Point Salad

I must say the name of the game did not inspire confidence. The term "point salad" has a negative connotation to me. It reminds me of soulless games which are a mishmash of different ways to score points. I want to play a game. I do not want to play the role of an Excel formula trying to maximize numbers. I played my first game of Point Salad with a little trepidation.

The Game

This is a pure card game in which you collect vegetables and also scoring criteria which help you score points based on those vegetables. A turn is super simple. You are just taking a card from the centre of the table to add to your collection. Everyone takes a card until all cards are gone, and then you score points to see who wins. 

The game is set up like this: three draw decks and six face-up vegetables. Depending on the number of players, some cards will be randomly removed from the game. In this game the card backs all have a scoring condition, and the card fronts are vegetables. On your turn when you take a card, you can take any of the six vegetables, or you take a scoring condition at the top of one of the draw decks.  If you take a vegetable, you must refill that spot with a card from the draw deck of the same column. This means the scoring condition previously available is now converted to a vegetable, and you have a new scoring condition. 

The scoring conditions vary greatly. Some give you points per a specific vegetable type. Some give you points per set of specific vegetables. Some give you points for certain vegetables but penalises you for others. Some give points based how many you have compared to other players, for example when you have the least, or when you have the most of a certain vegetable. 

The Play

What you do on your turn is super simple. You are just picking a card. But which card? That is a juicy decision. First there is the tricky balance between collecting vegetables and scoring conditions. You need both to score points. Collect too many scoring cards, and you may have difficulties fulfilling them all. Collect too few, and you may not be competitive. You still need the vegetables to fulfil the scoring conditions. When a vegetable you need turns up, but there is also a scoring card which matches your collection well, you will be forced to make a difficult decision. And this is just things that affect only you. You also need to watch your opponents. If there is a scoring card that is going to help your opponent a lot, you might be forced to take it. Well, you don't necessarily have to take the scoring card itself. You may take a vegetable in the same column, and that scoring card will be flipped over to become a vegetable. Sometimes you also want to stop your opponents from collecting certain vegetables. You only have one simple action every turn, but there can be a lot to consider behind that one simple action. 

The Thoughts

Technically, I guess you can still call this a point salad game, because indeed there are many ways to score points. And yes, if you look at the various ways of scoring points, they seem to be pretty arbitrary and general. You've seen these kinds of scoring criteria is many games. Yet, Point Salad turned out to be a pleasant surprise. I not only did not dislike it, I truly enjoyed it. I like the difficult decisions it presents. You need to carefully balance between collecting scoring conditions and vegetables. You also need to watch you opponents. There are many factors in play. And yet the game is short and succinct. It is not the kind of tedious cube conversion exercise that many point salad games are. So this gets a thumbs up from me.