Review: Point Salad

Salad... Not the most exciting thing. If we add points to it then all of a sudden it exciting and competitive. Watch out Top Chef there is a new competition on the block that has people competing to create the salad with the most points. Flatout Games and AEG they have co-published Point Salad designed by Molly Johnson, Robert Melvin, Shawn Stankewich and illustrated by Dylan Mangini. Grab a fork and lets dig into Point Salad.

Point Salad is a quick card drafting game where you draft ingredient and scoring cards into your tableau. There are 108 doubles sided cards in the box. The cards have two sides the veggie side has one of six veggies and on the other side of the card is the point side.

Depending on the amount of players (2-6) you will use between 36 and all 108 cards. The cards get stacked into 3 equal stacks with the point side up. Then draw two cards off the top and place them veggie side up in a column under the point cards so you can see bot of them. So now you will have a 3x3 grid of cards with the point card piles at the top.

So now what happens? Well we start playing Point Salad. There are 3 things you may do on your turn. You can draft a point card off the top of the stack or you may draft 2 veggie cards. When you draft cards you place them on the table in front of you with the side you drafted face up. The last thing you may do on your turn is flip a point card over to the veggie side. Once you have a card on the veggie side you may not ever flip it back to the point side.

Drafting your scoring cards wisely is going to be a big part of your strategy in Point Salad

The point cards are the scoring mechanism of the game. Drafting your point cards wisely is going to be half of the strategy of Point Salad. The point side of the card has one of several ways to score points. Some are as easy as have the most or least veggies one kind. There are point cards that give you positive points for one kind of veggie and negative points for 2 other kinds of veggies. A lot of what you are going to work through during the game is how the scoring cards will interact with your tableau of veggies. Also when drafting point cards don't forget that you can do this to block an opponent from getting a high scoring card. This card might not be high scoring in your tableau, but don't forget you may turn one point scoring card over to the veggie side per turn and negate the scoring side.

By drafting veggie cards in a row you can also manipulate the available point cards for the next person.

At the end of your turn you will fill the veggie columns with cards from the point card stack. By drafting veggie cards in a row you can also manipulate the available point cards for the next person. Once you have replaced all the veggie cards then its on to the next person. Once you start establishing your tableau and strategy the game starts picking up pace. The game is all about building your score and mitigating your opponents scoring as best you can. There are over 100 different ways of scoring in Point Salad. Tracking your opponents and playing off of them is easy with 2 or three players past that you are going to have trouble tracking everything, this does not by any means reduce the fun in the game. The game is over when all the cards have been drafted.

Point Salad is a great casual game that is easy to bring on a family road trip, just on a weekday evening or at game night when you are waiting for the last couple of people to get there, you know who you are... we start at 8 not 8:30. I really enjoyed playing this and my wife Mary and she really enjoyed winning Point Salad. This game is widely available at your friendly local game stores or at online retailers if you dont have a FLGS near you. Enjoy your veggies with Point Salad.

Players: 2-6

Year Published: 2019

Recommended Ages: 8+

Time to Play: 15-20 minutes

A review copy of Point Salad was provided to Bert's Tabletop Games for review purposes by AEG.