Mr. Cabbagehead's Garden
Each year Vernon Cabbagehead - Mr. Cabbagehead to you - wants nothing more than to be left in peace to grow his award winning vegetable garden.
Unfortunately for him, his tedious neighbours tend to stop by and help themselves to his vegetables while he’s away.
Can you help Mr. Cabbagehead keep his tiresome neighbours away, tend to his garden and finally win the blue ribbon?
Mr. Cabbagehead’s Garden is a game for 1 or 2 players. It takes about 15-20 minutes to play.
It comes with:
45 Vegetables
3 On Holiday cards
10 Neighbours
24 Neighbour tokens
1 Score summary and 1 Beehive
6 Bees
The game also comes with 3 expansions:
The New Neighbours
The Grasshoppers expansion
The Romancing Eudora expansion
To set up the game you need to first lay out 3 On Holiday cards.
Then, shuffle the 45 Vegetable cards and deal 15 of them face down onto each of the On Holiday cards.
Stack the three decks one on top of each other, so you have one Vegetable deck of 48 cards, placed within easy reach.
Choose 4 Neighbours to play with, and place them next to the Vegetable deck.
Take the Neighbour tiles and their matching tokens. Shuffle the tiles, making sure that their front faces are not revealed!
Then place the Bee Hive next to the play area with the bee hive tokens on top of it. Take 3 of these tokens into your supply in front of you!
Place Eudora Brassica’s tile nearby. You are now ready to play.
The game takes place over 3 rounds, and each round consists of 2 phases: The planting phase and the neighbour phase.
The planting phase is when vegetables are placed in the garden and when neighbor tokens are revealed.
The game is played slightly differently depending on whether there is 1 or 2 players. We will first look at how the game is played with 1 player, and then go over the small differences for games with 2 players.
The planting phase begins with 3 cards of the vegetable deck being drawn and revealed. One must be chosen for planting.
To plant the card on the left, you must pay one bee token from your supply and return it to the beehive. If there are no bees left in the player’s supply, this card may not be chosen.
The card in the center is free to plant.
If the player chooses to plant card on the right, then one bee token is earned from the beehive. If you already have all the bees in your supply, you may not choose this card.
There are 4 numbers on each vegetable card.
The number inside the red frame is the total number of cards of this vegetable in the deck.
The number inside the blue ribbon is the number of victory points this vegetable is worth.
The number inside the black fence determines which card will cause Neighbour tokens to be revealed after planting.
The number inside the white circle determines how many neighbor tokens will be revealed after planting.
Vegetables are planted in your garden plot with a maximum size of 6 columns and 3 rows.
A maximum of 15 out of those 18 slots will be filled by the end of the 3rd round.
Vegetables may be placed anywhere in the garden and do not need to be placed adjacently, however, the three row plots are not fixed until the 1st and 3rd rows have vegetables placed in them, and the same goes for the 1st and 6th columns.
Once planted, a vegetable may not be moved, but it may be replaced by another Vegetable planted in its place. The removed vegetable then becomes compost and its worth -2 points at the end of the game.
After a vegetable has been planted, the player looks at the two remaining cards on the table. The one with the highest number inside the fence icon is the one which determines how many neighbor tokens are revealed, and the number in white circle of that card is how many neighbour tokens are turned face up.
After the appropriate neighbour tokens have been turned face up, the two remaining cards are discarded, and the player proceeds to draw and reveal 3 more Vegetable cards in order to plant again.
Once 5 Vegetables have been planted, the On Holiday card is removed and the game proceeds to the neighbor phase of the round.
Each neighbour interferes with the garden in different ways. The neighbor who has the most neighbor tokens revealed is the one who comes by to interfere with the garden. However, if any two neighbours of them are tied for most tokens, then they become distracted by one another being boring conversationalists and they do not interfere with your garden.
The vegetable that is chosen by the neighbor is placed in a discard pile. All neighbor tokens are then turned face down and shuffled again. So while at the end of the third round a player might have planted 15 vegetables, there is a good chance that there will be fewer than 15 cards remaining, which could be due to composting when planting or pesky neighbors interfering.
RULES FOR 2 players
In a game for two players, setup is a little different. Place 2 holiday cards (instead of 3), and randomly deal 21 vegetable cards on the first and 20 on the second. Then, deal the remaining 4 vegetable cards on the table, and place the second pile on top of it, and the first on top of that. Set up the Neighbours and everything else as in the game for 1 player.
Placing vegetables in the garden and dealing with neighbours visiting are the same! The only difference in gameplay comes at the end of the planting phase. After choosing a vegetable to plant and then revealing neighbour tokens, instead of discarding the other two vegetables, place one under the vegetablel deck, and pass the other to the opponent, in the position (left, center or right) that you choose. The card passed becomes one of the three available to the opponent, who then draws and reveals two more Vegetable cards.
Neighbor tokens are revealed by both players at the end of their planting phase. In the Neighbor phase both players are affected by the Neighbor with the most tokens revealed. Even though there is no On Holiday card at the bottom of the deck, a final Neighbor phase still happens.
At the end of that third round Ms. Eudora Brassica & the garden club committee arrive to judge Mr. Cabbagehead’s garden for the annual Blue Ribbon Garden Contest.
During scoring, only vegetables which are adjacent to a vegetable of the same kind are scored. In this example, these and these carrots would be scored, however this one would not be. They would each be worth 3 points, for a total of 15 total points. However, this is not the only way to gain fame!
There are several different awards of merit that may be given in a garden, and a player may achieve multiple!
For example, the player gains 12 points if all 4 corners of the grid have the same vegetable type like so.
Or, a player may gain 8 points for having at least 5 vegetables of the same type in the garden, and 2 more points if all of those are adjacent to each other.
There are more of these awards, and are all listed in the rulebook that comes with the game.
Once the vegetable points, Merit award points and any lost points from composting have been scored, Mr. Cabbagehead’s Garden is awarded a ribbon. Surpassing 100 points is what it takes to take home the illustrious Blue Ribbon and the never-ending envy of your neighbours!
So roll up your sleeves and dig in to the best game about anthropomorphic vegetables planting.... other vegetables? (funny / weirded out face)
Plant vegetables, arrange your garden, and show it off to win the prestigious blue ribbon for Mr. Cabbagehead’s Garden!
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