Point Salad, Award-Winning Card Drafting Strategy Game for the Whole Family

This remains one of my favorite games, even as someone who loves heavy strategy. Easy to teach, easy to learn, plays up to six in under 30 minutes. It has surprising depth at lower player counts, and though it's quite random at 5-6 players that's not really a big deal for a simple family game. Great starter or filler game for group game nights, great intro game for children or people who aren't avid gamers. They could fit it in a smaller box, though. It's just 108 cards, plus a short rulebook. I suppose it wouldn't look as nice on a shelf that way.

Abandon All Artichokes and Point Salad are not similar games, except that they both contain vegetables and have green containers. Abandon All Artichokes is a deck builder, which requires that whoever you play with need to be able to be comfortable with a "deck" and "discard pile". Point salad is easy, players either pick a point card or two vegetables from the market. After that, the hardest part of the game is doing basic arithmetic, and really you just look for bigger numbers and avoid vegetables associated with minus signs. Abandon All Artichokes has a recommended age of 10+ and Point Salad has a recommended age of 14+, because I think they assume kids can only do math starting in 7th-8th grade. I would say this game is a lot easier and even more educational, because kids (and their respective adults) can practice doing basic math, so this would be better in a home-school setting in my opinion. However, the Abandon All Artichokes game cards are nicer. The Point Salad cards are cheaper and are relatively more likely to show wear sooner. Abandon All Artichokes also is more luck-based. My parents had a harder time grasping Abandon All Artichokes, because of the deck-building aspect (see my review: https://smile.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/RVBU5S09RK3Z ). I haven't had time to test it out on them, but I think they will have an easier time with this game. If you're going between the two games, I would recommend Point Salad, even if the card quality is not as nice, because the play is super fast, easier to play, less take-that, more strategy and more math = more educational value.

Love this game! Easy enough to learn and great design. Box could be smaller but oh well. Would recommend for families!

Point Salad is one of the stronger card drafting designs in its format: a two-card market where players alternate between taking vegetable cards for scoring and scoring condition cards that define how those vegetables earn points. The elegance is in the double-sided design — every scoring condition card is a vegetable type on the reverse, so the market refreshes constantly and conditions that aren’t claimed eventually become scorable resources. This creates meaningful decisions throughout rather than a front-loaded selection phase. What’s underappreciated is how the drafting dynamics shift with player count: at two players it plays as a tight race; at six it’s a genuine scramble for contested conditions. The 15-20 minute runtime is accurate and the box is appropriately small for what’s inside. Rewards players who track what others are scoring without requiring memorization. Among the cleanest designs in its weight class and one of the few small-box games that holds up after many sessions.

INTRO: for those who don't know, the term "point salad" in the table gaming world refers to a game in which there are many ways to score points. Thus, to title a game Point Salad and actually make the game not only have many ways to score, but to also have a salad theme, is a bit clever. What really shines about this game is that unlike most other "point salad" games (example: most Stefan Feld games), Point Salad has a very low barrier to entry, and can be taught and learned quite easily. SETUP: Take the appropriate amount of cards from each of the 6 vegetable groups (18 cards each), depending on the number of players. Shuffle these together and separate into 3 roughly equal piles, score side up. Flip two from each pile to the vegetable side, making 3 columns. The resulting grid should be 3x3, with the top row consisting of 3 score cards (piles), and 2 more rows of 3 single vegetables each. GAMEPLAY: On your turn, you literally only have two options: 1) Pick ("draft") one card from one of the 3 score piles. 2) Draft any 2 vegetables from the available 6. That's it! Where it gets interesting is that no two score sides are the same. Some give you points per single vegetable (positive and/or negative), with multiple vegetables; some give you points per group of vegetables (2 or 3 depending), some give you end of game scoring conditions, etc. Within a couple turns everyone should have the basic gist of how to play. The strategy, though not too deep, starts to come with how you decide to choose between selecting scoring cards and vegetable cards. Play continues until there are no cards left. At the end, add/subtract points from each of your scoring cards based on which and how many vegetables you drafted. Whoever has the most wins. ART/QUALITY: The artwork is simple and slightly cartoonish, but very colorful and well done overall. The graphic design is great and very easy to read. My only quips are with the card quality, which is a little thin/flimsy (I fear the cards will wear out somewhat faster than other card games), and with the selection of colors and shapes, specifically for the onions and cabbage. Both of these two vegetables are pinkish/purplish in color, as well as round, and can be a little hard at first glance to distinguish the two, particularly when looking between your tableau and the drafting grid. A different color for the onions (white, perhaps?) could've solved this small issue easily. We found ourselves constantly double and triple checking between the two throughout the game. Other than that, everything played smoothly, and there is even room in the box insert for sleeving your cards if you so choose. OVERALL: This is a great gateway game for nongamers, and has juuuust enough dash of strategy to keep gamers involved. While it wouldn't be my first game of choice, particularly with other gamers, it is a great new game that I feel replaces other gateway games as better and even easier to learn. The artwork is very cute and colorful, making for a pleasant treat for the eyes. It is also a good game for younger people, I'd say 8+ (maybe 6 or 7 with some help), and helps not only with developing beginner strategy concepts, but also is a fun way to sharpen math skills. I recommend Point Salad if you're into: (a) tableau building/drafting games, (b) gateway games (c) developing strategy and/or basic math skills, (d) any or all of the above.

Fun family game. Everyone enjoys it. Simple enough to pick up quick but interesting enough for everyone to enjoy it over and over.

The term Point Salad is used in the board gaming genre when a game has many ways to score points. POINT SALAD takes this term to the extreme. Each different card represents a different way to score points. In a full 6 player game, that's 108 different ways! The gameplay is very simple. Each card has a point side and an ingredient side. The point side shows a way to collect points with the various ingredients you collect. There are 6 different ingredients, and they are very identifiable. You start the game with three even stacks of cards point-side up, and six cards below them in the market. Each turn you can either take a point card or take two ingredient cards. Simple enough. You can also flip already collected point cards to their ingredient side (but not vice versa). The game goes until the cards are all claimed, then points are tabulated. Several nice things about this game. First, it scales well. From 2 to 6, all you have to do is remove a random amount of each ingredient card to make up the initial card pool. Secondly, there is just the right amount of luck vs. strategy. You can always see what a point card will become when it gets flipped into the market, so you can try to hinder your neighbors. I find this game to be a very good, quick game to break out on gaming nights, and fun for gamers and non-gamers alike.

🎲 Point Salad (2019) 🤓 Molly Johnson, Robert Melvin, Shawn Stankewich 🏭 Alderac Entertainment Group (AEG) . 📝Spark Notes: ⚡️Salad building ⚡️Card drafting, set collection ⚡️Choose recipes, collect ingredients . 💼Brief Review: 🟢Small and portable 🟢Unique and enjoyable theme 🟢Very easy to teach and to learn 🟢Super light-weight yet strategic 🟢There’s no one dominate strategy 🟢Fast pace keeps the game exciting 🌕Low variety in options can feel unrewarding . 🎬Final Take: Point Salad is a small game that packs a big punch. Simply just a deck of cards with vegetables on one side and recipes on the other, the ever-changing vegetable market creates a playful challenge on the card-drafting genre. The recipe cards tell you how to score points (i.e. 1 pepper + 1 carrot = 5 points), and the vegetable cards allow you to fulfill those recipes. On your turn you’ll take one of three recipes, or two of six vegetables from the market, replace the taken cards with new ones, then the next player will do the same. By the time it’s your turn again the vegetables you were hoping for might be gone, or new opportunities may have arisen, and the game is played until all cards are drafted. After three rounds of doing so, players add up their total points to determine the victor. Point Salad really shines in its accessibility, portability, pace, and variability. It may turn off gamers who want more depth of strategy and variety of options. For me, this is the perfect travel game or filler between heavier games.

Tremendo juego de draft de cartas, pocas reglas gran profundidad, vistoso y bonito en mesa con mucha estrategia y duración corta por lo que querrás jugar múltiples partida seguidas, lo podrás jugar con cualquier persona por lo que lo considero indispensable para jugar con principiantes o con expertos.

Great game. As soon as you think you've found "the strategy" to win, you find an even better one haha. Very well balanced game, would recommend to everyone

This has completely replaced Sushi Go. Excellent light card drafting game.

This is a simple but brilliant game with its own depth. Fun and quick and can be played with a range of ages. Colourful cards and everything seems good design and built to last.

This was a really fun game that was simple to learn and explain to others how to play. The setup is a tad tedious but thankfully there is an alternative setup which I would definitely recommend involving using the whole deck in multiple rounds of play. There is a mix of both strategy and luck involved. So far I have only played two-player games which were fun but I bet this game is even better with three or more players.