the arena instead of a regular piece.
These signature pieces can be incredibly useful, but you usually have to pay a few pieces to get them.
You can see Kabuto Sumo for yourself in our Let’s Play at the top of this post. If you like it, check out the rest of our Overboard episodes to our Youtube Channel!