boardgaming in photos: Ponzi Scheme, Innovation, Attika, Sabah Honeymoon

I was back in my hometown Kota Kinabalu recently. I met up with an old friend, Nicholas, a classmate from secondary school, to play boardgames. After graduating from secondary school we lost touch for some time. I only found out he was into boardgaming a few years ago. Once in a while we meet when I'm back in KK. This was the first time we met up to actually play games. I brought my prototype of Pinocchio and I asked for his help to blind test it, i.e. he and his group read the rules by themselves to play the game, pretending I am not present. After the blind test, we played other games. One of them was Ponzi Scheme. I had played Ponzi Scheme before, but it had been quite some time so I had forgotten most of the rules. 

My impression from when I first played the game was the mechanisms were solid, but the game felt a little dull. Every turn, you must start a scheme, which will earn you some money, but you will commit to making a payout of a specific amount to your investors every few rounds. You must honour the payout if you can, because the moment anyone fails to do so, the game ends, and that player is automatically disqualified from winning. The other players compare points from their companies to see who wins. There are four types of companies. You can start a company each time you launch a scheme. Your first company of a type scores 1 point, the second scores 2 points, the third 3 points, and so on. So you want to have many companies of the same type. During the game you can buy companies from or sell them to other players. You send a private bid to an opponent who has a same company type as you. They must either sell their company to you at that price, or buy yours at that price. This mechanism can be a way to force someone to sell their company to you, or to buy your company. 

Having played the game again, my impression remains the same. The mechanism is pretty solid. I don't see this in other games, so it is unique. Unfortunately the game feels a little dry to me. The bland art makes the play experience less exciting. Other editions of the game look better. The theme of scamming people also makes me feel a little uncomfortable. 

There is a gamer group in Ara Damansara which meets regularly, and they share what they play. It always makes me happy to see other people playing my games, in this case Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. 

I played Attika with younger daughter Chen Rui. We are both quite familiar with the game by now so we do not need to do any rules revision. We bring out the game occasionally. In this particular game, I (green) attempted to connect the two temples in the early game. Now in Attika winning by connecting temples is not easy to do. It is difficult to execute and easy to defend against. However sometimes it is worth doing because you can force your opponent to make suboptimal moves to defend against such an attack. If you can disrupt the tempo of your opponent, that gives you an edge in efficiency.

My first attempt to connect the temples was blocked. I continued trying, picking a right moment to drop that new terrain tile at the top right. That terrain tile opened up a new opportunity.

I caught Chen Rui off guard. She had just placed several buildings on that terrain tile on the left, and she was short on resource cards in hand. I managed to place that one last tile to connect the two temples, and subsequently won the game. 

We played Innovation. Chen Rui had played this before but she had forgotten how to play. In recent weeks we played quite a lot of this, so by now she knows she game well. It took her many games to finally get her first victory. There were a few times she came close, but Innovation is a game with unexpected twists, and sometimes just one specific and timely card can turn the tide. When she eventually won her first game she was overjoyed. Since we played a two-player game, we rarely reached the 8th age. Most games ended around the 6th or 7th age. 

After many years, I still think Innovation is a splendid game. It feels like every other card is overpowered. Yet often they are only overpowered under certain situations. There can be sudden twists of fate. There is always some excitement about whether you will draw the next killer card. Building a strong and stable empire is important. It protects you from attack and allows you make use of other players' actions. However it does not guarantee points. Sometimes opportunities to score points (called achievements in Innovation) pop up, and you just have to grab them, even if it means sacrificing part of your empire. 

After this recent spurt of Innovation, I feel the game is quite luck-heavy. If you are unlucky and don't draw scoring cards, it can be very difficult to catch up. That can be frustrating. Sometimes you draw the perfect card for your situation and you'll score lots of points. Still, you can take solid steps to build your empire, and there are cards you can anticipate. You also need to digest the situation and find the best use of the cards you draw. There is still much you can do to keep improving your situation, and that's what makes you feel you have some control. Well, maybe when I play even more of the game I'll see more strategic aspects and I'll have an even better appreciation of strategies that reduce the dependence on luck. 

I recently shipped two cartons of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves to USA. A US-based retailer Portland Game Collective contacted me and they were interested to stock Ali Baba. This was my first time distributing the game to the US, so I was pretty excited. I hope the game does well and I'm glad to see it reach more gamers in America. 

My old boardgame kaki (fellow enthusiast / partner) Allen has moved to Singapore because of work. Three of us - Allen, Han and I - used to be referred to as the Midah Group. We played together regularly and we played a good variety of games. Now we are all in different places - Kuala Lumpur, Singapore and Johor Bahru. We still meet up and play once in a while. Allen has been visiting some discount stores and he often found good deals. Not long ago he bought for me Ticket to Ride: Nederlands. Then recently he bought for me 7 Wonders Duel: Pantheon. Had I come across these expansions at regular prices, I probably would not have bought them. However when he found them at super deep discounts, I could not resist. I tell myself this must be fate, and who am I to defy fate. Pantheon was SGD3.00, which is less than MYR10! Normal price is about RM115. That's more than 90% off! 

This year, Gray from Kaki Tabletop has been hosting game nights at Xiao by Crustz. Mostly on Friday nights, 8pm - 11pm. These are public meetups. Entrance fee is RM35, which includes one drink. Sometimes there are themed nights. Sometimes he has local designers showcasing their games. I arranged with Gray to join one such session to demo Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. 

Xiao is a very nice place, comfy and classy. There was quite a crowd when I was there. In addition to boardgames, there were people doing roleplaying games. I taught players Ali Baba, and also managed to playtest several of my designs in progress. This one above is Sabah Honeymoon. 

Opportunities to observe others play my games are precious. Through observation I can learn a lot. One thing about Sabah Honeymoon is I definitely need to make the board bigger, at least double the size.

The presentation day for the game design competition organised by STTOS is 19 April. A few of my game designer friends are going to fly all the way to Kota Kinabalu to present their games (a 2.5-hour flight). I am a Sabahan myself but I won't be making the trip for the presentation. I will be doing my presentation online. Every contestant is only given 15 minutes to present. There won't be enough time to complete a full game. There are quite many participants, so I dare not have too high hopes. I am just happy that this competition gave me the inspiration and motivation to create a game about my home state Sabah. It was a fun and fulfilling experience. Also, I rarely design games with boards. For this competition I designed one with a board and that was an interesting aspect of game design to explore and learn.

In Sabah Honeymoon, you play a newlywed couple. You've agreed to go to Sabah for your honeymoon. However the two of you have different must-see attractions. You need to plan a trip where both of you get to go where you want, plus some other new experiences. In the photo above, the first card on the left is your honeymoon card. This is your secret objective. To win the game, you need to be first to plan an itinerary which covers all five destinations on your honeymoon card. Gameplay is simple. During the game you collect cards and then spend them to make bookings. You'll book flights, entry passes, overnight stays, boat trips and so on. Designing and crafting this game has been a happy journey in itself. Everything in the game reminds me of home.  

Nucleum

The Game

Nucleum (2023) from Simone Luciani and David Turczi is a currently hot game. There has been many positive reviews. Recently when Han was coming to KL and we planned to play, he asked what I wanted to play, offering several titles he could bring. I picked Nucleum because I was curious to see what it was like. 

Nucleum is set in a fictional industrial age Saxony, where a mineral called nucluem, a source of nuclear power, has been discovered. The game map is an abstracted version of the Saxony region. There are multiple cities, each with a limited number of spaces for different structures. Cities can be connected by building railroad tracks. During the game you can build mines, turbines and buildings. Mines produce nucleum. Turbines allow power generators to work more efficiently. Power generators consume nucleum or coal to generate electricity. The electricity is used for upgrading buildings. You want to upgrade your buildings because this gives you benefits and also it is an important source of victory points.

Every city only has a handful of slots for structures, so you will need to build in multiple cities. You will need to transport resources to power generators and when you run power generators they need to be connected to the buildings which you want to upgrade. So you will need to build railroad tracks to connect cities. You will be doing much construction work in this game. Railroads, buildings, mines, and turbines. This is a game of network building. 

This is the player board. Here you can see the various structures you can build. The first three columns are the buildings. The 4th column is the turbines and the 5th column is the mines. The core mechanism of the game is the action tiles. These are small rectangular tiles, two of which you can see at the top of this photo above. At the start of the game every player gets a unique set of starting action tiles. Every action tile has two parts, representing two actions you can perform. When you use an action tile, you place it in a notch along the top of your player board. This tile will be temporarily unavailable until you do a reset and take all action tiles back into your hand. When you do this reset, you also do some production. You generate money, workers and victory points. Some actions in the game increase your production during these resets. 

Besides the starting action tiles that you get, there are many better action tiles available in the game. You will be able to collect these better action tiles to augment your abilities. When you need to build a railroad track, you actually have to sacrifice an action tile. The back of an action tile is a railroad track. Since you are going to be building railroad tracks, you will need to get more action tiles to replenish those you spend as railroad tracks. When using an action tile as a railroad track, you might be able to execute the actions on it one last time. Both ends of an action tile has a colour. If this colour matches the city when you build the railroad track, you get to perform the action on that end of the tile. This is an aspect you can plan for.  Why waste the opportunity to perform one or two more actions? 

You spend money to construct buildings. You spend workers to construct turbines and mines.

These are contracts. They are missions you can complete. Whenever you claim a contract and put it next to your player board, you gain some benefits. When you complete the mission, you get a reward. 

These tiles on the left are technology tiles. Every player has their own set of unique technology tiles. There are certain things you complete during the game which will give you a technology as a reward. Some technologies are one-time benefits. Some are permanent abilities. They will affect your strategy. 

The Play

Nucleum is a rich game. It is a development game. You build lots of stuff, expand your network, and improve your abilities. You need to not only construct the buildings, but also upgrade them. You need to fight for space, and you need resources. You don't directly attack or damage your opponents. The nature of the competition is more along the lines of claiming spots and resources before your opponents do, i.e. the usual heavy Eurogame style. There is actually some possible collaboration. Players can work together to build railroad tracks to link up cities. When you do that, all of you involved gain a small reward when that link between two cities is completed. 

One thing I found interesting is every player has his own set of action tiles and technology tiles. This is like roleplaying a different character. You have different strengths and you will have a slightly different play experience. This is a game with many details to juggle. You'll be kept busy enough handling your own cash flow, resources and construction projects. 

The Thoughts

Sometimes when I introduce squad level battle games, party games, or collectible card games, I state a disclaimer that because they are not a genre I like, my personal dislike of a specific game doesn't mean it's not a good game. It's just my personal preference. I never expected that I would be doing this kind of disclaimer now for heavy Eurogames, a genre I used to love. I used to think the heavy Eurogame was my pinnacle of gaming, a kind of landing point for a gamer. Gamers go through different stages, likely beginning with gateway games or light games, moving on to trying different types of games, and eventually they settle down with something they really like. It can be collectible card games, roleplaying games, wargames, 18XX games and so on. I had thought my landing point was heavy Eurogames, but in recent years the newer titles don't excite me any more, not even the universally loved Ark Nova. I still enjoy the older games in the genre, like Indonesia which I played again recently. Gosh I have become that grumpy old man. I only like games from my "youth" days, and all the new games nowadays are rubbish. 

Nucleum is packed with many interesting challenges, and it is definitely the type which heavy Eurogamers enjoy. There are no direct attacks, but there are many aspects you need to compete in. It is a complex project management exercise. I would even say this is programme management (a programme is a collection of multiple related projects). You have to do a lot of planning. There is a ton of things to consider and prioritise. This kind of complex problem solving is what makes heavy Eurogames fun and satisfying. 

The reason the game does not excite me is I feel I have seen all the mechanisms before in various different games. When you go in, don't expect any ground-breaking idea, but you can expect many challenges put together in a compelling package. 

Rainbow

The Game

Rainbow is a clever card game from Japan by Mito Sazuki. What’s most special about it is that cards which you play in one round to compete for prizes in turn become the prizes in the following round. If you play powerful (i.e. high) cards to win lucrative prizes in the current round, beware they themselves will become lucrative prizes next round. Do you still have strong cards to compete for them next round? Are you offering too-good prizes to your opponents? 

Cards in the game are numbered 1 to 6. At the start of the game, most cards are dealt out to all players. The same number of cards as the player count are laid out at the centre of the table to become the prize pool. Every round, you play cards to fight for these prizes. The most powerful combo gets the highest prize, the second most powerful gets the next highest, and so on. There are only two types of combos, sets and runs. A set means multiple cards of the same value. A run means cards in sequence. You can play singles too. A single is both a set and a run, albeit with just one card. The start player of a round determines the combo type. If a single is played then it can still be any combo. The type is not committed yet. Once anyone plays a set or run with at least two cards, subsequent card plays must be of the same type (or singles). The strength of a combo is first determined by the number of cards and then by the card value. 

You must play a combo, even if it is weak. At least you must play a single. Once everyone has played, you start claiming prizes beginning with the player who played the strongest combo. After prizes have been claimed, cards played in the current turn are grouped by their values and in pairs if possible. You try to form pairs of 6’s, pairs of 5’s, pairs of 4’s and eventually you’ll have singles. These become the prizes for the next round. This means a prize can be worth up to 12 points (two 6’s). There will only be as many prizes as there are players. If you have too many prizes you simply discard them. The prizes you win don’t go to your hand. They go to your prize pile. 

The game goes on until at least 2 players have used up their cards. If you are first to run out of cards, you sit out until the game ends. The rest continue to play until the end condition is reached and they continue to score points till then. 

The Play

This is a game about winning the most points with the least effort. You don’t always need to “win” a round, as in playing the strongest combo. If the values of the prizes are about the same, it is probably better to conserve your resources. You need to do a little bit of planning. If you have many high cards, make sure you win some of them and they don’t all become your opponents’ prizes. The game end dynamic is also interesting. You need to think carefully when to use up your cards. Being first to go out and having to sit out for many rounds while others continue to play and score will be disastrous. When you are the player who can trigger game end, if you feel you are leading you’d want to end the game immediately and not let others have more scoring opportunities. 

One thing we tried to do in our game was to stay in play for as long as we could. That meant trying not to play big combos so that our cards lasted longer. We tried to make many small wins. We played the efficiency game. Sigh, these serious gamers are boring people. Where’s the drama? I realise small cards can be good too. If you use four 1’s to win a big prize, you are only making at most two sets of 2 points for the next round. The only drawback is playing four cards means depleting your hand faster. 

The Thoughts

Rainbow is a smart design. Certainly something a little different. It is short and quick, but not exactly a casual / silly type of game. There is some strategy to playing well. You need to respond to how your opponents play. Casual gamers can still handle this. Experienced gamers will find this an interesting challenge too. Despite the cute art, there is a certain seriousness to this game. This is essentially an abstract card game. At least I don’t get the unicorn theme at all. And I don’t mind that. 

Panda Panda

The Game

This is a design from Japanese designer Kaya Miyano, who is most known for Trio / Nana. He also designed Trick & Snipers. When I looked him up, I found that I have played an older game he designed with another designer - Zombie Tower 3D. I thought that was quite clever. The first edition of Panda Panda was released in Japan in 2023, and it was named Cat Poker. The international edition Panda Panda was released only shortly after the original, in 2024. 

Panda Panda is a simple and short card game. Every round, you race to be first to collect a winning combo. Whoever achieves that scores a point. You need to score two points to win the game. The cards in the game are labelled from A to G. A's are the most common. There are 10 A's in the game. The G is the rarest card. There is only one G in the deck. Here are the winning combos: 

To make a winning combo, you must have the exact number of cards, no more, no less. For example you want to make the C and E combo. That's a 2-card combo. You can't have more than 2 cards. If you do, you need to spend turns discarding the surplus cards. A turn is super simple. You either take a card or discard a card. When taking a card, you may draw from the common draw deck, or take the top card from the discard pile of any player. Yes, every player has his own discard pile. What this means is if someone wants a card you discard, chances are he will be able to get it, because that top card in your discard pile will not be covered by anyone else's card. It takes a full round before you can cover it with another discarded card. 

If you choose to discard a card on your turn, you simply place it face-up at the top of your discard pile. If you discard an A (the most common card), this triggers a special action. Everyone must pass a card to the left. This is an important mechanism. This can really mess up someone's plan. It is not easy to collect a winning combo, and an untimely (or timely!) A being discarded can really screw someone's plan. 

When you make a winning combo, whether by taking the last card you need, or discarding the last extra card you don't need, you don't score immediately. You still need to wait a full round until the start of your next turn. This is always a nerve-racking moment, because if anyone discards an A, you will be forced to break your combo. During the game if you see anyone getting cocky, you may want do discard an A to see whether you'd destroy his plans. One rule about A's - if the top card of a discard pile is an A, you can't take it. 

The Play

This is a quirky little game which I can't quite categorise. I guess you can call this a set collection game. It is brisk, and it'll work well as a filler for game night. The game is simple and doesn't require deep thinking, but if you do think about it, there are some tactics you can consider. When you pay attention to the cards others are discarding, you may be able to guess which combos they are making, or which ones they are not making. If anyone takes a card from another player's discard pile, that's a big hint too. Keeping some A's in hand is a good tactic. If you sense someone might be winning, discarding an A can severely delay him. It's always a pleasure to hear someone groan when you discard an A. 

One general strategy I use is to just keep drawing cards in the early game, and then depending on the cards I have, decide which combo to go for, and then start discarding. I'm not sure whether this is an optimal way to play. It seems sensible. When an A is discarded and everyone needs to pass a card, what you get from your neighbour might be a useful clue. 

I mention several tactics here, but you don't really need to think so much to enjoy this game. You can choose to focus on your own combo and just enjoy the race to make a winning combo. This is a light and casual game. 

The Thoughts

Playing Panda Panda was a refreshing experience. It is something a little different. It'll work well with non-gamers and casual gamers. This is the kind of game you can play while chatting. For gamers, this is something novel worth trying out. 

session report: Indonesia

Indonesia from Splotter is one of my favourite games. I had not played it for many years. Recently in a chat with fellow game designer friends Jon, Cedric and Chee Kong, we mentioned this game, and I said I have a copy and we should arrange a time to play. So we did. I checked my records and realised that the last time I played this was more than 10 years ago. So much for "one of my favourite games". Now I don't sound sincere at all. We set a Sunday afternoon, and we did a 4-player game - the best player count for Indonesia. 

Indonesia is a heavy eurogame and an economic game. You start businesses in Indonesia producing goods or delivering them to cities to make money. You can be a producer or a shipping company. Producers need to pay shipping fees to have the shipping companies move their goods to cities. How much you have to pay depends on shipping distance. The most important mechanism in the game is the mergers between companies. You can do hostile takeovers. You can also force others to buy your companies at a steep price. Our game lasted about 4 hours, but we were fully engaged throughout and time just flew by.

This is the tech chart. You use markers in your player colour to mark which level you are at in each of the technologies. To be able to own and operate multiple companies, you need to have the necessary technology. Otherwise you will always be stuck with just one company. Every round, turn order is determined through a single-round bidding. One technology in the game allows your bid amount to be multiplied. At the highest tech level, every rupiah you spend can be treated as 400 times the value. This is a hint at how important turn order can be.

The large square tiles are the companies you can start. At this point we had just entered the second era out of three eras. The game is played over just three eras. In the first era you can only start rice companies, spice companies and transport companies. In the second era, rubber companies come into play. Rubber is a more profitable product. 

When you force two companies to merge, they must be of the same type. For example a rice company can only merge with another rice company. A shipping company can only merge with another shipping company. There is one exception. A rice company can merge with a spice company to become a microwave meal company. In the photo above, yellow is rice, green is spice, and red is microwave meal. They are different goods and they do not compete with one another. Cities accept all types of goods, but in limited quantities for each type. Once enough of one good is delivered, that good is no longer accepted. Later in the game, that rice company on the left merged with a spice company to become a microwave meal company. This resulted in competition with the older microwave meal company on the right. Turn order became important for them because whoever delivered first would get the deal done. The other might not have any more buyers, or the buyers might be far and incur a high shipping cost. In Indonesia, you must deliver goods to buyers if you can, even if it means losing money on the transaction due to shipping costs. Your shipping partner is not necessarily your friend. 

Chee Kong was orange. His tech in managing companies was at Level 4 now, which meant he could own and operate four companies. I was green. My merger technology never developed, which meant I never proposed any company merger. I could only join in the bidding if someone else proposed a merger. I could not initiate any attack.

This was the third era. Now we had oil companies. Old is the most profitable product in the game. However in our particular game our third era was quite short. The oil companies did not have time to grow big. Instead it was the rubber companies from the second era which managed to grow big and become highly profitable. One decisive play in our game was when Jon initiated a merger and bought my large rubber company. At the time I did not have as much cash as he did. I bid the maximum I could afford, but it was not enough. I was forced to sell my rubber company to him. He went on to win the game. His winning score was slightly above 1500 rupiah. I was about 50 rupiah behind him. Oh my condom company! 

We had several important mergers in our game, which is expected of Indonesia. There were big shifts on the board. Cedric became the king of shipping. He had two large shipping companies spanning the archipelago. I had both production companies and one shipping company. The shipping company was somewhat profitable, but more importantly it helped me save on shipping costs because my production companies could make use of my shipping company. Left pocket right pocket. 

This was the situation at the end of our game. I must say Indonesia is tedious to manage. If it weren't such a great game I wouldn't be able to forgive this level of fiddliness. So many small pieces to lay down, to flip over, and then to flip back again. One sign of a good game is you are still thinking about it and discussing it afterwards. You can trace back to the decision which caused you to lose the game, or to win the game. You find that you can only blame yourself and no one else. You can't blame luck. It feels great to be able to play Indonesia again. I can truly say this - after 10 years, you are still as beautiful as I remember. The game does not feel aged. When I play it, I understand better why I like some of the games from that era, and why I dislike some of the newer popular games. Oh no... I am becoming that grumpy old guy.  

From left: me, Cedric, Jon, Chee Kong. 

Ketupat Rendang

The Game

Ketupat Rendang is a short card game about your favourite Hari Raya dishes. This is the latest game from Malaysian publisher Meja Belakang, the team which brought us Drama Pukul 7 and Nak Makan Apa. Everyone is randomly assigned one main dish and one side dish. This is kept secret. Throughout the game, you lay down cards which have dishes and also fire which is used to cook the dishes. Parts of cards can overlap, hiding some dishes and even fire. Dishes are only cooked if they are adjacent to fire. At the end of the game, you score points for your dishes which are cooked and whoever has the most points wins.

Your secret objective card

Regular cards

You have a hand size of two. On your turn, you simply draw a card then play a card. Cards can be played next to existing cards and they can also be played partially overlapping other cards. Every card is divided into three equal sections. There are many ways cards can overlap. The golden rule is no single card can be completely covered by other cards. That means if two sections of a card have been covered, the last section is protected.

This is how fire works. A section containing one fire cooks one dish in every orthogonally adjacent section. If the section has two fires, then it cooks two dishes in every adjacent section. The game ends after the last card is drawn. You check the play area. For each of your main dish which is cooked, you score 2 points. For your side dish, you score 1 point each. In case you have any fire in hand, you lose points.

At the moment my main dish rendang (red background) scores 8 points because 4 are cooked.

The Play

The gameplay is smooth and fast. Initially, no one knows who has which main dish and side dish. However, there will be clues if you observe your opponents closely. At the same time, you may also want to play in a way which hides your intentions. It is not easy to hide your main dish until the end of the game. After all, you do want to manipulate the play area to show as many of them as possible, and to cook them. It is always a little nerve-racking to play a card with your main dish. It is not always easy to protect your main dish from being covered. The board situation is fluid. There can be many attacks, as in players covering one another’s dishes, or at least what they think are their opponents main dishes and side dishes. You can attack your own main dish if you want to, but I am not entirely sure this is a good idea. The game is short. Shooting yourself, even just a little bit, might set you back significantly.

Don't worry. This is not Overcooked. Too much fire will not burn your dishes.

The Thoughts

This is a pleasant and breezy game. It is of just the right length that it doesn’t overstay its welcome, and there is enough time and space for you to make meaningful plays. So this is satisfying. The board is open information. Player cards is hidden information. The game reminds me of Carcassonne. You can only play one card, but there are several possible positions on the board where you can play it. I am glad I backed the game when it was crowdfunded. 

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.