USD ($)
EUR (€)
So, you’ve decided you need to improve your board game diet and picked up a light and (number) crunchy salad-based game. Well, here’s a recipe to get you started. Here's Point Salad!
Prepare Your Ingredients
Set up begins with making sure you have the right number of cards for the player count. Essentially, you’ll need to pick out 18 cards (3 of each of the 6 different vegetables) per player, i.e.:
- 2 players = 36 cards (12 of each vegetable)
- 3 players = 54 cards (18 of each vegetable)
- 4 players = 72 cards (24 of each vegetable)
- 5 players = 90 cards (30 of each vegetable)
- 6 players = 118 cards (36 of each vegetable)
Place the other cards you don’t need back in the box (so nobody knows what point-scoring cards are missing).
Shuffle the cards selected for play and split them into 3 equal draw piles. The cards are double-sided so make sure the point-scoring sides are face up. Place the 3 draw piles in a row. Flip over the top two cards from each pile and place them in a column below the pile. This should leave you with a row of three draw piles (point side face up), with two rows of vegetable face-up cards below.
Playing The Game
On their turn, players must choose between one of the following two actions. Either take one point scoring card from the top of any of the three draw piles. Or take two vegetable cards from any of the six vegetable face-up cards showing. After selecting their cards players should place them into their tableau.
Additionally, players also have the option to turn over one of their point-scoring cards in their tableau (whether existing or newly picked that turn) to the vegetable side. This can only be done up to once per turn.
The icons in the corners of the point-scoring cards preview the vegetable that is on the other side. Only point-scoring cards can be flipped, not vegetables. Once a card is a vegetable it stays that way for the rest of the game.
At the end of a player’s turn in Point Salad, replace any empty spots in the vegetable rows by taking the top card off the respective draw pile and flipping the card to its vegetable side.
Players continue taking turns in a clockwise fashion until all cards have been drafted. Players then count how many points they have gained against each of their point-scoring cards, and the player with the highest total score is the winner.
Tactics
To score well in Point Salad you’ll ideally want each of the vegetables you pick up to help score on multiple of your point-scoring cards, so you’ll want to try and pick up point cards that combine well together.
For example, you could try and build a salad stacked with only cabbages and pick up several point cards which score for cabbage so that each cabbage scores multiple points. Whilst a salad full of only cabbage might not be the most appetising in real life. This could be particularly fruitful (pun intended - yes, I know they’re veggies not fruit!) in this game. Particularly when there are more players involved and therefore more cabbages in the deck.
Another thing you’ll want to do is keep an eye on your opponents. If no one is picking tomatoes, you may want to start selecting point cards that reward tomatoes as you won’t have any competition for them. Equally, if you need several of the vegetables on offer and you know that other players are after one or two of the same ones too, you may want to grab those first as they almost certainly won’t be there the next time it’s your turn.