LogFAQs > #966740370

31. Point Salad

Category: Player vs player
Key mechanics: Card-drafting, set collection
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 1
Game length: 5-10 minutes
First played: 2020
Experience: 6-10 plays with 3-6 players

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/274960/point-salad

In Point Salad, you play through a deck of double-sided cards. One side of the cards shows a vegetable (e.g. a tomato, or spinach); the other side of the card shows a way to score vegetables (e.g., 2 points per tomato but minus 2 points per onion). A certain number of these cards are placed on the offer, and on a player's turn, they can draft either one scoring card or two vegetables. Once the collective deck is drained, the values of each player's scoring cards - based on the veggies they have taken - are tallied.

I do love a good pun/reference, and Point Salad's is phenomenal. Many eurogames are described both affectionately and disparagingly as point salads - i.e., there are a variety of ways to make points. The scoring cards in Point Salad kind of suggest that indeed, you score in a variety of ways. However, the game is actually pretty focused - you can't actually just draft any old vegetable and hope to get away with it; you need to make sure it doesn't conflict with your scoring cards, and you need to make sure to get the right scoring cards as well.

There's also a surprising amount of hate-draft potential in Point Salad, which has certainly frustrated me at times! I've admittedly played only with But at its insanely fast pace, I've never had a bad experience of Point Salad. I've also never won a game of Point Salad. Now I'm salty!