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

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.

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.

What I love The rules take less than a minute to explain. Every card being double-sided keeps choices interesting. It scales well from two players all the way to six. Games really do stay in the 15–20 minute range. Great as a warm-up, cool-down, or casual night filler. You can teach it to mixed groups without effort. The randomness keeps every round feeling different. Card quality and printing are solid. What I like less Luck can swing the scoring depending on what flips. It’s very light — don’t expect deep strategy. At higher player counts, cards you want disappear fast. Summary A simple, fast drafting game that works in almost any setting. If you want something easy to table, easy to teach, and consistently fun without heavy thinking, Point Salad is a reliable pick.

This game is so much fun! As a seasoned game player who is fond of strategy games, this is a nice switch. Very light strategy. Very simple to teach non-gamers too, which is a huge plus.

🎲 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.

This game is really fun. Pretty simple for most people, but for those who it isn’t, they pick it up within a game. Awesome design, high quality cards, and it has been a staple for me and my wife to play. Introduced it to family and they love it. Fast paced game since you use the number of cards based off of the number of players you have.

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.

Got it for my 16yr old son for Christmas, but the whole family young and old enjoys playing it together. Simple to understand and play but fun for replays. It would be a great maths based game for home learning too.