Arizona: Great Buy! 99 The Game review — Good for a few sips

“Arizona: Great Buy! 99 The Game” is admittedly an insane title for a board game. That didn’t stop Spin Master from publishing it but you’d be forgiven for seeing that and being a bit confused. You may be equally confused why there is a random can of Arizona Tea sitting on the shelf in the board game aisle. Look a bit closer.

For the purposes of not driving myself insane, let’s call this the Arizona Tea game. At first glance and if you don’t look too closely, it really does look like just a regular can of Arizona Tea. It’s the right size, the colors are perfect, and it even has “Game Facts” instead of nutritional facts. I’ve never wanted to drink a board game so badly. Seriously, give the marketing team a promotion.

Popping the top of the can open you get a deck of cards and some tokens featuring all of the different Arizona Tea varieties. The cards are of standard quality and for just $10 I was honestly surprised at how good they are. The extra effort stands out when other publishers put out much lower-quality card stock in bigger and more expensive games. The card art carries the consistent Arizona Tea style throughout and looks great. I do have to knock some points for the cards being different colors that carry to the edge without a border. From the side of the deck you can get an idea of the cards coming up if you try. But ya know… don’t do that. The tokens feature full art prints of the different teas and had us immediately fighting over our favorites. Arnold Palmer is the best, obviously. 

The gameplay is super quick and easy to teach. To honor Arizona Tea’s commitment to fighting inflation and keeping their price at just 99 cents, the object of the game is to play cards that add value to the current round price and try to hit 99 cents exactly. If you do, you get to collect a can. If you go over and bust, you lose a can. Play goes around until someone gets four cans and wins the game. There are special cards that spice up the game and trying to set up your opponents to bust adds just enough thought for a 10-minute game to keep it interesting and have the losers asking for another chance. One word of caution, if math scares you the numbers at play are small but doing addition in real time is basically the entire game. 

As a board game enthusiast and collector, I’d buy this just to have it on my shelf. It’s a nice bonus that it's a fun little game as well. The Arizona Tea game travels great in its metal can and would be great at restaurants or out and about. As a filler game for your game night, it’s a nice short burst of fun and a great conversation piece. You really can’t go wrong with this one as long as you aren’t expecting anything too deep. The game supports up to 10 players and I don’t even know that many people so it can accommodate pretty much any setting.