‘Garden Variety' Provides Interesting Twist on Trick-Taking

Geek Dad

03-07-2025

There have been a lot of cool twists on the classic trick-taking mechanic over the last several years, from somehow making it cooperative in The Crew to the Schrödinger's cat spin in Cat in the Box , and many more. Now, Garden Variety joins the club with ever-changing rules and a simple but interesting format for deciding who wins the trick. What Is Garden Variety ?
Garden Variety is a game for 2-5 players, ages 7 and up, and takes about 15 minutes to play. Garden Variety Components
The components of the game are pretty straightforward: a rules pamphlet, a deck of 54 cards, and a custom wooden dice. The deck of cards. Image by Rob Huddleston.
The deck of cards is composed of 48 basic cards, each showing a number value, a color, and some whimsical artwork. The four types of gnomes. Image by Rob Huddleston
The 12 remaining cards show a one of four varieties of gnomes, which have special powers.
The 6-sided dice is wood, and contains six unique values that determines the win condition for a particular round. How to Play Garden Variety The Goal
The goal of the game is end up with the most total cards, both from your hand and from the tricks you collect. Unlike normal trick-taking games, the number of cards you can take in a trick can vary, so the total number of cards taken is what matters, not the number of tricks won. Setup
The game is as easy to set up as you'd expect from so few components: shuffle the deck, deal 5 cards to each player, and put the dice where everyone the reach it. Gameplay
The youngest player goes first. They roll the dice, which determines the win condition for that round.
Five of the faces of the dice show a number: 0, 3, 5, 7, and 10. If one of these is rolled, then the goal of that round is simply to play the card that is closest to that number. The sixth side, an exclamation mark, is the 'chaos' side, meaning that the dice is re-rolled after the round to determine the win condition. A simple hand. Image by Rob Huddleston
Once the dice is rolled, the first player plays a card from their hand. Each other player follows. Unlike most other trick-taking games, there's no requirement to follow suit, so subsequent players do not need to play a card of the same color as the first one played. There's also no super suit that automatically wins each trick. In the image above, the red 7 is obviously closest to 7, so it wins. A tie, to be determined by the colors. Image by Rob Huddleston
Should two or more players tie–for instance, if the round rule is to be closest to 7, and two players play a 5 while another plays a 9, then the game has an interesting mechanic to settle ties: blue beats red, red beats green, green beats yellow, and yellow beats blue. In the image above, the player with the red five wins, because their red five is the same distance from 7 as the yellow 9, but red beats yellow, and yellow beats the green 5. Playing a wild flower card. Image by Rob Huddleston
There are also flower cards, which are wild in regards to color (but not number,) so if a flower card ties with any other number card, it wins, as in the image above.
Technically, the round is evaluated by comparing the first card played to the second, then the winner of that match-up to the third, and so on until one card remains. It's rarely necessary to do this, but there are some scenarios where it will be used. In the image above, there are two flower cards, each the same distance from the target. Assuming the red 4 was played first, it's compared to the 2 flower, which beats it. Then, the 2 flower is compared to the 4 flower. This is an absolute tie, so the card that was played first–the 2–wins. That card is then compared to the 0-10 card (when this card is played, the player has to declare whether it is a 0 or a 10, but in this case that doesn't matter,) and so the 2 wins the hand.
The real twist in the game comes when the gnomes are played. There are four types of gnome (shown in the image in the 'Components' section above,) and each one changes the round in an important way. Two of them change the win condition for the round: one lets you re-roll the dice, while the other simply lets you pick the win condition most advantageous to you. The other two let you mess with your opponents: one lets you simply take the card played by an opponent for this round and make it your play (in which case, the opponent simply doesn't have a card in that round) while the other lets you flip an opponent's card over, so it doesn't count in the round. In all of those cases except the one where you take an opponent's card, you then play a card out of your hand.
After each round, the winner draws enough cards from the deck to bring their hand back to 5, followed by the rest of the players in turn order. The winner also rolls the dice for the next round. Once the deck runs out, play continues until a player has no cards left to play. Game End
The game ends when a player does not have a card to play from their hand. The game ends immediately at that point. All players count the total number of cards they collected in the tricks they won, and the player with the most cards wins. If there's a tie, the tied player who collected the most gnomes wins.
Garden Variety is GeekDad Approved! Why You Should Play Garden Variety
Sometimes, nice things come in small packages. Before my first play, I expected that I would enjoy Garden Variety (mostly because I love trick-taking games) but I was surprised by just how much everyone in the group enjoyed it. It's fast and light, and the artwork of silly animals perfectly fits the theme. And yet there's just enough of a twist to truly keep things interesting.
Unlike other trick-taking games that can often get stressful–do I try to take this hand? Is this a good time to dump this card?– Garden Variety is so fast you don't really worry too much about it. Don't have a card that will come close to winning this round? Just dump something. You'll be drawing a new card in a moment anyway, and besides, it's impossible to know what you should and shouldn't keep since the win condition for the next round is absolutely random.
And then the gnomes get added to the mix. Suddenly, that certain win you had by playing a card that exactly matches the target is gone as the dice gets re-rolled, or another player simply takes your card. And while in other situations that kind of 'gotcha' moment could raise anxiety, it's almost impossible to take this game seriously enough to do anything but laugh.
While the game of course won't appeal to everyone–there are folks out there who think that games that don't require 90 minutes and setup and 2 hours of rules explanations to be worth even looking at– Garden Variety is a perfect filler game to start your game night or unwind between stressful heavier games. It's also small enough to be easy to toss into your carry-on and take with you to pull out at the restaurant while you wait for your food.
All in all, I'm glad to have it in my collection, and I know it'll be making it to the table frequently.
You can get Garden Variety from online or brick-and-mortal retailers.
Click here to see all our tabletop game reviews.
To subscribe to GeekDad's tabletop gaming coverage, please copy this link and add it to your RSS reader.
Disclosure: GeekDad received a copy of this game for review purposes.
Liked it? Take a second to support GeekDad and GeekMom on Patreon!