Rummikub Travel Review

Reviewed by Alice Dixon

We are a family who really enjoy games. We have a whole cupboard under the stairs full of board games and card games. From family classics to newer and more unusual games we have a variety and always make sure we play at least one game every weekend. We are all rather competitive! As we enjoy games so much we also have a collection of travel games so we can play when we go on holidays and short breaks away. Recently many family classics including Monopoly, Guess Who and Scrabble have been made into smaller, compact versions ideal for travelling.

One game we have not ever played, neither the standard nor travel version, is Rummikub. So we were excited to get our hands on the Rummikub travel edition this week as we love something new to play. Rummikub travel is made by Ideal games. It is for 2-4 players and suitable for 7+ years. The game arrived in a small cardboard box, definitely an ideal size for packing for a holiday but perhaps too big for a rucksack to be able to play on the go or whilst travelling.

My first impression when we opened the box was that it looked a bit complicated! There are a large number of small plastic tiles with numbers on and a lengthy instruction and rule booklet. Also included are four racks and rack holders to place the tiles on. So I had a look at the instructions and got my eight year old to have a read through too. After a couple of read throughs we found the game was simpler than we thought to learn.

The main object of the game is to play all the tiles on your rack by forming them into sets of either groups or runs. The tiles are all placed on the table and mixed up and then players take it in turns to play tiles onto the sets until they are gone then the next round starts. The winner is whoever has won the most rounds. I liked that the game is fast paced as there is a one minute time limit per turn. Also before playing you decide how many rounds you are going to play. Therefore you can have a short game or a long game depending on how much time you have available. We soon got into playing and had mastered how to play after a few rounds. We found us adults enjoyed playing as much as the children did.

Overall we really enjoyed this game. Having never played before we thought it was really fun for families with older children. There are some great tactical ways to play against each other. However, considering there are a lot of small pieces and the tiles all need to be spread out on the table I don’t think this works very well as a travel game.

Rating: 3/5

RRP: £12.99

This product can be purchased from Amazon here.