Noodle Battle 2026

Here in Renaissance Italy, it’s time for the Royal Pasta Festival! All the nobles are eager to try the best dishes prepared by top chefs from the local village.

You’ll play as either the great pasta maker Pietro Pastatore, or the equally great sauce cook Cicely Saucalinni. You’re bitter rivals, but you are obliged to work together to prepare the festival banquet.

Two players will face each other, arraying the banquet’s dishes in ways that will favor yourself in the eyes of the visiting nobles. Each dish is equally delicious, so the only advantage you can claim against your rival is in presentation.

If you can arrange the dishes to evoke each noble’s coat of arms, and thus appeal to their vanity, they will award you and your family with their patronage.

Both players will place tiles, one at a time, into the shared banquet, aiming to make patterns that will flatter the specific nobles currently waiting for their meals. Each tile is a specific pasta shape, with a specific sauce.

Pietro wants to make patterns of pasta shapes only: he can score a pattern made completely out of 1 pasta type (spaghetti, penne, or ravioli), irrespective of those tiles’ sauce types.

Cicely wants to make patterns of sauce colors only: she can score a pattern made completely out of 1 sauce type (marinara, alfredo, or pesto), irrespective of those tiles’ pasta types.

Every time a player completes a pattern, the noble will come over to that side of the banquet hall to be served! The first player to complete 5 patterns wins!

—description from the designer