Last year we wrote about the absolutely fantastic Vicious Gardens board game from Pops & Bejou Games. Well, now we’re back having played the fantastic, small-box expansion Cruel Summers & Noxious Weeds and… contrary to what the menacing names might infer, we’ve got some good news.
Before we start, if you’ve managed to find yourself here without actually knowing anything about Vicious Gardens then you should definitely read our review of it from last year. In it we stated how perfectly balanced the rules felt, but also stressed that it looks amazing: “Vicious Gardens is absolutely beautiful, all of the artwork and iconography is fantastic — even the manual is constructed to imitate an almanac. I love the clever use of fonts and the puns that populate every pocket of (non-instructional) text. The manual appears daunting as a six page document, but barely a page of that is instructions, and it’s incredibly carefully written and constructed. I can’t begin to state how refreshing it is to have a clear manual in a board game”
Now, with the core game covered, let’s talk about the Cruel Summers & Noxious Weeds expansions and what they add to Vicious Gardens.
Cruel Summers is especially topical considering the dreadful weather that the UK has had in 2026: It’s all about drought, adding 18 Sunflower cards as well as a board that lays next to the main play area when the expansion is in play. The Sunflower cards are shuffled into the plant deck and, when they are drawn, result in the Sunflower Token sliding down the Cruel Summers board. These cards, however, aren’t played as soon as they’re drawn, instead players can stockpile them and play them to the compost heap whenever they wish.
Once five of the Sunflowers have been played the game enters the drought phase, which affects all players. The player who triggered the drought then takes any active plot on the board and brings the cards into their hand, likely filling their hand, then others around the board do the same. A second phase then occurs wherein each player retires one of their Pollinators or Pestilences from the board. Only after this does the drought tracker reset, however there are enough sunflowers for three droughts in one game.
This is an incredibly tactical way to remove modifiers from the board, at the expensive of having players clear plots.
The second expansion inside the box is Noxious Weeds, which adds 15 new cards to the plant pile. These are plain ol’ negative cards and can be laid on any player’s plot, with each counting as a negative point at the end of the season. However, if a gardener does manage to collect seven of those into one plot then they can harvest them all to claim a victory card, exchanging a potential -7 score for a +8. A very bold strategy, but one that people will surely talk about for quite a while afterwards.
Both of these expansions are massive game changers and pollute the Plants pile with new mechanics. When my group previously played through Vicious Gardens we largely avoided the specialist pile – this, however, works as great encouragement for players to explore both of the major decks when playing.
Vicious Gardens: Cruel Summers & Noxious Weeds is available now, including from Amazon.
