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Broccoli, carrots, figs, onions, peppers……. Oh my! A feast of high vitamin fruits and veg await you in Delicious! But how do you turn those power foods into player points? Well, have no fear! For I am here to give you a quick guide through your first play!
Prepping The Beds
Setting up Delicious is simple. In the box you’ll find two pads (100 sheets each and double sided – yay!), 4 pencils (with erasers – huzzah!), a deck of 30 cards, 30 fruit/tool tokens, 2 markers, a Honey Jar card, and a bag. There’s also a rules booklet (but you won’t need that now! Haha! Just kidding. Definitely keep it (and keep it close by – you’ll find out why later!). Plus there’s a black wooden crow meeple which you’ll only need if you are playing solo (click here to read the solo review for more details!).
Give everyone a sheet from each pad and a pencil. Then shuffle the deck and divide it into two equal piles face down one on top of the other. Place the upward pointing marker next to the top deck and the downward pointing arrow next to the one below. Then flip a card over from each deck, and place a random fruit/tool token from the bag onto each card. And that’s it. Everyone is now ready to start planting up veg beds and collecting some fruit!
Oh and remember the rules booklets? Well, in Delicious you will be channelling your inner Monet and drawing the fruits and veggies you select. And very handily, there is a how-to-draw guide amidst the rules that will help turn your circles, cylinders and triangles into brilliant blueberries, carrots and figs! Okay so you don’t have to draw them – you can just use letters – but drawing is a big part of the calming, crunchy fun in Delicious!
Plant Up
In Delicious there are just 12 turns in a game (so you definitely won’t see every card in a single game), and play for everyone is simultaneous. So, on each one, you get to decide which of your one-time 12 actions you are going to take. And once you have used one, you cross out the circle next to that icon. There are 4 options:
Use the card and token in their given location (x4 actions)
Use the card and token in the opposite location (x3 actions)
Use both cards and tokens in their given locations (x 3 action); or
Use both cards and tokens wherever you like (x 2 actions) Note: each pair must remain together and be used in one or the other garden – no splitting them up!
The locations on offer for the veggies are either top garden or bottom garden. Looking at the main sheet, there are 3 planters in the upper section and 3 planters in the lower section. These are separated by a path. There’s also a fruitery on the right hand side where you’ll be adding nature’s own sweeties aka the fruit tokens during the game.
Get Growing
Now you know where you can plant things, it’s time to decide how you plant things. And that’s going to give you pause for thought. Because each veg planter has its own placement rules that you need to follow if you want to score. For example, the wheelbarrow planter needs 6 completely unique veggies in order to score. But the suitcase needs 3 pairs to turn sweet peppers into a sweet score!
Same with the fruits. At end game, you’ll score points for columns or rows that have either all matching or all different fruits in them (note: they don’t have to be completely filled as scoring is incremental. But only the largest group of contiguous symbols will score).
And you don’t exactly have a free reign there either. Look back at the veg card paired with the token, and you’ll see a shape (star, oval, or hexagon) in the bottom right corner with either a fruit or a tool on it. If you chose a card/token combo and it’s a fruit, that will need to go into a box in the fruitery matching that shape.
If the veggie card indicates that it is to be paired with the tool side of the token, you can draw any vegetable/fruit you like into any planter/box or row/column in the fruitery showing that same tool. As it is a one time use, however, you must remember to shade in or cross it out once used.
Now, if you are super speedy in your planting, there are also 1 point first player bonuses to be had for the person who fills a planter first. In addition, if you fill all 3 top or bottom planters first, you can get your sticky fingers on the hallowed Honey card (worth 3 points). The race is on!
Wild Garden
You might wonder what the extra boxes are on the smaller action sheet. Well, these are super handy! Once per game, you can change either of the face up veggies or fruits wild. That means if a mushroom is flipped over but you really need a broccoli, then you can use your one time wild power to switch it. Same with the fruit token on offer. If it’s blueberry time in the top garden but you need a fig this turn, you can turn that berry into a figgy delight and pop it into any open box.
There are also 2 additional bonus spots that let you increase the score for any one fruit type, or double the score of a single veg planter. But, in either case, you’ll need to draw the veg or fruit on offer into one of the bonus boxes instead of on your scoring sheet.
After each turn, the cards and tokens get discarded. And after 12 turns, the game is over and it’s scoring time!
Scores On The…Shed Doors
Scoring is easy in Delicious. Flip over the smaller sheet and there’s a table for totting up your points. Whether you have any to put in there will be down to how savvy you sewed your strawberries and planted your peppers!
You get points for:
- achieving the scoring criteria in each planter – the highest number shown in it (not the total of each row filled);
- incremental scores based on the rows and columns of matching/mismatching fruits
- first player to fill a planter bonus (1 point); and
- honey pot bonus.
Don’t forget to factor in the two bonuses you might have crossed off when calculating the values!
Sadly there aren’t points for the mightiest drawn mushroom or the cutest carrot (but maybe you can award some best-in-show type titles between the players after a game!).
I hope this helps you go get stuck into your first game of Delicious! If you’re interested in playing solo, check out the solo feature for more details. And if you liked this game, why not try Floriferous or Herbaceous by the same team?!
That concludes our guide on how to play Delicious. Did this help you? Let us know your thoughts and tag us on social media @zatugames.