Pickomino rules — the cheerful worm game with eight dice

The goal sounds unappetizing but is delightfully simple: collect as many worms as you can. Those worms sit on sixteen tiles worth 21 through 36, and you claim a tile by rolling enough points with eight dice — including at least one worm. Push your luck too far and your turn goes bust, costing you a tile instead. Below you'll find the complete rules, the tile table, and tips to win more often.

What do you need?

• Eight dice with the pips 1 through 5 and a worm in place of the 6. The worm is worth 5 points.
• Sixteen tiles ("portions") worth 21 through 36. Each tile shows one to four worms — the higher the value, the more worms.
• 2 to 7 players, ages 8 and up. A game takes 20 to 30 minutes.

The goal: collecting worms

You don't win with points but with worms. Every tile you capture goes on top of your own stack, and at the end you add up the worms on all your tiles. The breakdown:

A high tile is therefore worth up to four times as much as a low one — but it's also four times as hard to get.

How a turn works

1. Roll all eight dice.
2. Pick one symbol. Choose a pip value (or the worm) that appears in your roll and set aside all dice showing that symbol. Important: you may pick each symbol only once per turn — if you already have threes set aside, you may not set aside any more threes later in the same turn.
3. Roll on or stop. Roll the remaining dice again and pick another (new) symbol, or stop if you have enough points. You may only stop if you have at least one worm set aside and your total is high enough for a tile.

For your total, add up all the dice you've set aside, with each worm counting as 5 points. Fours, fours, and more fours may sound attractive, but without a worm to go with them your whole turn is worthless.

Taking a tile — or stealing one

When you stop rolling, you take a tile. There are two ways:

• From the middle: take the face-up tile that is exactly equal to your total. If it's no longer there, take the highest face-up tile below your total. Roll 28 while the 28 is already gone, for example, and you may take the 27 or lower (the highest still face up).
• From a fellow player: if your total is exactly equal to the value of the tile lying on top of another player's stack, you may steal that tile. Only the top tile counts, and only on an exactly equal total — this is the meanest and most fun move in the game.

You place the captured tile on top of your own stack. That instantly makes it your vulnerable tile: fellow players can steal it right back, and if your turn goes bust, you lose it.

When your turn goes bust

Your turn goes bust in three cases:

• You roll only symbols you already have set aside (you can't pick a new symbol);
• You stop or get stuck without a worm among your set-aside dice;
• Your total is lower than the lowest available tile and there's nowhere to steal one either.

The penalty is double: you return the top tile of your own stack to the middle, and the highest face-up tile in the middle is flipped over and out of the game (unless that happens to be the very tile you just returned). This way the game naturally keeps getting shorter.

End of the game and winning

The game ends as soon as there are no face-up tiles left in the middle. Everyone counts the worms (not the tile values!) on their captured tiles. The player with the most worms wins; in a tie, whoever has the highest tile wins.

Variants: Junior and Extra

• Pickomino Junior — a simplified version for young children (ages 4 and up), with no adding: you hunt for symbols instead of points. An ideal stepping stone; you'll find more play ideas for the little ones among the dice games for kids.
• Pickomino Extra — an expansion with extra tiles and special rules, for anyone who knows the base game inside out.
• House rule "soft landing" — some groups play that a busted turn only costs you your tile and no tile is flipped over. The game then lasts longer and is more forgiving.

Tips & strategy

• Grab your worm in time. Worms and fives are both worth 5 points, but without a worm it's all for nothing. If an early roll shows two or three worms, set them aside — waiting for "even more worms" usually ends badly.
• Stealing beats taking. Stealing a tile from a fellow player is a double win: you get stronger and your biggest rival gets weaker. Remember whose stack has which tile on top and steer your total toward it.
• Do the math on what's left. The fewer dice you have left, the smaller the chance of a new usable symbol. Rolling on with two dice left for a tile that barely improves your position is usually a bad trade. You'll get a better feel for those odds on the page about dice probability.
• A low tile is still a tile. Especially at the end of the game, as the middle empties out, a sure 21 often beats a gamble on 30-plus.

Rather try something completely different? Browse the complete overview of dice games, or dive into Farkle (10,000) — another game where rolling on too long will cost you dearly.