Point Salad is fun little card game for 2 to 6 players from AEG (Alderac Entertainment Group). This is a game that my family has been playing like crazy lately. Point Salad is easy to teach and quick to play. When we just have time for a quick “filler game”, this hits the table quite often!
Point Salad is available from Amazon and has an average score of 4.8/5.0 from buyers.
What is Point Salad?
Point Salad is a card-drafting and tableau-building game. Players take turns building a salad of veggies and collecting point cards in order to score the most points for the ingredients in their salad!
Players will take turns drafting vegetables or point cards. We consider the Point Cards to be salad bowls for orders we have to fill. I don’t think that’s the actual point of the “point cards”, but it might be easier to think of the point cards that way. 😉
What’s in the box?
The box is fairly small – approximately 6″ x 8″ x 1.5″. The components are simple:
• 108 double-sided veggie/point cards
• 1 Rulebook
All cards have vegetables on one side and point bowls on the other. There are six types of veggies: Carrots, Tomatoes, Onions, Lettuce, Cabbage and Peppers. As there are 108 vegetables, there are 108 different Point Cards on the opposite side. Here are a couple of examples of the point cards:
Most Tomatoes = 10 points. If you draft more tomatoes than anyone else you receive 10 points at the end of the game.
Let’s take a look at another card. If you draft this card below, at the end of the game you will receive: 2 points for each carrot you have, 2 points for each onion have, but negative 4 points for each pepper you have.
How to play Point Salad
There are 3 “Point Card” Draw Piles, and a Veggie Market of 6 cards. Here is an example of how the board might look on your turn:
On your turn you draft 1 or 2 cards. You may either:
(1) Draft 1 Point Card from the top of any of the draw piles
– or –
(2) Draft 2 veggie cards from those available in the market. After you select your card(s), add them to a face-up tableau in front of yourself, then your turn is complete.
Once you have drafted your card(s), refill the veggie market by drawing cards from corresponding draw piles in each column, filling any empty slots.
The game ends when all cards from both the point card piles and veggie market have been drafted. The player with the most points is the winner.
Likes, Dislikes, and Final Thoughts
Likes:
Point Salad is an easy game to learn and teach. You simply draft a Point Card or Draft 2 Veggie Cards. The box says this game is for players 14 and up, but I think if you have “gamer kids” you can easily teach this to kids as young as 8.
The cards are bright and colorful. The card stock is also of very good quality.
The game box is small and easy to transport.
There is plenty of strategy here for everyone. The game looks simple but that can be deceptive. Every turn you need to continually fine tune your tablea and adjust your strategies.
Games move along at a good clip. There isn’t too much down time between turns.
Dislikes:
There is a slight advantage to going first. The first player is almost guaranteed to have one more turn than some of the other players. The more players, the more likely the last players get 1 less turn. It’s just the way the games play out.
The Onion and Cabbage cards are both a shade of purple, and both veggies have a round shape. We have had people confuse the cards for each other during the draft. Maybe AEG should have gone with a white onion?
The game can get a little mathy at the end. I personally don’t find final scoring difficult, but I could see some folks having trouble adding up all their point cards at the end of the game. Just have the best mathlete at the table do all the final scoring if you have to.
Bad Beets! Okay … I mean bad beats! Anyway, as one of the last players, you will most likely “get stuck” with cards at the end you don’t want, but have to accept. And a lot of times, they can be really bad for you. It might be a carrot worth -4 points. Or you were trying to have an “even amount of carrots” at the end of the game in a salad bowl, but the last card now makes that an “odd” amount for you. … grrr!
Final Thoughts
Point Salad gets a huge thumbs up from me. It’s a well crafted game that is super fun to play. The game retails for under $20, so it is easy on the wallet too. At the time of this review, this game had great 4.8 star rating from reviewers on Amazon.com!
We play this one a lot before dinner. “Hey Ma, what time is dinner?!” “30 minutes??” “Oh man, we have can easily cram in a game of Point Salad as our appetizer!”
Point Salad is available from Amazon and has an average score of 4.8/5.0 from buyers.
