How to Play Aggravation

Aggravation is a marble race game for 2 to 6 players. Each player rolls one die to move four marbles out of their base, all the way round a track of holes and into their home row. Land exactly on an opponent’s marble and you aggravate it: it goes back to its base and has to start again. Shortcuts through the middle of the board save time but leave your marble exposed. The same game, played on homemade wooden boards, is known as Wahoo, and it belongs to the same family as Parcheesi, Sorry! and Trouble.

Aggravation Rules at a Glance

How to Set Up

1. Pick a colour and put your 4 marbles in the base of that colour.
2. Roll to start. Everyone rolls the die and the highest roll goes first. Play then passes to the left.

How to Play Aggravation

1. Roll and move one marble. On your turn, roll the die and start or move one of your marbles. Whenever you roll a 6, take another turn.
2. Start a marble on a 1 or a 6. Move it from your base to your start space. Only one marble can sit on your start space at a time. Once you have marbles out, a 1 or 6 can either start a new marble or move one already on the board.
3. Move the full count. Marbles go clockwise along the track. You can jump over an opponent’s marble (it counts as one space), but you can’t jump over or land on your own. If one of your marbles is blocked, it can’t move at all; if none of them can move the full count, your turn is over.
4. Aggravate. If you land exactly on an opponent’s marble, it goes back to their base, and your marble takes its space. They need another 1 or 6 to start it again.
5. Get home. At the end of the lap, move each marble into one of the 4 spaces in your home row by exact count, without jumping your own marbles. The first player with all 4 marbles home wins.

Shortcuts: Star Spaces and the Centre

Shortcuts are optional, and an opponent can aggravate you on them like anywhere else.

• Star spaces. Land on a star space by exact count, and on a later turn you can move clockwise round the ring of star spaces by your roll, step off onto any path (usually the one leading to your home) and use the rest of the roll there.
• The centre. Land in the centre hole by exact count, or roll a 1 from a star space. The only way out is to roll a 1 on a later turn, which takes you to any star space, usually the one closest to your home.

On older four-armed boards there is only the centre hole, which works the same way.

Team Play

• 4 players: two teams of two, partners sitting opposite. In the Hasbro rules you can jump your partner’s marbles, and landing on one aggravates it. When all 4 of your marbles are home, keep rolling and your partner moves by your rolls. The first team with all 8 marbles home wins.
• 6 players: two teams of three, sitting alternately. The first player on a team with all 4 marbles home says before each roll which teammate the roll is for.

Wahoo rules are kinder to partners: you can’t land on or pass your partner’s marbles, and once all yours are home you use your turns to help your partner.

Aggravation Rules Questions

Aggravation vs Wahoo vs Other Race Games

Aggravation Strategy

• Get marbles out early. Only 1s and 6s start a marble, so use them to start one while you can, so later rolls have more marbles to choose from.
• Don’t stop just in front of an opponent. Any marble 1 to 6 spaces behind you has a 1 in 6 chance of landing on you every turn.
• Use the centre with care. It is the quickest route home, but you only leave on a 1, and it takes five turns on average.
• Chase marbles near their home. Aggravating a marble that has nearly finished costs its owner the most.
• Don’t block yourself. Since you can’t pass your own marbles, bunching them up wastes rolls, especially near your home row.

Aggravation Odds

With one die and a 6 giving another roll, the chances are exact:

Where Aggravation and Wahoo Come From

Aggravation and Wahoo are cross-and-circle race games in the same family as pachisi, the race game of India, and Wahoo is almost identical to the German game Mensch ärgere Dich nicht of 1907. Wahoo is said to come from the Appalachians, and homemade Wahoo boards survive from the 1930s and 1940s. Aggravation was trademarked by BERL Industries, a group of four friends, who filed for the name in 1959, and the first edition came out in 1962. A six-player “deluxe party edition” with star-space shortcuts followed in the early 1960s. The game was licensed to Milton Bradley and to Parker Brothers, and today it is made by Hasbro, while the creators’ families still hold the rights.

More Games to Try

For more race games from the same family, see Parcheesi, Sorry! and Trouble. For another classic board game, try Chinese checkers, which is also played with marbles, or mancala.

Aggravation: frequently asked questions