Rogue Review – Abandon All Artichokes

Do you eat your vegetables? Do you love a good artichoke? In that case, how about a game that’s all about getting rid of them? Abandon All Artichokes is a card game where your goal is to dispose of all the artichokes you can.

Gameplay- B+

This is a deck builder game but with a twist. Typically, your goal is to acquire new cards that you use to help you reach the games win condition, often acquiring some form of victory points. As part of that, you often want to clear your deck of your lower quality starter cards so that you draw the newer, more powerful, cards more frequently. Abandon All Artichokes simplifies things by making that part your entire focus.

As you play the game, you will acquire new cards which you will use to both pad out your deck and dispose of your starter cards. Because, unfortunately for you, your starting deck consists entirely of useless and worthless artichokes. Your goal is to get rid of them so that when you draw a fresh hand, you are the first to draw a hand that contains zero artichokes. Since you start with a deck of ten artichokes and draw five each turn, it is going to be several rounds before that’s even a possibility.

During your turn, you will choose one card from the Vegetable Garden, a set of five face-up cards. This card is immediately added to your hand (which is not typical, as for most deck building games, new cards go straight to your discard pile). Next, you are free to play as many or as few cards as you want. As your starting hand contains nothing but artichokes, which do nothing but take up space, the card drawn from the garden will be the only card you can play.

The cards’ actions are all about changing the nature of your deck. Some remove artichoke cards directly from your hand, usually with some kind of condition. Broccoli, for example, requires that you have three artichokes in your hand. Very useful early, as you will have at least three for several turns.

On the other hand, Carrots allow you to dispose of two artichokes in one go. However, you also have to get rid of the carrot card. This means they don’t do anything to help you pad your deck with new cards. Since your goal is to draw a fresh hand of five cards which contain zero artichokes, you need to add a minimum of five cards from the garden before it’s even possible to win.

Production- B+

The game comes in a nice artichoke shaped tin. For those that like tins this makes the game cooler. For those that like games to stack well with others, that it’s not in a traditional box shape could be frustrating. It is essentially just a deck of cards so it could fit into a much smaller package. Aside from the rule book being shaped the same as the tin, you could transfer the game to any number of different boxes (such as left over card sleeve boxes).

The cards themselves are sturdy enough for some shuffling. The instructions are clear and easy to understand.

Theme- B+

The theme is a little hard to pinpoint. You want to dispose of a particular vegetable. That’s your goal. The name of the game tells you to abandon those nasty artichokes. Very anti-vegetable, a thing many people don’t like. But you do this by acquiring other vegetables. So maybe it’s not anti-vegetable, just anti-artichoke? Who knows? It’s cute and silly.

Expansions- TBD

None

Conclusion- B+

Play is simple and relatively quick as each player only has a few things to do and only one real decision to make. This works well as a game for kids to think through how to complete an unusual goal. Getting a certain number of points is straightforward. Pruning your deck of all artichokes would also be relatively straightforward. Pruning your deck so you draw no artichokes is a little bit more of a conundrum. Removing them all certainly is one way to win. But not the only way.