I’ve been running this blog since January 2021, and in that time I’ve published over 200 reviews, which is kind of mind-boggling to me. One thing I’m not very good at, however, is keeping an index of all the games I’ve already reviewed. Sometimes I’ll sit down to write a review for a game I just played, only to realize I’ve already written one two years ago. Today was the opposite problem. My wife and I played a game of Hardback last night because our kids went to bed with no fuss for once, and we actually had the mental capacity to play a game together. So we pulled out one of our favorite games, Hardback. Afterwards, I went digging through my blog archives to see if my thoughts on the game had changed over the years, only to discover that I haven’t actually reviewed Hardback before. So let’s give it a go, shall we?

Hardback is a deck-building word game designed by Jeff Beck and Tim Fowers, and was published by Fowers Games in 2018. Perhaps it’s considered to be a spiritual successor to Paperback, Hardback uses the same deck-building word game core, but the mechanical changes to the way you acquire cards and how those cards work together change how the game feels in a pretty dramatic way, despite sharing the same categories on the BGG pages.

Right off the bat, I’ll say that if you own Paperback, I don’t think Hardback replaces it. They’re different enough word games that both can happily exist in the same collection.

Hardback begins with everyone having the same deck of eight cards plus two unique cards specific to their player. On your turn, you draw five cards and use them to make a word. If you need a wild letter, you can turn any card face down and use it as a wildcard, but of course you don’t get any of the benefits that card would bestow upon you if it’s face down. After you’ve assembled a word, you count up all the points and money it provides, track your score accordingly along the bookshelf track, and then purchase card(s) from the market. The card market is simply a display of seven cards drawn from a massive deck. The cards in the market come from one of four genres, and each genre pushes your strategy in a different direction or provides effects unique to that genre.

Any cards you buy go into your discard pile. All the letters you used for your word, along with any unused cards from your hand, also go to the discard pile. Then you draw a new hand of five cards. If you run out of cards, you reshuffle your discard pile and keep going until someone reaches 60 points. Once all players have had the same number of turns, the player with the most points wins. Pretty simple right?

One mechanic I haven’t touched on yet is the ink system. During the card buying phase of your turn, you can spend one cent to purchase an ink token. Then, during a future turn, while you’re trying to build a word, you can choose to ink a card. To do this, you draw a card from the top of your deck and place an ink token on it. Now that inked letter must be used in your word. You can’t turn it face down as a wildcard; you have to use the letter exactly as it appears. This push-your-luck element is wonderful, as truly bold players can ink four or five letters and attempt some ridiculous nine-letter monstrosity for a massive payoff. Longer words are generally more beneficial anyway because you’re more likely to trigger genre bonuses.

On the subject of the genres I mentioned earlier. There are four of them, and each has effects unique to that genre. Many genre cards also have layered benefits. All cards have an effect that activates when you play them, but many genre cards have a secondary ability that only activates if you have another card of the same genre in the same word. Anyone who’s played Star Realms will immediately recognize this system. It encourages you to focus on one or two genres because triggering those genre bonuses are the way to unlock to full potential of each of your cards.

The genres themselves are all quite distinct. Horror primarily focuses on gaining remover tokens, which let you remove ink from cards you’ve previously inked, giving you more flexibility in how aggressively you use that system. Romance revolves around removing cards from your hand and deck for small benefits, but the real hidden strength of Romance is how absurdly thin you can make your deck. I’ve had games where my Romance deck was only five or six cards, meaning I was playing the same hyper-efficent word every round.

The Mystery genre has two primary benefits. First, it allows you to jail cards from the market row, reserving them for later purchase or denying them to opponents. Since you can only jail one card at a time, it’s not especially useful for hate-drafting. The real power of Mystery is that it can reveal the face-down wild cards in your word, so you can reap the reward from the card without really using that letter in your word. This allows you to use those difficult letters much more frequently, provided you can place them adjacent to the Mystery card. Finally, Adventure is straightforward. Adventure mostly focuses on generating points and money.

There’s a lot to love about Hardback. The ink system lets you push your luck while mitigating some truly awful draws. No one likes drawing a hand that’s mostly basic cards when you know your deck is full of good letters and powerful effects. Likewise, if you’ve built a deck around a particular genre and only draw one of those genre cards taking a chance on an ink draw can be incredibly satisfying, especially when the card you’re digging for comes up. Drawing that second genre card and suddenly unlocking the full power of your cards feels wonderful.

I also love the flexibility of being able to turn cards upside down and use them as wildcards. Having that option makes me far more willing to buy awkward letters like C, X, or Q because I don’t need the perfect follow-up draw to make them useful. Sometimes those difficult letters give you better benefits than than three basic cards combined, so it’s still a win if you only use that letter with 3 face down cards. Using all your weak starter cards as face-down wilds while still benefiting from the powerful card you’ve added to your deck is a pretty great way to keep those starter cards at least somewhat useful as you approach the endgame.

I also appreciate how distinct the genres feel and how mixing and matching them changes the experience from game to game. Some games I’ve leaned heavily into Mystery, using all my powerful letters as wildcards and building around revealing them later. Other games have gone in completely different directions like mixing horror and adventure for some huge letter words with bombastic point totals at the end.

The game we played last night saw me focusing almost entirely on Adventure. It wasn’t flashy, it was simply a high-scoring point engine. I also got fairly lucky with my draws, consistently pulling my Adventure cards together at the right times. My wife, on the other hand, had some back luck and got stuck trying to unlock her engine that never quite got it going before the game ended.

This is noteworthy because after 23 plays, I have never beaten my wife at Hardback. Except for last night.

Let this be a lesson to everyone. No one beats me 24 times in a row at Hardback. NO ONE!

*ahem* I’ve gotten off topic.

I will say that the card market can be annoyingly fiddly. If four cards share the same genre or four cards cost six cents or more, players have the option to wipe the market and have it be refilled. It’s not a huge issue, but I find it annoying to have to sweep all the cards and deal out 7 more every other round. It interrupts the flow of the game just enough to be mildly annoying.

The market can also occasionally stagnate. If the conditions to refresh it aren’t met and nobody really wants the available cards, then the market can just sit there for several turns. That’s mildly frustrating, but thankfully it’s rare. Either the condition to wipe the market will pop up, or if players have stopped buying cards, it’s because the game is approaching its conclusion anyway. Adding new cards to a deck in the last two or three rounds probably won’t matter much, but it still feels bad to have seven cents available and not want a single card that’s on offer.

Earlier I said that Paperback and Hardback can happily coexist in the same collection, and I genuinely mean that. Whenever I compare the two, I inevitably arrive at the question of trying to figure out which is better or which one I prefer more. The problem is that I don’t actually have an answer. They’re different games that do different things, and both are enjoyable.

I think Hardback offers more strategic variety. The genre system encourages specialization, and the ink system gives players far more flexibility. Being able to use any card as a wildcard makes most turn feel viable, even if you draw a C, X, V, and T. Paperback, meanwhile, has a much more defined arc to the game. You’re gradually improving your deck, climbing the card row, and deciding when to stop buying letters and start investing in the permanent wildcards which clog up your deck. Knowing when to make that pivot is a genuine skill.

In Hardback, you don’t worry about that nearly as much. Instead, the challenge becomes recognizing when money has stopped mattering. Early in the game, money generation is important. By the middle of the game, though, you often don’t need more money-producing cards. You need points, and you need ways to consistently score them.

So in the end, I don’t think one game is better than the other. Both succeed at being excellent word games, but they achieve that goal in different ways. Paperback offers a more traditional deck-building progression, while Hardback provides greater flexibility and more room for strategic experimentation. Both have earned a permanent place in my collection, and which one I would rather play on a given night mostly comes down to my mood.

Though if I can recreate whatever happened last night and actually beat my wife at Hardback for a second time, maybe I’ll be reaching for Hardback a little more often.