Have you even wondered how much work it takes to get food to a farmers market?
| Veggies (2019) | |||||
| Designer(s) | Jog Kung | Artist(s) | Roman Kucharski, Tomasz Larek, Álex Santaló | Publisher |
Devir Games |
 |
2-4 |  |
8+ |  |
10-20m |
Do you want to take part in the competitive business of produce stands? These can be found worldwide at farmer markets, bazaars, and even fairs. With so many options available for customers, how will you stand out. Easy, make sure the product you want to sell the most of is very visible and able to draw in customers. However, beware the mice who also want to enjoy some of your goods.
Components
The game comes in very compact box that holds the cards and rules perfectly. This size box is a standard for their mini-series. The game includes the following components:
- 40 Cards
- Five Rulebooks in different languages: English, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and I believe Catalan. The rules are very simple and fully covered in 8 page including a thorough breakdown of the scoring.
The components are pretty good quality. They aren’t your cheap card stock but also not your top tier; they are perfectly acceptable for this type of game. I don’t imagine these cards will get damaged too easily if used as intended.
Gameplay
Setup
Setup is very simple. Shuffle the deck of cards, lay three cards in the center of the table (called “central market”), and deal each player 2 cards. Each player will select one of the cards dealt to them to be their starting “market stand;” the other card remains in the players hand and is secret.
Player Turns
Players have two simple choices to make on their turn. They can either:
- Play a card from their hand and then draw a new card from the deck.
- Play one of the fac- up “Central Market “cards in the center of the table; this space is refilled immediately from the deck).
This card is then played to their market stand. The only rules for places are either:
- Play beside at least one other cards with one ensure at least one “square” is lined side-by-side with the “square” on the other card.
- Play on top of one or more cards ensuring the “squares” properly overlap. You can cover as little as one square or the entire card.
Game play continues to the next player. Continue until each player has 8 cards played to their market stand.
End Game 
Scoring is based on the popular items of each player’s market stands (do not move the cards in your market stand). Each player will look for the group of food with the most directly connected squares (creating essentially a group); each player will announce their large group’s food. This will be what each player will score for. So, if you have 2 players with Banana as their largest group and another player with carrots, each player will score their bananas once and carrots once; all other groups will not be scores.
From there, scoring is pretty simple, players will count the number of “food in their largest group” and count up the number of “individual groups” of that food in their market stand. Multiply these together. Repeat for each scoring group. Add the results together.
Finally, for each mouse shown, subtract 2 points.
So…
[(Largest Food “A” Group spaces X # of Food “A” Groups) + (Largest Food “B” Group spaces X # of Food “B” Groups) + etc.] – (2 X # of Mice)
Whoever has the highest score, wins! If there is a tie, the player with the least mice wins. Otherwise, tied player share the victory.
Variant
There is a two-player and a four-player team variant. In the two-player variant, the game is the same except each player announces their two largest food groups to score. The team variant is played the same as normal except at the end of the game, the players on a team add their score together to determine the winner.
Final Thoughts
Veggies is a fun little game that anyone can learn to play in minutes. It takes many of the concepts of larger games and compresses it into a 10–20-minute game. You also can’t argue with the $10 price of the game. Amanda and I love having a variety of small games we can keep on hand for dinners or quick meet ups with friends. It is very easy to recommend it if you are looking for a compact game you can carry anywhere if you just need to kill 10-20-minutes.