Choose the Best Pizza Portions But Hold the Anchovies in New York Slice

Pepperoni, anchovies, cheese, and sausage. Which toppings will you choose?

In New York Slice, one player slices the pizza and the other players choose their portions. Once all the pizzas are gone, players score on the slices they’ve collected and the pepperoni they ate!  

Gameplay

During set up, all the pizza slice tiles are shuffled and then put into stacks of eleven facedown tiles each (with the remaining three tiles returned to the box facedown). The ‘today’s special’ tiles are shuffled, one placed facedown on each pizza slice stack, and the rest returned to the box.

Each round one player will be the slicer; with the role rotating to the player on the current slicer’s left at the end of the round.

The slicer takes one of the facedown stacks of tiles, reveals the special token, and then flips over the slices one at a time, placing them adjacent to each other, until all eleven tiles are faceup on the table forming an entire pizza. The slicer then divides the pizza into portions, making one portion for each player. The slicer cannot change the order of the slices in the pizza when making the portions. The special token is either added to a portion or makes up a portion on its own.

Once the slicer has finished, starting with the player on the slicer’s left, each player chooses a portion with the slicer taking the last remaining one. When you choose a portion you must decide, for each slice of pizza in that portion, whether to add it to your collection faceup in front of you, or if there is at least one piece of pepperoni on it, whether to eat it, in which case you place it facedown in front of you.

At the end of the game, players calculate their scores. Players check who has the most slices of each type of pizza in their faceup collections. Each type has a number on it which represents how many of that type of pizza is in the game as well as how many points it will earn you if you have the most of it (no one scores points in cases of ties). Players also score one point per piece of pepperoni they ate and lose one point for each anchovy present in their pizza collection (pepperonis do not count for points in collections while anchovies do not take away points if they’re on slices you ate).

The special tokens have a variety of effects, such as making anchovies be worth points to you, winning ties, or allowing you to draw an extra slice.

Review

New York Slice is an example of a theme that works great on every level, from the components to the mechanics. The idea of one player dividing the resources and the other players choosing from the selections, works beautifully with pizza.

The dividing of the pizza also offers lots of strategic choices. The fact that you can’t swap the slices around inside the pizza makes sense thematically but also gives restriction to the slicer’s choices which makes the decision making more challenging. The specials also add another element for players to consider, as some of them can be quite powerful.

All of the components in the game are excellent. The specials are nice thick tiles, the pizza slices are also sturdy, and the artwork is so good that it’s impossible to play without getting in the mood to eat some pizza (you’ve been warned!). The check pad used to tally end game scores is also a nice thematic addition.

The game does take up a lot of table space, because the pizza slices are each a pretty good size, and set up is also a little onerous as the slices do not lend themselves to being easy to mix.

New York Slice has some fun depth in the choices, but also plays quickly with fast turns, and is easy to teach. There is definitely a sweet spot for player count, as six is too many, with not enough slices per portion, and two players too few, with too many slices per portion and fewer interesting decisions for the players. But if you have the right group size, the game is a ton of fun. It’s light, it’s intriguing, and it is incredibly yummy looking. Recommended!

Pros: Fantastic components, intriguing choices, theme and mechanics blend together nicely

Cons: Takes up a lot of table space, tiles are hard to shuffle, not all player counts are equal, will make you very hungry!

Disclosure: we received a complimentary review copy of this game.