Heckmeck/Pickomino

29th October 2019

Tuesday night at 'The Sovereigns' in Woking and it's game night at the Woking board game club.

We started the evening with 'Heckmeck' AKA 'Pickomino'.

Have you ever wondered what is a chicken's favourite food? It turns out that a chicken's favourite food is worms. But not just any worms, but roast worms! And not just any roast worms either, but BBQ roast worms! How many BBQ roast worms does a chicken like eating? As many as it can get. How does it get as many BBQ roast worms as it can? By pushing it's luck of course!

That's what Heckmeck is about. Pushing your luck to accumulate as many BBQ roast worms as possible.

What's in a game?
There are 2 versions of Heckmeck, standard and deluxe.
We played the standard version of the game. They use the following components:

• 8 six sided dice, each numbered from 1 to 5, the 6th side depicts a worm. A worm has a value of 5. 
• 16 dominoes, the top half of the dominoes are numbered from 21 to 36, the bottom half show 1-4 worms. The higher the value of the domino, the more worms on it.

The deluxe version includes some extra components and rules.

• 2 extra dominoes.
• 7 'bratworm' tokens.
• 6 different meeples, each meeple grants a special ability to whoever 'owns' it.

All of the components are of a good quality. The dominoes are solid and heavy. The dice are all wooden with rounded corners. The deluxe components are of a similar quality.

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How's it play?
First there's setup.

• Place the dominoes in a line in ascending order to form a supply.

Yep, that's it for setup. Now on with the game.

The goal in Heckmeck is to roll and accumulate dice to get a score high enough to claim a domino. But here's a twist, at least one of those dice must have a worm result.
How's this done? Keep reading.

• At the start of their turn, the active player rolls all 8 dice.
• The player must then keep a 'set' of dice. A 'set' consists of 1 or more dice showing the same face. For example, after rolling the dice the player gets; 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 4 & 5. They could choose to keep the 1, the two 2s (Combined value of 4.), the two 3s (Worth 6.), the two 4s (Worth 8.) or the 5. Let's say the player took the two 4s.
• Once the player has chosen a 'set', they put those dice to one side. Then they must choose to stop rolling or continue rolling.
• If the player chooses to continue rolling, they must re-roll the remaining dice and keep another 'set', but this set cannot be the same as a set the player already took. So now the player rolls the remaining 6 dice and gets; 4, 4, 5, W, W, W (W=worm.). The player cannot take the 4s because they have already taken 4s. So they must take 5 or the 3 worms. The player takes the 3 worms.
• The player now has a score of 23, 8 from the first roll and 15 from the second roll  (Remember worms are worth 5.). The player also has at least 1 worm result. So this is enough to get a domino, the player chooses to stop rolling. There are dominoes with the scores of 21, 22 & 23. The player must take the highest domino they can, which in this case is the 23.

Going bust or failing

• If after rolling the dice, the player cannot collect a set because all of the dice are showing numbers they have already collected. Then they have gone bust!
• Additionally, if a player chooses to stop rolling or cannot roll anymore dice and they have no accumulated a high enough score to get a domino, then they have failed!
• Going bust or failing have the same result; the player must return a domino to the supply row and turn the highest valued domino in the supply row face-down. If the player has no domino to return, there is no further action.

Stacking
Stacking is one of the things that makes Heckmeck stand out.

• When a player takes a second domino (And any subsequent dominoes.) they place it on top of the previous domino to form a stack. Thus all dominoes are kept in a stack (Even if it's a stack of 1.) and each player will have a single stack.
• When a player goes bust or fails and must return a domino to the supply, they must return the domino from the top of the stack.

Stealing
Like stacking, stealing is something I've not seen in a push your luck game before.

• If the active player accumulates a score that is exactly the same value as the domino on the top of another player's stack, then the active player can steal that domino and add to their own stack!
  
• That's bang out of order!

Endgame
Play continues until there are no more face-up dominoes in the supply to collect.
Players tally the worms they've collected, highest number of worms wins.

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3 dominoes and a winning score!

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Overall

​Heckmeck is easy to learn and fairly quick to play. It has several excellent mechanics that give players tricky decisions to make.
Choosing which sets to keep is crucial because of it 'locks out' numbers. Do you really want to take that single 5, because that means you can no longer get any more 5s. Decisions, decisions.
The worm mechanic is also cool. Needing to have a worm result is an extra thing that can go wrong. Making a worm worth a 5 is genius, it puts players in the same quandary as rolling a 5. If a worm was only worth 1, taking it when it's only 1 worm would be a no-brainer.
Finally, the stacking and stealing together is another great idea. If players just laid their tiles out in a line, then stealing them would be a bit too easy as the choice would be wider. However, since the dominoes are stacked, stealing is uncommon. When it does occur, it's something that should be taken advantage of!

All of this adds up to make a good push your luck game.
Heckmeck has very quickly become a favourite with nearly everybody I play it with. And deservedly so.