Abandon All Artichokes is a game as silly as its title, taking one tiny sliver of strategy from deckbuilders and making an entire game out of it: Get rid of your artichoke cards so that you become the first player to draw a fresh hand of five cards without any artichokes in it. It’s quick, and fun, and easy to learn for any player old enough to read the text on the other vegetable cards.
Each player in Abandon All Artichokes starts with ten cards, all of which are artichokes, and which are the only artichoke cards that you’ll use in the game. The main deck in the game comprises cards of other vegetables, each of which has an action associated with it. There’s a garden row of five cards that you refill after each player’s turn. On your turn, you must take one card from the garden row into your hand. You may then play as many cards from your hand as you’d like, using the actions printed on them, and then end your turn by discarding everything that’s left, artichokes and other. Then you draw a fresh hand of five cards, shuffling your discard pile into your deck if necessary, and play continues.
The main power to get rid of artichokes is composting. Four vegetables let you directly compost an artichoke card:
- A carrot lets you compost two artichokes in your hand, but you can’t take another action that turn, and you compost the carrot too.
- A broccoli lets you compost one artichoke if you have at least three in your hand.
- An onion lets you compost one artichoke, but you then give the onion to an opponent by putting it on their discard pile.
- An eggplant lets you compost one artichoke, and then players exchange two cards from their hands (of their choice).
There’s also the potato, which lets you draw the top card from your deck and compost it if it’s an artichoke; and the beet, for which you and an opponent each reveal a random card from your hands, and compost them if they’re both artichokes, exchanging them if they’re not.
The other vegetables don’t involve composting at all. Corn must be played with one artichoke, and it lets you take any card from the garden row and put it on top of your deck (so it will be in your hand on your next turn). A leek lets you reveal the top card of an opponent’s deck, after which you can take it or put it on their discard pile. A pepper lets you take a card from your discard pile and put it on top of your deck, which is nice for getting a strong card right back into your hand.
The key to success in Abandon All Artichokes is speed – these games go quickly, often faster than the 20 minute time shown on the box. You don’t have to get rid of all of your artichokes to win, although that doesn’t hurt; you just have to draw a hand of five cards without any artichokes in it. That could also involve composting a bunch of artichokes and also adding as many cards as you can do your deck so your odds of drawing five straight cards without an artichoke go up, but I haven’t seen anyone win that way, playing live or online. I think the slim deck strategy is the better one, not too far off from the Chapel strategy in the original Dominion, but it’s possible that with more players or the right vegetables you could pull off a “fat” deck strategy and win.
The box says it’s for ages 10+, but I would say that if your kid can read at a third-grade level they can probably play this game. There isn’t a lot of deep strategy here that would be beyond an 8-year-old’s reach, and the 20-minute playing time (if that) is great for all ages. It’s only about $13 everywhere I can find it, including at amazon, and even better comes in a small artichoke-shaped box. The ceiling on a game like this isn’t super high, but I love it as a family filler game.