Actually, Hey Waiter! turned out to be a rather cool debut game, since its easy mechanics and the included teamplay options can captivate the players right from the start. In the game each player starts with a stack of 10 dishes (poker ships), and a maximum of 4 different kinds of dishes exist in the game (Soup, Salad, Pizza and Blueberry pie). Each of the players operates a waiters team in a huge restaurant, and the first player to get rid off all dishes in his stack will have won the game.

The players place their stack of dishes on a waiter-card in front of them, and each player receives a hand of six playing cards to start with. Only four different cards exist, so that one type of card for each of the chip/dish colours is included. However, the clever element in the game is that a player does not play one but two cards during his turn, and the must be aligned in a way so that the right side of the first card lies next to the left side of the second card. Taken together, this combination of cards determines the action available to the player, and usually the first card will define a dish colour whereas the second card will be used to determined which action can be performed with this dish colour.

The most simple combination is a "serving" combination for a colour which corresponds to the top dish on the player's stack of dishes, but here it must be noted that this combination actually allows all players with a top-dish of the same colour to get rid of their dishes as well. So, players will try to block each other by putting covers over their tops dishes, and if they have successfully placed one of these bowl-shaped covers over an opponent's top dish in a previous turn that dish cannot be served until the player gets rid of the cover. Thus, the covers open up a possibility for hampering the opponents, but in order to keep a player from being blocked for a longer time the players also can use cards to activate their four assistant boys. If an activation is made successful, such an assistant may remove a hindering cover, and the player comes right back into the action.

Another very important type of action is to send another waiter in. This allows the splitting of a player's stack of dishes so that the top dishes from more than one stack can be served. This opens up more flexibility for the player, but on the other hand the activation of a new waiter requires the player to put one of his handcards facedown in front of himself. Showing a waiter on the backside, this card now represents the new waiter, but the player has to live with the consequence that his hand of cards will be reduced by one until one of his waiters has gotten rid of all his dishes. This process even can be continued with the activation of even more waiters, but the more waiters the player puts out the more restrictions he will face concerning his choice of cards.

As indicated, Hey Waiter! is a funny and fast-paced cardgame, and it can be played with 2 to 4 people. With four people attending, there even is the possibility to go for teamplay of two players against the other two, and in this constellation the first team who gets rid of all of its dishes will have won the game. Overall, the game catches its background story rather well, and some cute details like the plastic covers for the dish stacks of the players all make round my general good impression. So, if you are fond of these kinds of easy going cardsgames, Hey Waiter! certainly is worth to be added to your collection!

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Copyright © 2010 Frank Schulte-Kulkmann, Essen, Germany