Vicious Gardens

The plants are perfectly pleasant. It is the gardeners you want to watch.

A card game that combines the quiet satisfaction of gardening with the thrill of being a menace about it. You plant cards into plots in front of you, harvest them when the moment looks right, and spend a good deal of effort ruining whatever the person opposite has been patiently cultivating. Ross Bruggink designed it for Pops & Bejou Games. The title refers to the gardeners rather than the plants.

Plants sitting in your plots are worth points, but harvesting converts them into Victory Cards and unlocks abilities, so knowing when to pull them up is the whole decision. Specialists let you sabotage the other gardens, at the cost of taking up room in a hand you also need for planting — and they rarely come free. Quick to learn, twenty to forty-five minutes, and it stretches from solo to six players.

Perfect for: Groups who would like a gentle theme and absolutely no gentleness.

1–6 players | 20–45 minutes | Age 10+