His Lordship Reviews: Paperback

You may not have heard of Paperback. It's even more likely that you haven't played it. A game of word-searching and deck-building, it was designed by Tim Fowers and released as a Kickstarter-only project - one I was lucky enough to find out about in time. Why would I write about a game which isn't available at retail? Because Mr. Fowers is currently funding a second printing - which, if you're quick, you might be able to jump into at https://www.paperbackgame.com/.

Disclaimer: The above free advertising notwithstanding, I am

Official image - box bottom

not receiving any consideration for this review. In fact, I will go further, and lay good adds that Mr. Fowers has no idea of my existence other than as an address on his former Kickstarter fulfillment list.

Let's get to it, then. Paperback has been described as half Scrabble and half Dominion - while this is indeed good shorthand, it falls short of describing the total package. As the fine chaps at Shut Up And Sit Down observed, if you merely add half of one game to half of another game, you get exactly one-third of a game. Paperback combines its influences to create something much more than the sum of its parts.

The Game Itself

Just as with Dominion, players have their own deck of cards, from which they draw a hand, play it, and purchase new cards for their deck based on the hand they have played. The cards themselves represent letters; to play cards out of your hand, they must form a word. To help you on your way, half the starting deck is composed of wild cards (or 'blanks' in the common Scrabble parlance). The letters score points based on their rarity in the English language; the wilds score no points when played, but are the main source of score at the end of the game. Once you've played your word, its score is used to purchase further cards to be added to your deck.

Photograph, and racks pictured, by Chris Miller

Some are difficult to use, but worth good points - and, unlike Scrabble, some higher-scoring cards contain two letters to be used together. Others are simple, common consonants, but have commensurately lower scores. Additionally, many cards have special effects when played - this is where Dominion-like mechanics return to the fray. Many powers will be familiar to players of deckbuilders, such as drawing additional cards, and 'trashing' unwanted cards by removing them from your deck entirely. More unusual are the "Attack" powers which affect other players; many of these effectively provide a counter-play to other cards, e.g. by preventing those additional draws by other players. Then there are the wilds, which aren't worth any points, but stand in for any letter, and are used to determine final score at the end of the game; unlike the scoring cards of Dominion, the 'blank' effect means these cards are useful in themselves, but they can still dilute a deck.

On top of this, there are other, minor mechanics. A common vowel is available for everyone's use; this is also worth points at the end of the game, and can be acquired at the beginning of the game by making a word of seven letters or more. Once acquired by a player, a new common vowel is revealed; this requires a word of eight letters or more, and so forth. There are further optional mechanics, such as unique player powers, word lists that give bonus points for completing a word on the list, and the mythically powerful "space bar". These are really minor variants; the core of the game is in making words with your cards, and carefully selecting letters to buy which you will be using to make other words in the future.

Why is this a better game than Scrabble?

While both games involve finding words in a set of letters and/or blanks, the wider strategies of the two games are very different. Scrabble is an exercise in finding the highest-scoring placement of the various permutations of words and placings possible in a given turn (taking into account opportunities created for the opponent, keeping letters for future rounds, etc.). Such an exercise in Monte Carlo calculation is absent in Paperback - instead, when playing a word, you only need to find the highest score you can make, give or take adjustments to include desirable powers. This makes player turns faster, particularly because more advance planning can be performed; there is little game state to change before your turn arrives. Nonetheless, Paperback still achieves significant strategic depth in the card-drafting mechanic, which provokes a wider range of considerations than the relatively mechanical Scrabble. Which brings us to...

Why is this a better game than Dominion?

Picture by Bennet Rosenthal

Well, for one thing, you have to make words with your cards, rather than simply play them. This alone would make it superior than Dominion. But beyond that, the drafting itself is more interesting in Paperback than in Dominion. The need to balance cards with powers against cards with value remains, but these considerations also need to be balanced with the purchasing of wild cards, and, most challenging of all, the drafting of letters which work well with each other. Put it all together and you have a multi-dimensional card-drafting game which is head and shoulders above either of its most obvious competitors.

The final verdict: highly recommended to lovers of word games and deck-builders alike.