I’ve said before that I am not a solo gamer. Playing board games by myself was something I did as a wee lad living in a small village in northern Manitoba where there was no one around who wanted to play games with me. Since then, I have grown up, moved to a place where there is more than one street, and vetted a pretty fantastic friend group with whom I regularly play board games. Needless to say, I’ve never felt the need or draw to explore the world of single player board games.
Cue the pandemic. The world shut down, and so did in-person gaming. Although my group quickly adopted Tabletop Simulator so we did not have to survive the pandemic without ANY board games, it just hasn’t been the same. I’ve missed the tactile experience of moving meeples, placing game tiles, and holding a hand of cards. To fill this aching need in my soul, I decided to explore the solo modes in the games that I already own, and to my amazement, I kind of liked some of them.
After I wrote about Paperback and posted it on my Twitter, designer Tim Fowers reached out to me and offered to give me a preview of his latest game, a fully solo experience called Paperback Adventures. I leapt at the chance.
Adventuring Basics
I’ve already written aboutPaperback at length, and if you know how the word building in that game works, you’re already halfway through learning how to play Paperback Adventures. The other half of the rule load comes from understanding how manage the AI enemy and the round structure, but I’m getting a little ahead of myself.
In Paperback Adventures you begin by choosing one of two asymmetric characters; the rogue Damsel, or the robot, Ex Machina. Each character has their own starting deck of 10 cards, plus a deck of 50 cards, some of which that may make their way into your deck over the course of the game. Each character has 3 sets of 2 core items. These items change how you interact with the ‘boons’ that you accumulate on yourself, and the ‘hexes’ you’ll inflict on your opponent. Each set of these core items will drastically change how to approach each combat and any future upgrades you may get. In addition, each character starts with 2 items unique to them that offers even more options during a combat, and one wild letter card that is essential when it comes to making words.
Once you have your deck and all your items, it’s time to embark on your adventure. Paperback Adventures is broken up into 3 books. Each book features 2 regular enemies and 1 boss that must be overcome. Each enemy you face will provide you with a vowel card that can be used in each of your words. On each of your turns, you’ll draw 4 cards and decide what word you want to make out of the letters the deck has decided to give you, including the wild card and the vowel the enemy is providing if you wish. Each of your letter cards has symbols along the left and right edges, these symbols provide attack, blocks, and mana (which is needed to use your items). In addition to all that, every card has an ability that can be triggered if the letter is the top card of the word.
Top card of the word? What does that even mean? Well, when you decide on what word you want to play, you also need to decide if you’re going to ‘splay’ your cards left or right (splaying is laying your letter cards in a line, showing only the left or right half of each card). Once you’ve splayed, the one card that doesn’t have anything covering it will trigger it’s ability. Then, you’ll count up all the symbols on the left or right sides of your letters, apply any hits you’ve accumulated, then perform the enemy’s action which varies depending on the enemy you’re facing. Assuming that neither of you have died after trading blows, your top letter card (the card which power you activated) moves into a ‘fatigue’ pile, and the rest of your cards go into the discard (except for your wild and the vowel provided by the enemy, those are available to you every turn). You advance the enemy action marker (so you don’t lose track of what they’ll do on the next round), then draw a new hand of 4 cards. As per expected deck building rules, if you need to draw a card, but can’t, shuffle your discard and keep going.
Once you knock the enemy’s health down to 0, they become stunned for the rest of that turn. You flip over their card, reset their health to it’s new value, and prepare for the second half of the battle. The enemy will now have different or stronger abilities for the rest of the combat. Assuming you’re able to overcome the challenge presented by the enemies second side, you’ll be rewarded with riches beyond your imagination. Just kidding, but you do get some rewards for surviving each encounter.
After each encounter you’ll draw a card from a basic rewards deck that will offer some bonuses. Perhaps you’ll be offered new letter cards from your character’s deck that you can use to replace existing ones in your deck (hopefully stumbling upon a wonderful synergy that you’ll be able to exploit to crush the upcoming enemies). You may upgrade cards that are already in your deck (more on this in a minute), obtain new items, find macguffins that offer you special abilities, and perhaps take some penalty cards that feature hard to play letters, no attack or block symbols, and often some drawback for not playing them in a word on the turn that you draw it.
After you’ve reaped the fruits of your combat, you set up the next enemy, steel yourself for the challenges ahead, and press on.
Review – How this game made me feel
I have not had a run where I’ve beaten all 3 books in a row yet. Only once I got as far as the boss in Book 2’s. Too many penalty cards and inopportune card draws sank my character. Paperback Adventures is a “roguelike” game; you always start from the same static and weak position. As you play the game, you gain random benefits and just might come across an incredible combo that breaks the game apart, while on your very next play of the game you’ll find yourself begging for mercy in the first encounter due to some terribly unlucky circumstances. The randomness is what makes a game like this so addicting. When you finally do win, you feel vindicated; powerful; unstoppable.
Paperback Adventures utilizes randomness in a satisfying way. By placing you into a situation with your hand of cards and perfect knowledge of what your enemy is going to do, it’s entirely up to you to decide how you want to tackle the challenge. You’ll weigh the costs and benefits of attacking vs blocking, and decide if you’re willing to take the 3 damage now in exchange for a big hit on the enemy, or if you should just bide your time, hoping your next hand will bring you the cards you need to bring home the victory.
It’s important to note that you can’t stay defensive forever, or even for very long. Because you have to fatigue a card out of your deck every turn, every encounter is on a timer. After half a dozen turns your deck is down to just 4 cards, which means you’re drawing your entire deck for your hand! The knowledge that each turn from that moment on will be drastically weaker propels you forward, encouraging haste as you to take a hit on the chin to frantically lunge for the kill before your deck becomes too weak.
I found the AI opponent and game system as a whole very easy to maintain. The round to round upkeep was quick, simple, and got me back to making interesting decisions quickly, rather than bogging me down with upkeep and game maintenance. The decisions that went into this design were obviously careful and deliberate. Tim Fowers has crafted an experience that is satisfying and sticks in my head like a catchy tune so I’m musing about it during the moments where I’m not playing this game.
A really neat feature that Fowers used for this design is the use of card sleeves to facilitate upgrades to the cards. Each card in your deck comes sleeved. When one of the letters in your deck gets upgraded, you take the card out of your deck and flip it around, showing off the upgraded abilities on the back, and place it back in its sleeve. Each card has a note on the bottom of the card telling you what the upgraded ability will be, so you don’t need to pull all the cards out of their sleeves to decide which one you’ll want to use. I have only played this game on Tabletop Simulator, so I cannot attest to the physical quality of the experience, but I do applaud Fowers for his creative genius when it comes to innovative design.
Final Thoughts
I really like Paperback Adventures. Were I younger, I’d say I “like like” Paperback Adventures. It’s the kind of game that lived rent free in my mind for days following my first couple plays, which is always a good sign. It’s challenging, entertaining, and it utilizes a theme that I truly enjoy. Having said all of that, I admit that I am biased. I love deck builders, I love word games, and I really enjoy Tim Fowers’ designs. For people who share my tastes, this is an excellent design.
All in all, I really enjoyed my plays of Paperback Adventures. Playing through the entire 3 book campaign in one sitting may be a tall order, as each book takes between 60 and 90 minutes. It’s easy to ‘save’ your progress after a combat and jump back in when you have more time. I’m absolutely looking forward to getting my hands on a physical copy and really diving into the adventure, probably dragging my friends into it with me, playing cooperatively. When I tell my friends about this game, I don’t say “It’s pretty good for a solo game”, as if it’s simply understood that solo games are somehow inherently inferior. I tell them that Paperback Adventures is an excellent game.
Bullet♥︎ exploded into into my life from seemingly nowhere and consumed my soul for nearly 3 weeks. I was drawn in by the promise of fast paced shoot-em-up (SHMUP) action and a gorgeous anime aesthetic. What I got instead was a compelling puzzle game where the player manipulates sliding discs to match patterns while learning how to best use each heroine’s abilities to defeat the multitude of bosses.
Adelheid, one of the eight playable heroines
Bullet♥︎ is a game that offers numerous play modes. You can play the head-to-head mode, which is designed for multiple players to battle to the death; the score attack mode that lets players see how long they can survive when their neighbours aren’t trying to kill them; or you can explore the co-op/solo option, the boss battle mode. Bullet♥︎ is designed so that players learn the head-to-head mode rules first, as that forms the foundation for the rest of the play styles.Bullet♥︎’s head-to-head mode begins with a real-time 3 minute timer dictating when a round ends. During each round players put a certain number of discs (called bullets) into their own bags and start the timer. As soon as the timer starts ticking, they’re free to furiously pull bullets out of their bags, one at a time, and place them on their board (players’ boards are referred to as their ‘sight’) according to the colour and number depicted on the bullet.
Each bullet colour has its own lane, and the number on the disc tells you how many spaces down your board the bullet must be placed, skipping over any spots that already have a bullet occupying them. Players can be as quick or slow as they want when pulling bullets out of their bag, and can spend energy freely to use their heroine’s skills to manipulate the bullets that are already in their sight. The goal is to utilize pattern cards to remove bullets from their board and send them off to an opponent. However, if the timer runs out and they still have bullets remaining in their bag, the bullets must be drawn and placed in the sight with no opportunity to manipulate or clear them. If a bullet ever hits the bottom row of the sight, the player loses 1 hit point, and if they run out of hit points, they’re out of the game.
Three of Mariel’s patterns. Each character has up to 10 different patterns.
At the end of a round, every bullet players have managed to clear from their sights gets put into the bag of the player to their left. As as the rounds proceed, more and more bullets get added to everyone’s bag from the supply. The game continues until there is only one player left standing. While this is supposed to feel like a victory, proving your superiority over your friends, in reality it feels like the winner is just the person who was able to tread water the longest. The head-to-head mode helped me to learn the fundamental rules of Bullet♥︎, but I’ve spend the vast majority of my time with this game in the solo or co-op mode, the boss battle!
The Intensity track adds bullets to every players bag at the start of each round
Every character in Bullet♥︎ has a boss mode that presents you with a wildly different challenge to overcome. The boss battle mode plays very similarly to the head-to-head mode, except all of the bullets coming into your bag are dictated by the current level of the boss, and how far you’ve broken down their shields. As you continue to send bullets and break the boss’ shields, the number of bullets that will get added to your bag each turn usually increases.
In addition to the multitude of bullets that you have to deal with, the boss has a pattern of their own that you must match in the end of the round, or suffer their penalty. In the case of Adelheid, your bullets are turned upside-down, which can make them difficult to use in your patterns. If you happen to break one of Adelheid’s shields while you have face-down bullets, the face-down bullets will automatically hit you.
Adelheid, how could you turn against us? We trusted you!
Each character and boss is wildly asymmetric in nature, to a degree that I didn’t think was possible when I first learned the Bullet♥︎ system. Playing different characters can feel like an entirely different game because the ways they interact with their boards is so diverse. To compound on that, every boss presents you with a fully different challenge, which drastically increases the replayability. Some bosses are a cakewalk to defeat when using a specific character, but feel completely insurmountable when using the other characters. It’s incredibly fun to explore each of the characters and change your strategies depending how they play off each of the bosses.
The boss battle mode does away with the real time aspect. This allows you to slow down and puzzle out exactly how you want to approach each wave of bullets as they enter your sight. I understand why you wouldn’t want to use a timer during this mode, considering the additional cognitive load of running the AI and ensuring that you’re not going to trigger an effect that will deal 4 damage to you in a single move. However, it does remove the action-packed, fasted paced nature the game promised to emulate.
I love Bullet♥︎, and whole-heartedly recommend playing it. I’ll be the first to admit my biases; I love the anime asthetic, I’m an avid gamer (even if SHMUPs aren’t my genre of choice), and I love puzzle games. Bullet♥︎ checks each one of those boxes. The publisher, Level 99 Games, has also released a soundtrack of 3 minute long character themes that you can listen to via Spotify while you play the game, which is a wonderful addition to the experience.
One of the major downsides of me playing Bullet♥︎ 40+ times over the last month is that when I return to in-person gaming and I introduce my friends to this game, I’m sure I’ll wipe the floor with them. There isn’t anything to assist new players against veterans, other than making the veteran use a character they’re unfamiliar with, but who knows if even that will be enough slow me down. I did have some success when introducing this game to a new player by playing 3 co-op rounds of the boss battle mode first, and then moving into the head-to-head battle. This way the other player has SOME familiarity with the system. Still, it’s hard to close the gulf separating our experience levels when I have dozens of plays under my belt.
The entirety of my experience with this game has been via Tabletop Simulator, which also gave me access to Bullet🍊, a 4 character expansion to the game, based off Orange_Juice games (Sora, Flying Red Barrel,SUGURI, and QP Shooting – Dangerous!!). This expansion adds even more asymmetric heroines and bosses to face off against, further expanding the matrix of play options available, and offering even more different ways to interact with this system.
While it does feel weird to recommend a physical product while having never put my own hands on it, the digital implementation allowed me to fall in love with the challenge presented within the box. As soon as this game lands in my FLGS, I know I’ll be picking it up.
3 – That Which Points was a tough nut to crack. Oh my elation when I finally knocked her ass to the curb
All above images ofBullet♥︎are screenshots of the Tabletop Simulator mod.
Welcome to part two in my Top 100 games series, going through the next 10 games in my list! I’ll be the first to admit that when it comes time to pick a game, the games listed here aren’t necessarily at the forefront of my mind (almost as if there were at least 80 other games ahead of them), but I can tell you that if any of these games get suggested, I am down to play and know that I’ll have a great time doing so.
90 – Colt Express
Colt Express designed by Christophe Raimbault is a hand management, action programming game about being the best thief amongst a colourful cast of scoundrels. In Colt Express everyone plays cards one at a time that represent the actions they will perform and the order they will be performed. Each round is dictated by a round-card that tells all players how many actions can be queued up, and whether those actions are public or secret. If the actions are public, the card is placed face-up, while secret actions are denoted by face-down cards.
Your goal is to accrue the most wealth by scooping it up from the floor, shooting your opponents, and swinging fists in hopes to make people drop their hastily gathered loot. Other actions include shooting at your opponents (or getting shot by stray bullets), leaping up and down the train cars, and controlling the Marshall, who also shoots at anyone who gets too close.
What makes Colt Express fun is the chaos that ensues from needing to pre-plan and program all of your moves for the round, then having something unexpected throw all of your hopes and desires out the damn window. The whole table hoots with laughter they watch characters bumble about the train. You will hold your head in your hands with disbelief as your character moves unexpectedly to an empty train car, then punches the air, tries to pick up loot that isn’t there, and finally shoots their gun at nothing.
Broom Service by Andreas Pelikan and Alexander Pfister is a pick up and deliver game about witches delivering potions. In Broom Service, everyone has a handful of cards that dictate the actions that are available to them. Each card has a stronger “Brave” action and a weaker “Cowardly” action. The actions on a card are usually very similar, but the brave action is much stronger.
So why would anyone ever choose the cowardly action? Excellent question reader! At the beginning of a round, each player picks 4 of their 10 cards and that forms their ‘hand’. The first player will play one of their action cards and choose to play either the “Brave” or “Cowardly” action. Then, every other player in turn order will either pass, or play the same action card from their hand and also choose to play the “Brave” or “Cowardly” action. Anyone who chooses the cowardly action can simply perform that weaker action. Any players who chose to be brave need to wait until everyone has had a chance to play or pass. If any subsequent players choose to be brave, then all previous brave players don’t get to do anything for this action!
The tension of desiring to do the brave action, but fearing the following players snatching it away from you is genius. I love the theme of witches trying to deliver their potions around the world, and the art evokes memories of classic fairytale story books.
88 – Seasons
I’ve often tried to sell Seasons to my friends as a light version of Magic: The Gathering. In Seasons you play as sorcerers competing in the legendary tournament of 12 seasons with the winner being crowned archmage of the kingdom of Xidit. The game begins with a draft phase, where you swap hands with your opponent picking a card to keep and passing the rest until you have 9 cards in your hand. You then must separate those 9 cards into 3 stacks of 3. You’ll draw these cards into your hand at the start of each year.
On every turn, the die that correspond with the current season are rolled and each player gets to take one into their play area, gaining the benefits shown on the face. The remaining die progresses the time track forward, perhaps hurtling you into a new season.
I’ll be upfront; while I’ve played this game 16 times, every single play has been on Board Game Arena. The system takes care of all the bookkeeping like tracking your energy intake, your tableau limits, and your crystal counts. I could see how playing this game on the table would be a little onerous, but damn is this game worth playing, and worth playing repeatedly. The art is cute and charming, and players are constantly forced to make decisions on how best to play their cards. Each season has their own set of dice that dictate the types and amount of resources that will be available to players. for example, If the game is currently in the summer season, water energy may be in short supply, but fire will be plentiful. Of course, there are ways to mitigate the luck and restrictions, but they are not without their own penalties.
Seasons is best played with 2 players, and only gets better and better as you and your opponent reply it, learning how best to manipulate the system to amass the most crystals, and claim your crown as Archduke.
87 – Underwater Cities
Underwater Cities by Vladimir Suchy takes players into the depths of the ocean and tasks them with creating the best underwater metropolis possible. Kind of. The theme here has a tendency to melt away as your brain spins, trying to maximize your actions to maximize your productions and end game victory points.
UnderwaterCities utilizes a unique worker placement system that uses cards from the players hands. On your turn you can take any of the open colour-coded actions along the edge of the game board. At the same time you play a card from your hand. If the colour of the action and the card match, you can do both actions. If they don’t, you only get to do the action on the board.
This game is an exercise in loss aversion. I’ve found myself delaying taking a critical action simply because I didn’t have a properly coloured card to play along side it and refused to do something that felt inefficient. Underwater Cities also has an excellent arc to its gameplay, with the first few rounds making players feel starved for resources, then growing their engines until suddenly you find yourself placing several costly building on a single turn.
I recall when this game was released a few people compared it to extremely highly rated (by other people) Terraforming Mars. Personally, I don’t see the comparison, Underwater Cities is much more complex (and the better game in my opinion), but the games play significantly differently and don’t evoke the same feelings in players.
Underwater Cities is available to play on Yucata.de
86 – Calico
Calico by Kevin Russ is a tile placement game about matching patterns and colours to satisfy the whims and desires of cats. Each player takes turns placing a tile from their hand, then pulling one from an offer. Each player has their own board with 3 objectives that can be satisfied by patterns, colours, or both. You also get additional points if you can connect three tiles of the same colour you also get a button that’s worth points. Everyone knows kittens love quilts with buttons
Don’t be fooled by Calico’s adorable aesthetic. The actual game contains an intense cerebral workout. You only have two tiles in your hand and 3 in the supply that you can take from to refill your hand after you place one tile. Within these limitations, you’re tasked with trying to place tiles that contain 6 different patterns and 6 different colours in ways that connect like patterns and colours, while also satisfying the objectives on the board which require multiple different sets of colours and patterns. It does not take long before everyone at the table has their head in their hands and the only thing keeping the table from being flipped is the adorable kitten artwork dotting this game.
85 – Automobiles
Automobiles by David Short is one of my favourite racing games (being so far down the list is pretty telling on how I feel about racing games in general (But if you break it down, aren’t all games a race in the end? (No, shut up))).
I’ve written in depth about Automobiles before, so I won’t rehash words I’ve already written. For those who don’t know, Automobiles begins with two trays of cubes. One tray hold white, black, and various shades of grey cubes, representing the various gears of your car, which correspond to spots on the game board. The coloured cubes have special abilities that are set at the beginning of the game when you draw a card for each colour (the game has 4 cards of each colour, offering a wide variety of powers to choose from). From those trays of cubes each player seeds their own bag with a standard set of white and grey cubes, and a chosen selection of coloured cubes. Then they’re off to the races!
There aren’t a lot of bag building games, and theoretically, this could also work as a deck builder; the bag and cubes don’t do anything that cards couldn’t do also. Having the bag of cubes click and clatter as your swish your knuckles around, searching for a cube is satisfying. When you and your opponents are pulling around the final turn and you desperately need a specific cube THAT YOU KNOW YOU HAVE IN THE BAG SOMEWHERE really gets your heart pounding in your chest.
Also, it’s fun to make the vroom noises with your mouth as you move your little car around the track. Automobiles is available to play on Board Game Arena and Yucata.
84 – When I Dream
I love when a party game makes me question if my friends are insane or not. When I Dream by Chris Darsaklis has one player close their eyes and everyone else offer one word clues to try and lead them toward a word as dictated by a card. The guesser gets one guess, then the word card gets moved to either the correct or incorrect pile, then the game presses on with a new word card drawn.
After a couple of minutes the guesser is then asked to recount their dream, trying to name all the elements they can remember. If they’re able to name all the words that were in the ‘correct’ pile, they get a bonus two points.
What makes this game excellent is each of the players also have a role. Some are encouraged to try to get as many words correct as possible, while others are trying to lead the guesser astray. Others yet are trying to achieve a balance between the correct and incorrect cards. The inclusion of asking the guesser to recount their dream is a fun exercise that looks easy until you find yourself in the hot seat and the only word you can remember for the life of you is “spaghetti”.
83 – Evolution
Evolution, designed by Dominic Crapuchettes, Dmitry Knorre and Sergey Machin, is a hand management game about survival of the fittest. In Evolution you are tasked with growing creatures’ populations and body sizes, and assigning traits that will help them not only survive, but thrive.
The gameplay loop begins with a bunch of small herbivores, happily eating from a well stocked feeding hole. As a turn or two passes, the herbivores grow larger and get more efficient at eating. Eventually one creature gets a taste for blood and turns into a carnivore, feasting upon its neighbours. Very quickly defenses are raised; some animals learn to climb, other have defensive herding, and other develop a hard shell.
Evolution Is a brilliant game that has each player double guessing what their neighbours will do. With every creature you control having access to different traits, and some traits working off neighbouring creatures, you can have fun building an impenetrable wall, or you can have fun trying to tear down the other players’ walls. Only the fittest will survive.
82 – Everdell
Everdell is so hot right now. Released in 2018 and with 3 successful Kickstarters funding a myriad of expansions, Everdell has climbed the Boardgamegeek ranking and at the time of writing this, sits as the 31st best board game of all time.
Everdell is a light worker placement tableau building game set in a fantasy forest. As you play your workers and bring cards into your tableau, you’ll slowly start to see an engine form. It’s easy to play, has absolutely gorgeous artwork, and a family friendly andromorphic animal theme. It’s easy enough to play with your family, while maintaining enough complexity to keep adults involved. I don’t really want to use the term “gateway game”, but this gorgeous game is a perfect ambassador to show people how beautiful and interesting board games can be.
I’ve enjoyed my plays of this game a lot, and if the opportunity to play it more arose, I have no doubts that Everdell could climb higher in my rankings. As of this moment, it has settled at #82.
81 – Century: Spice Road
It seems for every game that has new and interesting mechanics, another one is just about trading cubes for other cubes to trade into points. Century: Spice Road is in the latter, but does so in a fast and satisfying way. In Century: Spice Road you take action cards into your hand, then play the cards to manipulate your cubes. Some cards will simply gain you more cubes, others will let you trade in specific recipes, while other others will allow you to upgrade some cubes higher along the value chain. The other action you can take is to sell a specific combination of spice cubes to acquire a point card, which are necessary to win the game.
Century: Spice Road does restrict players to only being able to hold 10 cubes at a time, so you feel an ebb and flow of resources as you build your wealth, then drain your coffers to nab a particularly high scoring card. The game often begins with people taking card after card from the row, but soon enough each player should have a small engine they can exploit to increase the number and value of their spice cubes until, finally, one person is labeled “The Spiciest Trader”
The Century series of games have the added benefit of being able to be combined with the other games in the series to enhance each other. I’ve played each of the games in the Century series, and while each one stands on it’s own as a good game, I firmly believe that Century: Spice Road stands taller than the rest.
When asked about my hobbies, one of the first activities that I choose as the activity to define myself is that I’m an avid reader. This is why in my home my bookshelves have 9 compartments dedicated to books and only 3 to board games. I’ve always been a voracious reader, going back to my elementary school days. I would get irrationally excited when the Scholastic Book Club pamphlets would come out and I would excitedly circle all the books that I wanted (Come to think of it, it would have been less work to cross off the books I didn’t want). Unfortunately I grew up in a very small town in northern Manitoba, which meant that the newest books in the libraries were on average a decade old. I was also the child of a single mother who was raising three kids and did not have a lot of room in the household budget for brand new books.
Regardless, I spent the vast majority of my free time in the school library, reading through most of the fiction section. It’s there that I got to experience some fantastic stories that I would have otherwise passed on. I will never forget pulling a unassuming brown covered book off the shelf, and reading Lamb by Christopher Moore for the first time, not knowing what a wild ride I was in for.
I was incredibly lucky to have some great teachers who invested in my love of reading. My IT teacher introduced me to Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels with Guards Guards!, and I now have an entire shelf dedicated to Pratchett. Another teacher introduced me to his personal Dragonlance Chronicles collection, thereby ensuring I would never get a date throughout my high school career.
When it comes to my board game preferences, I absolutely have a proclivity toward deck building games. There’s something about the mechanic of building a deck of cards over the course of a game that just makes me smile. I love starting with a small pool of cards and adding cards one at a time, while culling cards that don’t fit my vision, until the result is a deck that’s finely tuned, completely unrecognizable from the deck I started out with, and ready to destroy my opponents.
Paperback marries my two loves, and also tickles the fancy of the woman I married. A deck builder with a book theme, every card in your deck is a letter and to get points and currency, you need to use your letters to make words which allows you to buy more powerful letters to make bigger words! The catch is that in order to gain victory points, you need to buy wild cards that award you no currency. You must balance buying cards that make your deck more powerful and cards that will win you the game.
I recall Paperback being pitched to me as a “Scrabble, but deck building,” which sparked my curiosity and intrigue just right. You see, when my wife and I first started dating, we were long distance. We would spend hours on Skype playing Scrabble online, and listening to a playlist that we created together. Scrabble became a pretty integral part of our relationship early on, so hearing about a game promising to mix that with the deck builder genre using a theme about writing books made me wonder… Was Paperback designed directly for me?
How Paperback Plays
Paperback plays like most other deckbuilding games. You begin the game with a deck of 10 cards and draw 5 cards per turn. Over time you’ll buy cards to put into your discard, and if you ever need to draw cards but your deck is empty, just shuffle the discard to form your new deck.
Each card has a letter, a special ability, and a value, letting you know how many ‘cents’ you’ll earn if you include that letter in your word. Each turn you can play the cards from your hand to form a word. You don’t have to use all the cards in your hand, but any that go unused will end up in the discard pile. Once your word is formed (assuming no one calls you out for trying to pass off Realy as a proper word), you add up the cents earned from each letter, then purchase cards from the card row to add to your discard. All the cards from your word and your hand go into your discard pile, and you draw a new hand for the following turn.
The letters you can buy from the card row increase in cost as well as in value. You’ll soon find yourself buying an M that gives you 3 cents when you play it, or an R that lets you draw extra cards next turn, or an S that gives you extra cents when it’s the last card in the word. Very quickly you’ll find yourself within reach of the the 7, 8, and 9 cent cards that were impossible to obtain when the game first began.
The other type of card that you can purchase is wild cards. These cards do not give you any cents when they’re a part of your word, but being wild, they’re very useful to have in your hand, offering necessary flexibility. While these cards don’t offer much value during the game, every wild card is worth victory points at the end of the game. Each game has a turning point; usually around 75% of the way through a game your deck has enough really good cards that you don’t feel the need to add any more letter cards, and you can start focusing on those wild cards. In our experience, once one person starts buying wilds, everyone should follow along quickly, or they’ll find themselves with a deck full of letters, but no victory points to contest for the title of best novel writer.
The stacks of wild cards also function as the endgame trigger; once two of the four piles of wild cards are claimed, the game ends. At that point you break your deck apart, count all the victory points you have earned on each of your wild cards, and the player with the highest score is the winner.
Compared to Scrabble
I’ve played a lot of Scrabble, and talked about Scrabble to a lot of people who are into hobby board games. The most common complaints I hear are that turns take too long as people hold their head in their hands trying to find a really good word and a valid spot to place their word once they’ve finally identified it. The other major complaint I hear frequently (out of my own mouth because my wife is the worst for this) is that as you get better and better at Scrabble, the game becomes less and less about playing great words, and more about playing small words that score well while controlling your opponent’s access to the double and triple word score spots. Scrabble devolves from a word game into a game almost entirely about area control and getting a mix of letters that can go in many high scoring places.
Paperback does a excellent job of sidestepping the complaints that plague Scrabble. By removing the need to chain off other words on a board, each player needs only to focus on the letters in their hand. It’s often much easier to see a word that uses all, or at least most of your cards and that’s the best word you can possibly make. The flipside to this is you are now at the mercy of your deck. If you draw a bad hand of cards (such as Q, K, J, X, C and no wilds), you’ll just have to discard your hand and wait for your next turn. You can’t even play a tiny word for one or two cents because any unspent currency is lost at the end of your turn.
Conclusion
Paperback doesn’t try to improve upon the deck building genre, nor does it need to. If you’ve played Dominion then Paperback‘seconomy and mechanic of points cards clogging up your deck will immediately feel familiar. By taking the tried and true formula of deck building and applying a word-building theme, designer Tim Fowers has created an approachable gateway for fans of word games everywhere.
Paperback is a game that my wife and I have played a lot. We have played the physical game at least 19 times together, and when the Android app was released we instantly bought it and spent many a night playing against each other while lying in bed before going to sleep. We’d have games going during our work days, each of us stealing a few minutes here and there to play a turn. It is a super fun game, and it takes a long time before repeatedly playing it gets old.
I have a type. It’s Tim Fowers
Honestly, once the app came out, the tabletop version really stopped hitting the table. The setup for the game is a bit much, even with the well divided box. Eight separate piles that form the store, plus 4 more piles for the victory point cards, everyone gets a starter deck and common cards need to be arranged; it’s not difficult to set up, but it is absolutely easier to just press a button on the phone and start playing. It is also handy that the app will dictate which words can and cannot be used. The app does lack the attack cards that inject a bit of player interaction into the game, but my wife and I often choose not to play those cards. For us, the joy comes from building each other up and trying to see who can stand tallest, not who is better at knocking the other to their knees.
Since the app came to our phones, Paperback has physically hit the table 3 times. I have felt slightly burned out on it because we have played it so frequently, but I still get a sense of glee when I open the box and hand each player a deck of fairly well-worn cards. I hadn’t actually noticed how worn my cards had become until I received the Paperback Unabridged expansion along with my Kickstarter copy of Hardback. Once the expansion content was slotted into the original Paperback box, I was taken aback by how pristine the new cards looked and how tattered by comparison my old cards were. Personally, I believe well-loved cards are a sign of a great game.
Can you tell which cards were added later?
For me, Paperback is my favourite word game, narrowly edging out it’s pre-quill, Hardback. I love the deck building and the trade-off of buying wild cards that clog up the deck but provide the points you need to win the game. I’ve introduced Paperback to a lot of people, and it’s never failed to impress. So many people have played Scrabble that a word game is almost second nature, and the twist of deck building always excites, especially if it’s a mechanic that they haven’t seen before. Because it has such an appeal for people who aren’t into designer board games, it’s the perfect game to use to introduce your bibliophile friends to this wonderful hobby.
I suffer from deep personal dilemmas when it comes to Kickstarter. I am constantly aware of all the projects flowing in and out of the platform, trying to tease the hard-earned money from my wallet. At the same time, I’m constantly paralyzed with fear, either of missing out on the next best game that is difficult to get after the product ships, or spending much more on a game that I could get for less after it hits retail shelves. Let me tell you about two games that recently caught my eye when they launched on Kickstarter. For both projects I chose not to pledge my support.
Burgle Bros. 2 by Tim Fowers is the follow up game to one of my favourite cooperative games of all time, Burgle Bros. When I saw the Kickstarter for Burgle Bros. 2 I decided to pass on it because I already owned the first one. The initial reviews talked about how the game ‘fixed’ some annoyances of the first one (particularly about the guard movement) that I never found to be onerous. The Kickstarter campaign failed to offer me a compelling reason to add this this shiny new version to my collection when I already owned the tried and true original.
Cut to today – the Kickstarter is being fulfilled and some of my favourite reviewers are lauding the game. According to the reviews, the production is novel and exciting, the game flows smoothly, and the campaign setting is exciting. Deep within my heart, I found myself lusting after this product. I loved the first game and desperately wanted to experience Burgle Bros 2 at the same time as the others in the board game community.I did not account for the social aspect of experiencing a new game at the same time as everyone else when I chose to pass on the Burgle Bros 2 Kickstarter. If I wanted to buy the game now, it would cost $60, plus $6 shipping. Had I backed the Kickstarter I would have only paid $50 +shipping, and I would have the game in my hands now! I pledged to myself to not miss out on another Kickstarter.
Bullet♥︎ was another Kickstarter project that I was terribly tempted to get in on. While I’m not the biggest fan of shoot-em up games (SHUMPS), I am a degenerate anime fan, and I really enjoy Level 99’s whimsy. Ultimately I passed on Bullet♥︎, knowing that the majority of my gaming partners do not find the anime aesthetic appealing.
Reviews on Bullet♥︎ started trickling into my media feed, and I found myself playing the (highly scripted) Tabletop Simulator version after having my interest renewed. I loved the puzzle the game provided. Additionally, the variability of all the different heroines and the promise of multiple game modes caused me to salivate. Again, the desire to have this game in my hands right now rose dramatically, and I found myself wandering over to their Kickstarter page to find all the things I missed out on.
Imagine my surprise when I found that the base game of Bullet♥︎ was $50 on Kickstarter, while the pre-orders have it listed for $35. The Kickstarter had no stretch goals, and no exclusives to speak of, which then begs the question, where is the value in Kickstarting this project? Is it just to have the game first? To be riding the first wave of discussion when the community at large gets their hands on it? I made a pledge to myself to remain strong and not back Kickstarters. After all, the majority of games come to retail eventually, and I can make the distributors pay for the shipping.
These two experiences with Kickstarter perfectly illustrate my ambivalence. If I choose to back, then I regret spending my money (not to mention having to explain to my wife where that board game came from and of course it’s always been there). If I pass, I have the bitter taste of regret in my mouth for months.
Turns out Kickstarter is a push your luck game, and I am what the experts call a coward risk-averse investor
