Solo Chronicles – Mr. Cabbagehead’s Garden

Tell me that box cover doesn’t look straight out of some weird 1940s kids’ book. At first I was a bit too weirded out to even consider playing this one. It’s creepy. But so many reviewers loved it, so I recently bit the bullet and gave it a shot. It’s weird and it has weird art, but dang. I love it!

Mr. Cabbagehead’s Garden is a game originally designed for solo play, and that is how I intend to play and review it. In it, the player is hoping to help Mr. Cabbagehead plant and tend his garden so he can win the annual gardening award. Think Mr. Wilson in the 1993 “Dennis the Menace” movie. The problem is, Mr. Cabbagehead is often distracted by his meddlesome neighbors and he can’t concentrate on his gardening. So he goes on vacation. While away, his neighbors help themselves to the fruits of the garden (or vegetables in this case). After his third vacation it is time to have his garden judged and awarded a blue ribbon! Or at least SOME kind of ribbon! We won’t talk about my first play (74 points).

To setup, arrange the main veggie card deck into three equal sets of 15 cards with an, “On Holiday” card beneath each set. Place the sets atop of each other. Place out four nosy neighbor tiles and randomize their respective tokens below, face-down. Place out the beehive tile with three of the six Bee tokens on top, and the Eudora tile nearby. She tends the compost. Lovely… turnip lady? Draw the first three cards, one by one, into a central play area and the game may begin!

The game is setup into two main phases: The Planting Phase and The Neighbour Phase. The meat of the game is played during The Planting Phase. Each of the three cards set before the player depicts different veggies with its name, art, and a group of four numbers at the bottom. Conceptually, one of the three cards will be planted in a six-column by three-row grid somewhere above the play area. Veggies will score at the end of the game ONLY IF they are orthogonally adjacent to another matching veggie species card. Once the veggie card is chosen to be planted from the three, it is placed anywhere within the garden space. Of the unchosen two card, their numbers in the black icon are compared. The higher numbered card determines how many neighbour tokens are revealed this turn. That number is in the white circle icon. The blue icon notates how many points at the end of the game the card is worth and the red icon notates how many copies of that species of veggie is in the deck.

The card in the middle is always free to plant. The leftmost card requires that a bee token is placed back on the beehive from the supply (there are three on the beehive and three off the beehive during setup). The rightmost card requires a bee to be taken off the beehive and added to the supply. Also, when planting a new veggie, an existing veggie may be uprooted and given to Eudora to add to the Compost. These cards will be worth NEGATIVE two points at game end.

Once five of these turns of choosing between three cards is complete, Mr. Cabbagehead has to go On Holiday. While on holiday, his neighbours begin to get up to no good and visit his flourishing garden. During this Neighbour Phase, the neighbor who has the highest number of their token revealed over the past round will help themselves to a veggie card in the garden. For example, one neighbour simply wants the veggie with the lowest vegetable number (in the black icon). Another neighbor wants a veggie with the highest vegetable number that is adjacent to a Carrot. If no Carrots, they take no cards.

The game continues in this fashion until the final On Holiday card is revealed. The final Neighbour Phase is completed and then Mr. Cabbagehead’s Garden is ready for Evaluation. Again, cards will score in the garden if adjacent to a matching species. Each card in the Compost will score negative two points. Here’s a kicker you should know BEFORE you play your first game (unlike myself who played as he read the rules and totally didn’t plan ahead because he didn’t know this last part is a thing), there are bonus points if veggies are in certain physical locations. One of these requires that the same veggie species be located at all four corners of the 6×3 grid. There’s 12 points. And six points if you manage to get all the bees off the beehive. And another 12 points if you can end the game with six different veggies in one row. My first score would have been way higher had I known about these.

In any case, compare your score with the chart in the rulebook to see if you are a winner or if you will be ridiculed!

Components. I believe I may have purchase the Deluxe version, because in addition to the base game, it comes with a couple small expansions as well as a nifty burlap sack and six beeples. I think in hindsight I was supposed to use the bag to pull the neighbour tokens instead of simply having them on the table, and I was already a few games into it before I realized there were six beeples I could have been using. That said, the component QUALITY here is fantastic. It feels great to play, and everything in the box seems tough enough to handle quite a number of plays.

But did I like it? HECK YEAH I DID! I’ve been getting more into solo gaming lately, and this is one of those titles where you have a great plan going into the start of the game and then one of the neighbours truly screws you over. Then you play again but swap in a different neighbour only to discover that they screw you over even worse! But you have that goal you want to hit and you know for certain that you definitely can. So you play again. It is short enough to put away 3-6 games in a setting and have a great time.

I wish I had known about the bonus scoring my first time because I would have enjoyed it much more and had a plan of attack. However, I didn’t, but subsequent plays increased my score. I am very interested in the decisions of which veggie card to plant, where to plant it, and which strategies I am trying to employ every game that even the randomness of the neighbours causes me only mild frustration. This is truly a great little game, and I am so glad others were able to persuade me to try it. If you are looking for a fun little press your luck, spatial placement, hating on that dang Horace Lettuceface neighbour, card game, then definitely check this one out.