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Waimea Wipeout from sggc Waimea Original Works is a simple push-your-luck dice game with a surfing theme, several complicated result tables, and a superfluous board.
The score track counts tenths of points, but wraps around at 0.7 points, so the first row is up to 1.7, then to 2.4, and so on. You roll to catch a wave, roll for points on the wave, roll for starting to surf, roll for points on the start, roll to start a maneuver and to see which maneuver, roll for success on the maneuver, and repeat until you’re tired of doing maneuvers or you wipe out. I counted some 10 rolls a round, each requiring look up in one of two or maybe three result tables. Two rounds to a heat, ten heats to a game.
We’ve had surfing games going back to the early 1960s, including the evocatively named Surfie Joe and the Weirdo Board Riders.
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So that’s what something like two hundred rolls and lookups total? Yikes.
All press is good press…so Mahalo to the Purple Pawn. However, as one familiar with the game, your calculation of the number of rolls and “look ups” seems a little high. This game presents the opportunity for 4 “surfers” to enjoy a “heat” which is one of the small segments of a real surf contest. Further, they can choose different “surf breaks” at which to hold the heat. The charts, which are standard spreadsheets with some color enhancements for emphasis, have varied results to represent the particular Breaks. You begin with a “take off”, then a “Drop”, then into the “Tube”. This means 3 rolls, 3 “look ups”…but quickly the initial roll result (take off) will be easy to remember, so one “look up ” disappears. At this point, you then have “up to” 3 maneuvers to attempt. One roll selects the maneuver (another column that becomes familiar due to the repeat usage), and the next executes the maneuver. Since you essentially risk all maneuver points with each attempt, most surfers will “cut out” of the wave to secure good scores.
If a surfer completes 3 maneuvers, there will be 9 total “look ups” to do.
Each heat consists of 10 “take offs” which often end in one or two rolls. Overall, the game runs in about 35 to 40 minutes for a heat. THanks for noticingthe mental element of the game as we have been introdicing to students just learning decimal addition and the response has been overwhelmingly positive. We invite you to play a heat with the beautiful game board in front of you and then give us another thought…as this article appears to have been written after just viewing the instructional video of one wave opportunity…albeit a nice long ride at that…7.8 I think!
Yes, it was written after viewing the instructional videos; I have not played the game.
Yehuda