Heuschrecken Poker

About this board game

Heuschrecken Poker is a 20-minute garden-building and bidding game for 2–4 players. Compete for valuable crops, collect sets, and manage the threat of grasshoppers before they ruin everything.

Each player begins with eight bidding cards: values 1–6, an Ace, and an X. Three cards from the garden deck are revealed, showing corn, strawberries, broccoli, blackberries, or grasshoppers. Everyone secretly chooses a bidding card, then all cards are revealed simultaneously.

The highest bid takes all displayed cards of one type. The next-highest bid chooses a type from what remains, continuing until every eligible player has taken a type. Place plant cards in your personal garden, with grasshoppers at the top. Collect three cards of the same crop to remove them from play and take a point chip.

• Ace: Collects all cards on offer instead of one type.
• X: Collects nothing, unless an Ace was played; then it steals the Ace’s power and collects everything.
• Grasshoppers: Three in your garden force you to remove every card and start again.

Matching bids are ignored. If every bid is ignored, add another garden card to the pot and play again; if another tie occurs, discard all four cards and begin a new turn with three revealed cards.

After eight turns, the player with the most plant cards in their garden takes a point chip. Everyone then returns their bidding cards to hand and begins another turn. Once the garden deck is exhausted, the player with the most point chips wins. In Heuschrecken Poker, every bid can help your garden grow—or leave it vulnerable to a grasshopper takeover.