Wahoo (board game)

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Wahoo, a game similar to Parchisi, is a board game that involves moving a set number of marbles around the board, trying to get them into the safety zone. Most boards are four to six players. Wahoo has been a popular game for decades. Even today, custom-made boards proliferate on eBay and Milton Bradley has sold their own version of the game, under the title Aggravation, for years.

1 Rules
2 Aggravation
3 See Also
4 External links

[edit] Rules

Number of Players: 2 to 6

Object: To be the first player to move all of the player’s individual marbles out of the starting area, around the board, and into home, whether by going the distance or taking shortcuts.

Setting Up: Each player places his/her marbles in the starting area and has their dice handy. Each player rolls the die. The highest number goes first, then play proceeds to the left. If two or more players roll the same number, they roll again to break the tie.

Playing: To move a marble out of the Starting Area to the Starting Position, a player must roll a two, four, or a six. The Starting Position is the space just outside the Starting Area.. After a marble is placed on the Starting Position, the player rolls again to begin moving along the board, going counter-clockwise.

If a six is rolled, the player is allowed an extra turn. There is no limit to how many extra turns are allowed in regards to this rule. As long as s/he rolls sixes, the player is allowed an extra turn.

A player may never land on or pass over one of his or her own marbles. This rule applies if the players are playing doubles or triples.

If a marble lands on a space already occupied by an opponent’s marble, the opponent’s marble is removed and placed back into its Starting Area.

If a player rolls a number that does not allow a marble to be moved, that turn is completed and goes to the next player in the sequence.

Shortcut: In the center of the board, there is a commonly a hole. This may be used as a shortcut. To enter the hole, one must land on one of the corner holes. For example, if a player moves a marble into the Starting Position, then rolls a five or six (depending on how the board is made) that allows the marble to be moved to the end of the player’s territory, s/he may go into the hole. If the person does not go into the hole, on the next turn, the player can roll again, this time going to each subsequent corner hole without going through the individual territories. There are either four or six corner holes per board. If the player starts out at his/her corner hole, s/he may roll a six or below. The only valid roll of the dice when taking the corner shortcuts are the remaining amount of corner holes from the person’s current position on the board. If the player’s marble is on the fourth corner hole, for example, and there are only two more corner hole left in the marble’s progression toward home, the only valid rolls for that particular marble is a one or two.

If a player is in the center hole, only a dice roll of 1 can get a that marble out of the hole and onto the closet corner hole that will get the marble home. As long as the marble is on the corner hole, it is open to attack. If another player lands on any corner hole while the marble still remains on the player’s corner hole, that marble is considered lost and placed back in the starting area.

Winning: The game is won when the first person has all his/her marbles safely home. The game may be continued to see who gets second place, and so on.

[edit] Aggravation

Aggravation is the name of one of the many Pachisi variants. Its distinctive features are that the track is usually asterisk-shaped, to accommodate six players, that it is normally drilled to accept colored glass marbles as playing pieces, and that it incorporates "shortcuts." There are no "safe" holes where a player's marbles cannot be captured (or "aggravated," in the game's parlance). Each player rolls a single die to determine the number of spaces to move, with a roll of either 1 or 6 needed to enter the track.

Each of the inside corners near the center of the board is a "shortcut," as is a hole in the center of the board: if a player lands a marble on one of the corner shortcuts, he or she has the option, on the next roll, of jumping from shortcut to shortcut, counting each jump as a single space; however, to do so, the player must be able to complete the move without leaving the shortcuts. If a player on a corner shortcut rolls a 1, he or she has the additional option of jumping to the center shortcut; from there, the marble can move directly to any corner shortcut on a roll of 1, but cannot move at all on any other roll.