Diced Veggies

Diced Veggies caught my eye in a Grant’s Game Recs video because of the beautiful artwork of the cards and the colourful dice. Designed by Josh, Rory and Rowan Cappel, this compact game combines dice cleaving (I’ll explain later on) and set collection. Diced Veggies is a light-strategy family game featuring artwork by Claire Lin and published by Kids Table BG. It plays in 30 minutes for 2 – 4 players, ages 6 or above.

Theme

Players become talented chefs who must carefully cleave the right ingredients and turn them in sumptuous dishes. Players take it in turns to cut dice from the main block and assign them to the recipes that they are working on. Once one of the players has completed six Recipe cards, everyone adds up the points from their cards, and ‘Hype’ bonuses, to see who has won. The person who ends the game is not necessarily the person who wins!

Setup

The game begins with the ingredients being set up. This is done by rolling all the dice into a frame and then lifting the frame to reveal a neat rectangular block. Players start by being dealt two Recipe cards and one Hype card. The Recipe cards feature dishes with different dice ingredients along the top, while the Hype cards grant bonuses that players can match up with their recipes, such as all numbers must be sequential or all numbers must be odd. Three Recipe cards are placed face-up in the middle of the play area to form a communal supply, with the rest of the cards forming a face-down deck next to it, and the Hype cards forming another face-down deck. Every player receives a Chef token and the starting player receives the cleaver!

Gameplay

Once cards have been dealt, the starting player uses the cleaver to carve ingredients from the main block using a single cut. The pips on the dice chosen must have a combined total of 10 of lower. Players can then assign these dice to their recipes and choose whether to cook or not. You can cook more than one recipe per turn.

When you cook a recipe, you may also play a Hype card from your hand (one per recipe), which will score you bonus points at the end. You can also use the Chef token to change either the type or the number of one of your dice to help you complete a Recipe or Hype card. You will get your Chef token back whenever anyone Restocks, which happens a few times during the game. Then players place played cards face down and discard any dice used back into the empty frame.

At the end of the player’s turn, they can draw one new card – either a Recipe card from the face-up row or face-down deck, or a Hype card from the Hype deck – and then discard down to the limits of eight dice, two Recipe cards and two Hype cards. Finally, the player passes the cleaver to the next player clockwise and they begin their turn.

Restocking occurs when your turn starts if there is at least one ingredient type missing from the block. You may choose to Restock in this instance. If there are no dice left in the block, then you must Restock. Restocking consists of gathering the frame (with the discarded dice inside) back into the middle of the table along with the leftover dice already in the middle of the table so you have a new block. Players who spent their Chef tokens also get these back at this point. Then play resumes as normal.

Game End and Scoring

The game end is triggered when any player cooks their sixth recipe. They finish their turn and then each other player gets one more turn before the game is over. Players then add up their totals from their Recipe cards and corresponding Hype cards. In the event of a tie, the victory is shared!

Game Variant

Diced Veggies offers two additional variants: one for playing with children, and one for solo play. For playing with children, the game offers some ideas for simplifying the game: you can play without Hype cards and Chef tokens; you can reduce the number of completed Recipe cards needed to trigger the end of the game to five or four cards; and instead of there being the rule about pips must add to 10 or less, you can just say the limit is any three dice. For solo play, a new Trimming step is introduced that removes one dice of each colour from the main block. The game end is triggered when the automatic restocking occurs for the third time. Then the player compares their score to the scoring chart.

Final thoughts

Diced Veggies is a simple and light-weight, dice game that can be played with friends and family. The artwork on the cards is really lovely. I found the game very easy to learn and then teach to other people as the rule book is straight-forward and logical. As it’s a dice game, no two games are the same and I am still cooking new recipes each time I play.

The quality of the cards, dice, cleaver and frame is great. The Hype cards add a layer of challenge that means you are not just picking the different colours, but you are also thinking about which numbers you want as well.

I am excited to see if they make an expansion with more Recipe cards and Hype cards, or possibly more dice/ingredients!