Las Vegan - First Play!

10th April 2022

Sunday evening is here and we're logged into Board Game Arena for a night of gaming.

'Viva Las Vegan!'
Or
'Millions of cabbages, cabbages for me.'
'Millions of cabbages, cabbages for free.'

Err... wait...? No... that's enough of that!
Las Vegan is a umm.. vegetable-themed trick taking card game?

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Caveat: We've only ever played Las Vegan digitally and not sure if a English language version is even available in hard copy?

What's in a game?

• Cards: Las Vegan comes with 40 cards numbered 0-9 in 4 different vegetables/colours/suits.
• Cabbage machine cards: There are 12 of these double-sized cards which are used for scoring. Each one displays either a numeric value or a set of vegetables. Cabbage cards essentially represent scoring criteria. Thus if a cabbage machine displays the number 3, it means that cards with 3 on them will score. What they score is determined by casino chips, see below for more on casino chips.
  Golden cabbage machine card: Another scoring card displaying scoring options for Min and Max.
• Casino chips: The game features 4 double-sided casino chip tokens that sport a number on each side ranging from -3 to +1, obviously these numbers are skewed towards the negative.
  Golden chip: This chip is golden and is also double-sided, displaying -3/-4 respectively.
  Casino chips are used to determine the scoring on the cabbage cards, i.e., casino chips determine what meeting the scoring criteria will actually end up scoring.
• Cabbages: What is it with cabbages? Not satisfied with cabbage machines, Las Vegan also has cabbage tokens, which are the game's victory point tokens.

There's fairly minimal art throughout Las Vegan. The cards feature illustrations of vegetables on a slot machine reel and the cabbage machine cards show either vegetables or numbers across 3 reels.
Nothing bad but also nothing to write home about.

There's no iconography to speak off, just plain and simple numbers as well as the icons for the 4 types of card.

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How's it play?
Setup

• Cabbage tokens: Give 15 cabbage tokens to each player.
• Cabbage machine cards: Shuffle the cabbage machine cards into a face-down deck and deal 3 face-up into the central playing area, then put out the golden cabbage machine card.
  These are the cards that will be scored in this round.
• Casino chips: Take all 5 casino chip tokens and flip them. The sides that come face-up will be used for scoring in that round.
• Cards: shuffle the cards into a face-down deck and deal all of them face-down to the players.
• First player: Determine a starting player.

On to play
Las Vegan is played over 1-4 rounds, each round follows the typical turn structure for a trick taking game, with the first or active player playing a card and the player to the left the 'following' that play.

• Opening card: Whoever is the first player can play any card from their hand. As you'd expect for a trick taking game, this set the suit for the trick.
• Follow: The next player must 'follow suit' and play a card from the same suit as the starting player if they can, otherwise they can play any card from any other suit.
  This continues until all players have played a card.
• Take trick: Whoever played the highest value card in that turn's suit takes the trick!
  Trump: However, if someone plays a '0' card of a different suit during a trick that will trump the highest value card and win instead.
  Take cards: Whoever won the trick should take all the cards and place them into their own face-down pile as a reminder of how many tricks they've taken. Players cannot look at any of these cards during the remainder of the round.
• Number 7: When a player collects 1 or more '7' value cards after winning a trick, they must place one of the casino chips (For each '7' they took.) on to a cabbage machine card, there are some restrictions here though.
  A casino chip cannot be flipped over to it's reverse side.
  Only 1 casino chip can go on a cabbage machine card and cannot be moved for the remainder of the round.
  The golden casino chip can only go on the golden cabbage machine card and it must be placed on the Min or Max space. None of the other casino chips can go on the golden cabbage machine card.
• Next Trick: The player who won the trick becomes the first player for the next trick.
• End of round: When all players have played their cards, the round is over and several events occur.
  ​Scoring: Each of the 4 cabbage machine cards is scored for all players, depending on the value of the casino chip that was placed on it.
  E.g., If the cabbage machine card with a '5' has a -2 chip on it, that means players lose 2 VPs for each '5' card they've taken during the round. If the card with 3 green vegetables has a +1 on it, it means that every 3 greens scores a VP.
  The golden cabbage card: This works a little differently, the scoring only affects the player who took the least/most tricks - depending on where the golden casino chip was placed and since that coin has a score modifier of -3 or -4, they'll always lose that amount of VPs.
  Got to say; there's nothing golden about that!
  New setup: The three cabbage machine cards are removed from play and 3 new ones are dealt from the cabbage machine card deck, the golden cabbage machine card is used in all rounds.
  All the casino chips are collected and flipped again in preparation for the next round.
  The cards are all collected and shuffled into a face-down deck and dealt out to the players again.
  Whoever took the last trick becomes the start player for the new round.

Endgame
Las Vegan can end in 1 of 2 ways.
If during scoring at the end of any round, any player's cabbage tokens (VPs.) reaches 0 or lower, it ends the game.
The game will also end at the end of the 4th round regardless.
Once the game has ended, players tot up their remaining cabbage tokens.

Points are tallied, highest score wins.

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Overall
The first thing to talk about is the scoring and particularly the casino chips. The values on the chips go from -3 to +1 and obviously skew heavily towards the negative, it's even worse than that though. There are 4 double-sided chips and +1s only appear on 2 of the 8 sides (Although in some regard this is quite logical as most numbers only appear twice across the chips.), thus it's skewed both in value and probability.
The golden casino chip is negative on both sides.

All of this means thhat this is a game about how little you lose, minimising your losses and not really how much you accumulate.
Las Vegan appears to be themed ont slot machines and one-arm bandits and maybe this is part of that theme; 'The house always wins?'
Even so, it all seems negative and doesn't feel like fun.

Despite my reservations about the scoring, the casino chip mechanic itself is pretty interesting.
When a player gets the opportunity to deploy a chip, they'll want to try and remember what cards they and the other players have taken. E.g., if the '3' cabbage machine card is in play and a player knows an opponent has taken several 3's, they may want to put a big negative on that card to hit them. Conversely, a player may try and use a +1 if they've collected 3s this round.
This is also affected by when 7s appear. The earlier that 7s appear, the more of a gamble it is using the casino chips, if they appear later, it's a lot easier to predict scoring. It's also that chips might appear right at the start or end of a round, or several may appear in single trick.
Players will need to calculate and adapt when using the casino chip, remembering plays opponents make made will be helpful too.

There's not too much to say about the mechanics for the actual game, which are very straightforward and about as basic as a trick taking game can get - and that's not a bad thing, it makes the game accessible and easy to learn, as well as playing fairly quickly . Las Vegan could be a good filler or finisher for the day.
Having said that, the scoring mechanics feel a little clunky, counterintuitive and unnecessarily fiddly.
The game's depth comes from strategies that will emerge once casino chips are starting to get played on cabbage machine cards and then players will look to how they can manipulate or win or lose tricks to optimise their scores.

For me; I found the game's simplicity a little unengaging, a little too run-of-the-mill while the depth the scoring brought to the table (sic) did not add enough to make me want to play more. The negative scoring also left me feeling frustrating.
Not a game for me.