How to play Pinch & Plate

What a deckbuilding card game is

In a deckbuilding game you start with a small, plain deck of cards and improve it as you play. Between rounds you add better cards, upgrade some and remove the weak ones, so the deck you draw from late in the game is very different from the one you began with. Each attempt is called a run: it goes on until you fail a goal, and the next run starts fresh.

The skill is in two places. In each round, you choose the best play from the cards you happened to draw. Between rounds, you shape the deck so that good hands come more often. A deck with fewer, stronger cards usually beats a big one full of average cards.

Playing Pinch & Plate on AllFun

AllFun Pinch & Plate is a cooking card game built on that idea. The deck is your pantry: 39 kinds of drawn ingredients, such as fish, noodles, basil and honey. Every card scores on five tastes, sweet, salty, sour, spicy and savoury, and every guest who sits down wants a particular balance of them, shown as an outline on a pentagon chart.

Your first restaurant is the Corner Bistro. Lasting longer in a run opens Night Wok, Sugar Loft and Spice Bazaar, and finding 12 pairings opens Harbour Shack. Find more games like it on our puzzle games page.

The rules

• The counter: seven ingredients are in your hand. A plate takes two to five of them, their tastes are added together, and the chart draws your plate in gold over the guest's outline.
• Scoring: the points are the cards' flavour multiplied by Delight. An exact match, a Golden Pinch, gives six times; one step off gives four, and it keeps falling.
• Toss: three times a day you can set aside the plate and draw fresh ingredients.
• The day's goal: the day's plates together must reach a target that grows each day. Fall short once and the run is over.
• Guests: days 1 to 3 bring three, days 4 to 6 bring four, and from day 7 there are five.
• Rush hour: on days 4, 8, 12 and so on, the last guest is a VIP with a rule of their own, and that plate scores double.

Pairings and the market

Certain ingredients belong together, and plating them side by side multiplies the score. Fifty such pairings are hidden in the game, and once found they are written into your Recipe Book. After each day you shop at the Market with the coins your plates earned: more ingredients, seasonings that shift one taste, and up to five kitchen tools with rules that raise your scores. The Market also lets you Refine a card or Remove it. Survive twelve days and you earn a Golden Star; after that the run can go on, with targets that rise more steeply.

Six tips for longer runs

1. Aim for the shape, not the size. A modest plate that matches the outline usually beats a pile of strong cards that misses it.
2. Read the chart axis by axis. Find the taste the guest wants most, then fill the smaller ones. Every step off the wish counts the same, too much or too little, on any of the five tastes.
3. Remove before you add. A smaller pantry brings your best ingredients round more often. Taking out a weak card is often worth more than buying a new one.
4. Build around pairings. Once you find a pairing, buy ingredients that complete it, so it turns up often.
5. Pick tools that agree. Tools that pay off for one style of plate multiply each other; five unrelated tools rarely do.
6. Plan for rush hour. Days 4, 8 and 12 bring a doubled plate with a house rule. Keep a toss in hand for it.

Cooking card game FAQ