Paperback (Fowers Games)

When I was in high school and parts of college, my go to game was Scrabble. It's nerdy, I know, but I always enjoyed the word game, seeing how many two-letter words I could make, and trying to get a new high score. Anything over 400 was considered a success, and one time I broke 500. It was this game that sparked my love of word games and that eventually led me to the game Paperback. Paperback is described as a novel deckbuilding game (very punny) for 2-5 players ages 8+. It retails for $33-$35 and takes approximately 45 minutes to play. In this game, you are a novelist trying to complete paperback novels for Fame. The person with the most Fame at the end of the game wins. Let's set up the game for two players.

Setup
1. Give each player their starting deck of ten cards (1 cent Letters of R, S, T, L. N and five Wild 2-cents Fame cards).
2. Set up the Fame card piles, dividing them by their monetary value (four 5 cents cards, four 8 cents cards, two 11 cents, cards, and one 17 cents card).
3. Shuffle the Common Cards and deal out four. Then, splay them out face-up on top of the Length Track.
4. Finally, sort the Letter and Two-Letter cards into piles by price (2 cents through 10 cents), making sure to combine the 8, 9, and 10 cents cards. Shuffle each of the seven piles and place them face-up in the center of the table to form The Offer. Take the top card off each pile and place it below its respective pile (except for the 2 cents pile) to form the Alternate cards.

Game Play - A turn consists of the following
1. Draw cards - Draw five cards from your starting deck.
2. Create a word - Form a word (no proper nouns, names, or places) using any combination of the five cards in your hand and the topmost Common Card. (Notes: You do not take the Common Card, it is just there to help you form words.)
3. Check the word length - Count the number of letters in your word. If the word is equal to or longer than the highest number on the Length Track, you get to claim the Common Card and make it part of your deck.
4. Resolve any abilities - Some letters have special abilities on them, like extra points for playing all your cards.
5. Score word - Add up all the scores from letters in your word.
6. Buy cards - Using your score to purchase visible cards in The Offer. (Note: You can buy multiple cards, including Letter, Two-Letter, and Fame cards.) Purchased cards are put in your discard pile and unspent money does not carry over to your next turn.
7. Discard cards - Put all cards from your word and hand, including any cards gained this turn into your discard pile.
8. Draw 5 cards - Draw 5 cards, plus any additional cards granted by abilities in your last word, to form your next hand. If you run out of cards to draw, shuffle your discard pile and draw up to your hand limit.

Play then continues to the next player in clockwise order.

The game ends when any two Fame piles are emptied or there are no more Common Cards in the Length Track. The winner is the one with the most Fame points on the cards in their deck. If there is a tie, the player with the most Common Cards is the winner.

Review
If you are like me and love word games, then you'll want this game in your collection. It's has a clever theme and the art and color scheme are vibrant to make it stand out on the table. There is also a lot of replay value with the different cards you can build into your deck, and a lot of variability with the different expansions and modes you can play. For example, there are several player powers that grant each player a unique ability and there are theme cards that give you a goal to shoot for when forming words. There are also little cubes included in the game which you can use to award players who help you form a word from your cards or as discount tokens if people don't buy cards from The Offer. There's also even a cooperative mode where all the players work together to buy all the Fame Cards before it gets five cubes on it. Be sure to check out other games by Tim Fowers - Burgle Bros. and Fugitive as well as the "successor" to this game Word Domination. It is a combination of word game and Risk and is currently on Kickstarter.

This game was provided to me for free by Fowers Games in exchange for an honest review. If you found this review helpful, please click here and hit Yes!

Codenames (Czech Games Edition)

There were a lot of amazing games released in 2015. Perhaps none surprised the gaming world more than the release of Codenames. Codenames is a party game that I would describe as Password meets the CIA. It retails for $20 and can be played by as few as two players, but is best played with four or more. My setup and review for this game will assume that you are playing with at least four players (a standard game).

Components
17 - Agent Cards (8 Blue, 8 Red, 1 Double-Sided)
7 - Innocent Bystander Cards
1 - Assassin Card
40 - Key Cards
200 - Codename Cards (Double-Sided so 400 words total)

Setup
Begin by dividing the four players into teams that are as close as possible in terms of size and skill. For each team, pick a color (Blue or Red) and a Spymaster (person who will be giving the clues), and have both Spymasters sit on the same side of the table. Deal out 25 Codename Cards in a 5 x 5 grid. Have a Spymaster draw a Key Card. The color surrounding the Key Card determines the first player. Each Spymaster receives their 8 Agent Cards and the first player receives the double-sided Agent Card flipped to their color.

Gameplay
Gameplay is simple. Each turn a Spymaster looks at the the 5 x 5 grid and gives a one word clue followed by a number. The number represents the number of words on the grid that the Spymaster believes relates to his clue. The Spymaster can give no other words, expressions, or body language to guide his teammate to guessing the correct word(s). For every word guessed correctly, the Spymaster takes one of his Agent Cards and places it over the correctly guessed word. You may always guess up to the number the Spymaster gave plus one, so if the number given was two, you may guess three, but you don't have to and could instead opt to only guess one or two. An incorrect guess has three results, which all result in ending your turn or losing the game. 1. If the other team's word is guessed, that team gets to place their Agent Card over the word and turn ends. 2. There are seven words denoted by a tan color on the Key Card that belong to no one. If you guess one of those, your turn ends and an Innocent Bystander Card is placed over that word. 3. If you guess the word denoted by a black color on the Key Card, you automatically lose, because you found the Assassin.

If my explanation wasn't clear, I defer you to the video by Rodney Smith of Watch It Played who gets paid to clearly explain games:



Final Thoughts
To put it mildly, I LOVE this game! It is such a simple concept of giving a one word clue to make your opponent guess other words, but you have to be careful that your clue doesn't match words that aren't yours or you'll quick find your turn over or worse, the game over. What's more is the components are brilliantly made. The box comes with 40 Key Cards and you might think that means you only have 40 grid arrangements. WRONG! Since the grid is a square, you can orient each card four different ways, meaning you have 160 grid arrangements. There are 200 Codename Cards, but each are double-sided. That means no two grids will have the same 25 words arranged in exactly the same way. It also means that playing back-to-back games is simple, because instead of replacing all 25 Codename Cards in the grid, you simply flip them over, and you have a new layout. It is no wonder this game has rocketed to the #1 spot among party games. It's easy to learn, fun to play, and competitively addictive. The makers of this game could easily release an expansion with more Codename Cards and people would buy them in a heartbeat. However, they instead are choosing to release a game called Codenames Pictures, which will get people thinking with a different part of their brain, and I for one can't wait for it to be released.

If you found this review helpful, please click here and hit Yes!