Overview
At a glance
Is this game right for my group?
ABG editorial scores on a 1–5 scale.
Easier to teach
High replayability
Highly interactive
Scales well
Light strategy
More strategic control
How it plays
How does it play?
Cultivate plant sets, time profitable harvests, recruit mischievous specialists, and sabotage rival plots on the way to Master Gardener.
Core mechanisms
Key systems that shape the decisions players make.
Set Collection
Gather related items that become more valuable when scored together.
Commodity Speculation
Buy or influence goods whose values change before they are sold or scored.
Hand Management
Time and sequence a limited hand of cards to preserve future options.
Take That
Use Take That as a recurring structure for player decisions and resolution.
Victory Points as a Resource
Use Victory Points as a Resource as a recurring structure for player decisions and resolution.
End Game Bonuses
Earn additional points for meeting conditions evaluated when the game ends.
Read the full game description
Vicious Gardens is a competitive card game that pairs cheerful retro botany with direct sabotage. Players plant cards into species plots, develop sets, and choose when to harvest them for Victory cards and new abilities. Specialists can steal, disrupt, or protect, but they occupy precious hand space and often carry a cost. Pollinators, pestilence, the season track, and variable Victory cards keep every garden shifting. The final round can swing dramatically as players convert carefully cultivated plots into points—or ruin a neighbor’s work at exactly the wrong moment.
