Point Salad scores big!
This past summer I switched jobs.
The switch was great for me for a number of reasons. One of the cool perks is that there are a bunch of employees that love playing games during lunch breaks.
Since not every game makes a great lunch break game, I’ve been selective on which games to take to the office to play.
A good lunch break game is one that’s quick to set up, relatively quick to play, easy to teach, can accommodate varying numbers of players, has a lot of replay value, and can be enjoyed by almost anyone.
Point Salad has turned out to be a perfect lunch break game!
It also gets lunch break game bonus points for being about food!
How to play Point Salad
Point Salad is a very straightforward game to play.
The goal of the game is to score the most points for the “salad” (sets of cards) you make. It’s a card drafting game where each card either grants a way to score points or adds to your vegetable salad.
The game consists of 108 double-side cards. On one side are the Vegetables. There are 6 different vegetables (carrot, pepper, tomato, lettuce, onion, or cabbage) with 18 cards of each type. And on the other side are 108 unique scoring conditions.
Depending on player count, a certain number of cards are randomly removed from play. All remaining cards are shuffled and placed into 3 piles of roughly the same size. They’re set out with the Point side up.
From each pile, players flip over 2 cards to the Vegetable side and place them in columns next to their pile. This creates the Vegetable Market.
The game consists of players taking turns drawing cards to their personal play area until all cards are gone. Then players add up their points to see who wins.
On a player’s turn, they can either take 1 Point card from the top of one of the piles or take 2 Vegetable cards from the market. They then place the card on the table in front of themselves (showing the same side that they drew – Point or Vegetable).
During their turn, a player may also flip over 1 Point card to the Vegetable side. (The corners of the Point side show which Vegetable is on the flip side.)
The Point cards grant points in a number of ways. They may show individual points for each vegetable (positive or negative), points for combinations of vegetables, or points for most or least of different types of vegetables.
If the player took Vegetable cards from the market, they then refill the space by drawing and flipping over cards from the pile above that market column.
The game ends when all cards from the piles and Vegetable market are gone.
Players add up their score from all their Point cards according to the Vegetables they also have. All vegetables they collected are considered for each Point card they have.
The player with the most points wins!
Can the whole family enjoy Point Salad
Point Salad is a great game for the whole family to enjoy.
We have no idea why the published recommended age for the game is 14+. This is definitely not a game we’d put in that age range.
As you can see from the earlier section, Point Salad is a set-collection card game. And set-collection games cater to a wide range of players and player ages.
The only caveat is that players need to be able to add up their points easily. Since every card shows a way to score points, players need to be able to reason their scores out in their heads. They don’t need to do so fully during the game, but they will want to have an ongoing idea of how well they’re scoring throughout the game.
Also, since all information is open to everyone, players can keep an eye on how their opponents are doing throughout the game as well.
The amazing variety in the game is awesome.
While the basics of the game don’t change at all from game to game. The opportunities for scoring change every time.
And we love that!
Some players will get lucky with which Point cards get revealed just before their turn. If they’re collecting a bunch of peppers and lettuce and then a Pepper + Lettuce combo point card pops up just before their turn, it’s an easy choice to snag it.
Which means there’s a good amount of luck in Point Salad.
But at the same time, players do need to play with strategies in mind. And those strategies may need to change a bit during the game. For example, if you’re going after carrots, but the player just before you is going for carrots as well, you’re going to have a hard time — because that player may snatch them up just before you each round.
Strategic players will be looking for point cards and ingredients that benefit them. But they’ll also be looking for ways to slow down their opponents. This can include grabbing vegetables their opponents will want. And it may also include taking vegetables from columns where the showing point card that an opponent may be hoping for gets flipped to a vegetable to re-fill that column — thus keeping big point cards from opponents.
We also love that player turns are very quick. On their turn, a player simply chooses to take 1 point card, or 2 vegetable cards. Then it’s on to the next player!
Since which cards are available changes with every player’s turn, players can’t plan too far in advance for their turn on what they’ll take. They’ll have a general idea of what cards they’ll be looking for. But the decisions they make will be based on opportunity of which are available right as their turn comes up.
The good news is that it still doesn’t take long for each player to make that choice and play continues right away to the next player. And before you know it, the games over and your adding up your points.
The last thing we’ll cover is what we love most about the game — the double-sided cards!
Almost every card begins life in this game as a Point card. The only cards that start and will always remain as Vegetables are those that begin face up on the table. The rest all first appear with their Point side up and then will re-fill areas with their vegetable side.
So players will see tons of scoring options come and go throughout the game.
But each point side of the card also shows in the corner what the vegetable is on the other side. Sometimes it can be advantageous to snag a point card just to get the vegetable on the other side.
Also, if a player takes a point card and then later sees that it won’t help them as much for scoring (based on how the game has played out with the vegetables they’ve taken), they can flip it over and use it for its vegetable side.
This versatility is awesome.
How does Point Salad score on our “Let’s Play Again” game meter?
Point Salad scores high on our “let’s play again” game meter for the same reasons why it makes a great lunch break game. It’s quick to set up, quick to play, easy to teach, can accommodate varying number of players, has a lot of replay value, and can be enjoyed by almost anyone.
To be honest, Point Salad sat on our game shelf for a long time before we first played it. It didn’t look like a very appealing game (after all, it’s about vegetables — how appealing is that?). However, once we played it for the first time, we were hooked.
And it being a great lunch break game also means it’s being played over and over with people at work as well. Plus a number of them have borrowed it over weekends to play with their own families. And they always report that it’s gone over very well.
If you’re looking for a light card game with lots of options, Point Salad is a great game to get.
We’d like to thank AEG for a review copy of Point Salad.
