It’s that time of year again – time for the des Jahres awards! These are a set of awards given to the German game of the year. The Spiel des Jahres (family game of the year) has been around since 1978, with the Kinderspiel (childrens game) being officially added as an award in 2001, and the Kennerspiel (connoisseur’s game) being introduced in 2011. Despite being only one of a myriad of awards out there, these tend to be the most like the Oscars and get the most scrutiny from the hobby game community. Every year since this blog started, I’ve done an annual rundown of the titles nominated and given my predictions, and I’m 22-16 overall with my picks. Last year, I broke my three year streak of getting all three winners correct as I only got the Kinderspiel right, so let’s see if we can get back on track this year.

I’m 6-4 overall with my Kinderpiel picks, which I only started picking in 2015. And here is how I’ve done over the years:

• 2015: Spinderella (correct)
• 2016: My First Stone Age (I picked Leo)
• 2017: Ice Cool (correct)
• 2018: Dragon’s Breath (I picked Panic Mansion)
• 2019: Valley of the Vikings (I picked Go Gecko Go)
• 2020: Hedgehog Roll (I picked Foto Fish)
• 2021: Dragomino (correct)
• 2022: Magic Mountain (correct)
• 2023: Mysterium Kids (correct)
• 2024: Magic Keys (correct)

You’ll notice that I have gotten the Kinderspiel winner correct the last four years in a row. We’ll see if we can keep that streak up this year. Without further ado, here are the nominees!

Cascadia Junior (Fertessa Alysse/Randy Flynn, Flatout/AEG) is a kids version of 2022 Spiel des Jahres winner Cascadia. In the game, you’ll be drawing double hex tiles and adding them to your habitat. If you ever create a group of three animal icons, you’ll cover them up and draw a matching animal token, placing it on a panorama board (but not looking at it). Once everyone has placed 10 tiles, the game ends, and you collect habitat tokens for having groups of 3-5 and 6+ identical terrain groupings. You’ll then reveal all your tokens, add up the scores, and see who won.

It’s certainly not unheard of for the kids version of a game to win Kinderspiel – My First Stone Age and Mysterium Kids have both done it. And plenty have also gotten nominations – Taco Kitten Pizza got a nod last year. This one looks like an interesting distillation of the Cascadia rules, though I’m really not a fan of the hidden-from-everyone-including-the-player scoring. Still, it doesn’t look bad.

Le Clan des Souris (aka Die Mäusebande, Christoph Lauras, Débacle Jeux/Game Factory) is a game about collecting teeth, because apparently other cultures use a Tooth Mouse instead of a Tooth Fairy. A 3×3 (or, in a more advanced game, 4×4) grid is laid out, and players have to find animals on the tiles to collect their teeth. Before time runs out, as tracked by moons, players need to find different sizes of animals to collect their teeth. In the advanced game, there are monsters to be beaten, stuff to beat those monsters, and other bonuses/obstacles to discover.

This game is only available in French and German, but it seems like a fairly simple memory game. Memory games don’t tend to do well in Kinderspiel voting, but I have enjoyed seeing the different ways the mechanism is explored over the years. The three sizes of animals look like it really throws a wrench in just straight memorization. It looks fun.

Topp die Torte! (Wolfgang Warsch, Schmidt Spiele) is a game about building cakes. Each player starts the game with a unique base layer with a number of colored bars. You’ll also get a stack of 7 layers from which you’ll draw two. From those two, you’ll choose one to add to your cake, and you’ll pass the other. If the colored bars line between the tile you placed and the tile below it, you gain gems of those colors based on symbols present on the bars. Gems are placed in jars, which (when full) get you coins with points on them. After everyone has placed seven layers on their cake, the game ends, and the player with the most points wins.

This is a spatial game, where players really have to visualize where the layers will line up so they can get maximum gems. There is some luck in what you draw, as well as points from the coins. But the draft becomes the most important, as you have to pick both what you’re going to keep as well as what your neighbor will get. It looks like a pretty cool game.

My predictions for the winners are at the bottom of the post, but for now, let’s get to the granddaddy of them all, the Spiel des Jahres.

I’m 8-6 Spiel in my predictions for the Spiel des Jahres. Here’s how I’ve done over the years.

• 2011: Qwirkle (I picked Forbidden Island)
• 2012: Kingdom Builder (I picked Eselsbrücke)
• 2013: Hanabi (correct)
• 2014: Camel Up (I picked Splendor)
• 2015: Colt Express (correct)
• 2016: Codenames (I picked Imhotep)
• 2017: Kingdomino (correct)
• 2018: Azul (correct)
• 2019: Just One (correct)
• 2020: Pictures (I picked My City)
• 2021: MicroMacro Crime City (correct)
• 2022: Cascadia (correct)
• 2023: Dorfromantik (correct)
• 2024: Sky Team (I picked Captain Flip)

Captain Flip was the one pick I made last year where I was pretty certain I was correct, and then the jury went against tradition and picked the heaviest game nominated. I haven’t gotten to play Sky Team yet, and while I do think it looks very good, it’s still a surprise that a two-player game got picked for family game of the year. Anyway, I’m going to try to get back on the horse this year with my pick. Here are the nominees.

Bomb Busters (Hisashi Hayashi, Pegasus Spiele) is a cooperative game about being part of a bomb disposal squad. Each player has a rack of wires, and other players have to logically figure out what you have. On your turn, you can either do a solo cut, where you reveal two of your wires that have the same number, or a dual cut, where you ask another player if a particular wire is a number that matches one of yours. If they do, you both reveal. If not, you’re one step closer to blowing up. There’s equipment you can use to make your life easier, but the main goal is to find all the wire pairs before the bomb detonates.

This game kind of gives me Hanabi vibes as players are trying to logically figure out which stuff to reveal without having it all blow up in their faces. It also gives me a little bit of The Crew, as there are a ton of missions in the box to keep things interesting. And it looks like a pretty good logic puzzle style game with a slightly more intense theme than the cover art would suggest.

Flip 7 (Eric Olsen, KOSMOS/The Op) is a push-your-luck card game where you’re trying to score points by taking unique cards. In a round, players will take turns deciding if they want to hit and take another card, or if they want to stop and just take their points. If they hit and get a number (0-12) that they do not have, they are safe. If they get a repeat number, they bust and are out of the round. There are also special action and modifier cards that could come up. When someone gets to 200 points, the player with the most points at the end of that round wins.

This is a pretty light card game that seems like a lot of fun. I thoroughly enjoy light push-your-luck games, and this looks like a good one. It bills itself as “THE GREATEST CARD GAME OF ALL TIME” right on the cover, which is kind of off-putting to me, even if it is just a joke. However, the game does look fun and it’s one I’d like to try.

Krakel Orakel (Die 7 Bazis, frechverlag) is a party style drawing game where players are trying to get their fellow players to guess a drawing. The trick is, you’re drawing on a board that has a bunch of scribbles already printed on it, and you have to use those lines. Each player gets a word, then has two minutes to make their drawing on their board. Once everyone is done, the words get mixed with some dummies from the deck, and each player gets to vote on one word they think was not drawn by another player. If players can survive four rounds without losing too many points, they win.

I’m not a party game fan, and I don’t think this one would make a convert of me. I think it has a clever twist with the preprinted lines, but at the same time, I can see that being really frustrating and limiting for some people. Sculptors like to talk about seeing their sculpture in the medium before they start, and that’s something I think you’d have to do here. It looks like an interesting twist on drawing games, but it’s not one that I’m personally interested in trying out.

Before we get to my pick, let’s look at the Kennerspiel des Jahres.

I’m 8-6 in my picks for the Kennerspiel, which is awarded to a slightly heavier game each year. It’s typically not a heavy game, more like a next step up from the SdJ. Here’s how I’ve done:

• 2011: 7 Wonders (correct)
• 2012: Village (correct)
• 2013: Legend of Andor (I picked Bruges)
• 2014: Istanbul (I picked Rococo)
• 2015: Broom Service (correct)
• 2016: Isle of Skye (I picked Pandemic Legacy)
• 2017: EXIT: The Game (I picked Raiders of the North Sea)
• 2018: The Quacks of Quedlinburg (I picked Heaven & Ale)
• 2019: Wingspan (correct)
• 2020: The Crew (correct)
• 2021: Paleo (correct)
• 2022: Living Forest (correct)
• 2023: Challengers (correct)
• 2024: Daybreak (I picked Guild of Merchant Explorers)

I had gotten five in a row correct before I talked myself out of picking Daybreak last year. I have played both that and Guild of Merchant Explorers this year, and like them both. But it was indeed a case of the jury defying tradition again and picking a heavier game than they usually do. Still, I’m going to try to get to 6 out of the last 7 with this year’s pick. Here are the nominees.

Endeavor: Deep Sea (Carl de Visser/Jarratt Gray, Burnt Island Games/Grand Gamers Guild) is the latest game in the Endeavor line. The original Endeavor came out in 2009, and was a game of exploration and economics. The 2018 reprint (subtitled Age of Sail) updated the game and brought a whole new set of fans to the system. This sequel is about underwater exploration, and while it has similar mechanisms, it is a different game. Players will be performing actions on different tiles that will make up the modular board. These include diving, traveling, using sonar, and research. The game has a conservationist bent to it, and the goal is to score the most points as you explore and understand the deep sea better.

I’m not getting into all the mechanisms of the game because there are a lot of moving parts, and I’m trying to keep this at least relatively brief. But, it looks like a good sequel to Endeavor (I’ve played the original, but not the reprint) that takes the system in a different direction. I’d imagine that the third game might head to outer space, but who knows. I think this looks like a lot of fun, with my only hesitation being that I think it might have just a few too many moving parts for the Kennerspiel this year.

Faraway (Johannes Goupy/Corentin Lebrat, KOSMOS) is a game about taking a journey and completing quests. In each round, players will simultaneously add a card to their journey rows. Starting with the player who played the lowest number, they will then draft a new card to their hand. After eight rounds, players will score their journey. This is done by flipping all the cards face down, then revealing them one by one, starting from the end (i.e. the last card they played). Cards have different scoring conditions, including different symbols to collect and colors needed, and you can only score cards that have been revealed. So the first card you play won’t get scored until the end, while the last card you played will score before anything else has been flipped. The player with the highest score wins.

Faraway is the only nominee from any of the categories that I have played. It’s a very interesting game that takes a little thinking to get your head around the concept. There’s a lot of thinking in the game, especially at the start as you figure out your strategy going forward. It can run long with higher player counts (my first game was with six players who kept getting very distracted), but it shouldn’t take too long once people understand the flow. I like it, and I think it’s a good nominee for this award.

Looot (Charles Chevallier/Laurent Escoffier, Gigamic/Game Factory) is a Viking themed game where you’re pillaging the land to build up your own community. Players are placing Vikings on a shared board to collect resources and building to put on their own board. The different buildings have different rules for capture. There are also different Longships you can get that will give you more points, and these have resource requirements to make them operational, and will lose you points if not completed. In the end, when all Vikings have been placed, the player who has the most points wins.

Looot seems like a pretty interesting puzzly game, as you’re trying to figure out the best way to get resources and buildings. That you’re picking up stuff from a shared board is interesting, especially that your Vikings don’t have to be adjacent to your own Vikings, which means you need to b mindful of what others need and try not to make it too easy for them. It seems like a pretty good game that, due to the title, I might have skipped over looking at had it not been for the nomination.

OK, it’s time for my picks. For the Kinderspiel, I’ve been waffling between two choices. My general guiding principle is to pick the one with the dexterity element, but none of these have one. Memory games don’t tend to do well in voting, so I’m not going with Les Clans des Souris. That leaves Cascadia Jr and and Topp die Torte. After much deliberation, I’m going with…

This is a weird pick for me because I think it’s the game that I personally would be least interested in. However, at the same time, it’s the one that feels the most like a Kinderspiel winner. Topp die Torte looks really cool and interesting, but I can also see it being super frustrating for kids. I mentioned that memory games don’t tend to do well in KidJ voting, but Les Clans des Souris does have a great concept and looks like a pretty solid game. Cascadia Jr, despite having more randomness in the scoring than I would like, does have that light puzzle feel, nice art, and a panorama where you can build your own nature scenes. Also, it’s based on a popular board game IP, and those games do have a history of doing well (just since I’ve been doing my predictions, My First Stone Age, Dragomino, and Mysterium Kids have all won). So, I think it’ll be Cascadia Jr, though I’d be happy seeing either of the other two win.

On to my Spiel des Jahres prediction, and this is another one where I went back and forth between my choices. Ultimately, I think I’m going with

It was between this and Bomb Busters for me. Krakel Orakel seems like this year’s weird pick – the one that is interesting because it’s so quirky, but ultimately doesn’t have a shot. I ended up going with Flip 7 because I think it’s an easily accessible game that will really reach a lot of people who might not be that into gaming. While I think Bomb Busters looks great, I think the theme is probably going to turn a lot of people off. It coming the year after “avoiding a plane crash” was the theme probably doesn’t help. While Flip 7 does seem very small and simple for an SdJ winner, that’s my choice, and I’m sticking with it.

Time for the Kennerspiel prediction, and while I’m not 100% confident in my pick, I arrived at this decision quicker than the others. I’m going with

Faraway seems like the kind of game the jury will go for. Simple rules, the twist on scoring, and a fairly compact game make it seem like the clear frontrunner. Endeavor: Deep Sea and Looot seem like very good games, but just with a lot of moving pieces that might be kind of intimidating. I have played Faraway and haven’t played the other two, so maybe that’s my bias showing, but I’ll go with Faraway as this year’s Kennerspiel winner. If it doesn’t win, I think Looot would be my second choice, but I’m sticking with Faraway.

So, there’s my predictions. The award winners will be announced on Sunday at 6pm German time (GMT+2), so we’ll see if I managed to get it right this year. Thanks for reading!

EDIT: Well, that didn’t go well. For the first time since 2016, I’m 0-3. Topp die Torte won the Kinderspiel, giving Wolfgang Warsch his second dJ award – he’s now one step closer to the career Grand Slam, just need an SdJ. Bomb Busters won the SdJ, meaning that a cooperative game has now won 5 of the last 7 years. Endeavor: Deep Sea won the Kennerspiel, which was a surprise for me because I thought it would be a little too heavy. Between that and Daybreak last year, it seems the jury might be moving in a little bit of a heavier direction with these picks. Anyway, not a good year for me, so we’ll see if I can do better next time.

This edition of Off the Shelf is going to look at an odd little game called

oddball Äeronauts is a 2014 two-player game designed by Nigel Pyne, and published by maverick muse. It’s an in-hand game, where you are playing cards in an attempt to get your opponent to discard all of theirs. It has a steampunk theme to it, with two different factions included in the box. The game first caught my attention when it was on Kickstarter, and I got my copy shortly after it actually released. The game is no longer in print – I don’t think the publisher ever put anything else out, other than a sequel in 2015, and they aren’t in operation now.

Each player gets a deck of cards specific to their faction (Pirates or Pendragons). They also get a mercenary and two event cards. The decks are then traded, shuffled, and returned to their original owner. Players hold their deck in hand face up, and flip the bottom three cards face down. The deck is held with the top three cards splayed out as these are the cards available to be played.

In each round, one player is designated as the Leader. That player will choose a suit to lead – Sailing, Guns, or Boarding. These are listed in the upper left corner of the card. The opponent will then choose a suit, which can be the same or different. Players will then choose how many cards they want to play (1-3), and reveal this information simultaneously. Players will then add the main value from the suit they chose (the larger number) and add it to the support value from other cards they played (the smaller number with a +). The higher value wins. The winning suit gives a bonus – Sailing allows a player to recover two cards, which means they flip their first two facedown cards so that they are face up; Guns forces their opponent to discard two additional cards, meaning they are flipped facedown and moved to the bottom of the deck; and Boarding allows the player to recover one while the opponent discards one.

In addition to the Sailing, Guns, and Boarding values, each card has a trick. You can use the trick on your top card, which may give you a bonus for winning, increase the value of certain suits, or other benefits.

When one player has no face up cards remaining in their deck, their opponent wins.

What really makes this game stand apart is that it’s a game you don’t need a table for. It’s just cards, they’re all held in-hand, and this means it’s a game that you can play anywhere. Which is pretty cool. Each player’s deck consists of 29 cards – 26 faction cards, one mercenary, and two events – so they fit pretty well in-hand. The art is all steampunkily stylized, and it’s a good looking game.

The game boils down, basically, to War meets Rock-Paper-Scissors. Even that’s not entirely accurate as it only really bears a passing resemblance to RPS – there are three categories you can choose to fight in, and rather than one always beats another, it’s a case where you just have to compare strengths at that particular time. But still, this means that there is a lot of luck in the game. You can only play with your top three cards, your top card is always your main card, and the next two are always supports. There’s some tactics you can employ, such as trying to manipulate it so a certain card comes on top next, but you’re still at the whim of that initial shuffle. (Incidentally, I do really like how the game instructs you to have the other person shuffle your deck.) The manipulation becomes harder if your opponent is choosing a suit that will cause you to discard if you lose.

I like the flow of the game, where one person leads with a suit, then the other player chooses their response. Especially since the leader is the person who won the last hand, it gives the second player a chance to react to what they’re doing. Maybe tricks could be in play. The use of the term “trick” in the game always makes me think that this is some kind of trick-taking game. It’s not, the tricks are just little rule-breakers you can use to enhance your game. Their inclusion is pretty nice – it gives you something to consider other than just the numbers on your card.

I like the portability of the game, and the fact that it can be played all in your hand. However, in the end, there’s not a lot of strategy. Don’t get me wrong, there is some, but the choices are usually based on how you think you can get the highest score based on what’s in front of you. The game doesn’t require a lot of brain power, which is good, but at the same time, I feel like it should require a bit more than I get. That’s why I’m ranking this fairly low, currently at #43 on my Off the Shelf rankings.

I know I’ve kind of had some radio silence lately, but there’s been a lot going on with work and things. The next post I do will likely be my annual X des Jahres rundown. Thanks for reading!

Off the Shelf is back with another game off my shelf. This time, we’re looking at the first board game Kickstarter success story…

Alien Frontiers is a 2-4 player game first published in 2010 by Clever Mojo Games, designed by Tory Neimann. It’s a dice placement and resource management game about the colonization of a new planet, with zones named after different classic science fiction authors. When the game launched on Kickstarter in 2010, no other board games had really had any success on the platform. Alien Frontiers made over $14,000 on a goal of $5,000, which is wild by today’s standards. I did not get the game on Kickstarter, but I was aware of it shortly before it started delivering (it was the subject of my third post on this blog). The game has gone through a number of editions since its initial run, with a fifth edition and a big box released in 2017. I don’t know if there are rules changes from edition to edition, but I’ll be talking about my version.

The game is played on a board showing the surface of an alien planet, as seen here:

Each player starts the game with three dice, as well as one fuel token and one ore. On your turn, you’ll roll your dice and then distribute them to various spots around the board.

• You could place any die at the Solar Converter, which will turn a 1-2 into one fuel, a 3-4 into two fuel, and a 5-6 into three.
• You could place any die at the Lunar Mine to get one ore. However, the die you place must be greater than any other die there.
• You could place any die at the Alien Artifact to get rid of all the cards on display and see new ones. However, if the total of dice you place there equals or exceeds 8, you can take a card.
• You could place a pair of dice with the same value at the Orbital Market. This would allow you to convert fuel to ore at a rate of X:1, where X is the number on the dice you placed.
• You could place a pair of dice at the Shipyard, and spend fuel and ore to build a new ship. In other words, you’ll have another die to roll next turn.
• You could play a sequence of three dice (i.e. 1-2-3) at the Raiders’ Outpost. This would allow you to steal any combination of four resources from your opponents, or one card.
• You could place three identical dice at the Colony Constructor and spend three ore to place a colony directly on the planet.
• You could also just place a die at the Colonist Hub to advance a colony towards the end of its track. When it gets there, you can spend a fuel and an ore to place it.
• You could place a 6 at the Terraforming Station. This allows you to place a colony (at the cost of one fuel and one ore) on the planet immediately. However, that die is now lost to you – you’ll have one fewer to role next turn. You can always replace it at the Shipyard.

Each time you land a colony on the planet, you score a point, plus an additional point if you have control over the region you land in. If you ever lose that colony, or lose control, you lose the point. Control over a region gives you a special benefit, and that’s different from region to region.

The game continues until someone has placed all of their colonies. At that point, whoever has the highest score is the winner.

I got my copy of Alien Frontiers in 2011, so that’s the version I know. Future versions upgraded the colonies to be much fancier, but I like the little wooden lumps from the original (as seen in the picture above). The art has always had that retro pulp sci-fi look, and it’s cool that all the regions on the planet are named after influential sci-fi authors – Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, AE van Vogt, and so on. And the components are quite nice – it’s a well produced game.

The theme of colonizing a planet is good. It probably easily could have been an Earth-based colonial theme, though that probably would have proved to be more problematic these days. Since the dice are your “ships”, the theme does fall apart a little bit, but the look of the game really helps sell the theme.

This is a dice placement game, which was a genre that didn’t have too many entries before it – Kingsburg and Alea Iacta Est are the only ones listed prior to 2010 on BGG, with Troyes coming out the same year. There have been a bunch since then, but the mechanism was fairly novel for the time. And it’s still good, though I think it suffers somewhat due to a lack of variety in gameplay. The board is always set, the places you can send your dice is always the same, the regions on the board is always the same. The most variety the game gives you is in the tech cards, but even those feel a little samey after a while.

There are several other mechanisms in play. Resource management is a big one. Area majority comes into play with the planetary regions. And there’s some ladder climbing involved, as you need to beat what another player has placed somewhere in order to claim things – the Lunar Mine and the Raiders’ Outpost, in particular.

The game also has a fairly significant take that factor to it, which tends to leave a little bit of a sour taste in my mouth. It’s not just blocking spots other players might want to go to – there are ways to steal from them and mess up their plans. The tech cards are a big offender here, especially because they come out randomly. But my biggest problem comes with the Outpost, which is a set spot and allows you to steal all kinds of stuff. You can clog it up with a high straight that other players can’t beat, and when you claim your dice on the next turn, you could potentially end up doing the same thing again.

The scoring system is a little funky, though not really if you think about it. The way it is described is that you’re basically looking at a snapshot of where people are when you look at the scoreboard. It’s a dynamic thing – just because you have points doesn’t mean you will always have those points. Losing colonies and control of regions will bump you back, so you have to keep an eye on things.

It’s probably pretty obvious that I’m not the biggest fan of this game. I really want to be, but this has been the most disappointing game I’ve ever pulled out with people. I think the lack of variety hurts it, and the fairly obvious strategies mixed with the randomness of the dice. It took several games before I found anyone who enjoyed it, and by that time, I wasn’t really feeling it any more.

I will say, however, that I played once with the Factions expansion, and that made a world of difference in the game. It added special player powers, hidden agendas, and new orbital facilities. It made the game a lot more fun. I never got it, however – instead, I just have the basic game, and it’s fine. It’s not one that I’m dying to play, but it’s not bad either. I’m ranking it currently at #40 on my Off the Shelf rankings list.

That’ll do it for today. Thanks for reading!

Thanks to SD Toys for providing a review copy of this game.

It’s been a little while since I’ve gotten a review copy of a game – part of that is by design, it’s been really nice taking a break and not feeling the pressure of needing to write something up. But I’m still planning to do occasional reviews when someone reaches out to me, so here we go with

WordSnap is a 1-4 player word game published by SD Toys. It consists of 100 flexible, interlocking letter tiles in an octagonal tin. To set up the game, you just mix the tiles up face down, then each player draws eight. Players draw a tile and reveal, with the one closest to Z going first.

If you’ve ever played Scrabble, you know how this game plays – on your turn, you play a word of at least two letters and score the points listed on the letters. The first player plays in the middle of the playing surface, and all subsequent words have to build off something already out on the table. Because of the design of the tiles, you can build words horizontally, vertically, or diagonally. Once you’ve played, you draw back up to eight tiles. You can always opt to use your turn to discard some tiles and redraw. Once all tiles have been drawn and someone is out, or if no more words are possible, the game is over. Players deduct tiles in their hand from their final score, and the player with the most points wins.

WordSnap is a very standard word game, and has a lot of similarities to Scrabble. And so, I’m going to frame this review by looking at what distinguishes it from that classic.

1. Scrabble has a board, WordSnap does not. Scrabble has a 15×15 board, which gives you 225 possible places to put words. That seems like a lot, but it can quickly get crowded when words get to the edge. WordSnap is only limited by the size of your table, and it will sprawl. The tiles are much bigger as well, so space can definitely be an issue. Still, I think the boardless nature of WordSnap is a good thing. Plus, it means you can build words diagonally, which is fun.
2. Scrabble pieces are subject to scattering, WordSnap pieces are not. If you bump the table while Scrabble is possible, it’s very likely that the pieces are going everywhere. Unless you have a board with an overlay to keep the tiles in place, and even then, a good knock would still mess things up. WordSnap has interlocking pieces, so that will never be a problem.
3. Scrabble games can be very long. So can WordSnap, though there is a Speed Mode. As the board (playing space) gets more and more words in both games, it can be difficult to decide what the best play is. WordSnap does have a Speed mode, where you can use their app timer as a kind of chess clock to time your turns. For that matter, there’s also a solo mode that’s basically just trying to play out all the tiles as quickly as you can. So, there is a way to speed things up. I would imagine serious Scrabble players also have rules like these in place.
   • It’s worth noting that the WordSnap app is really just a timer. I wish it also had the capability to keep score.
4. Both games reward large vocabularies. If you’re good at finding big words, you’re going to be better at both games. Or, if you’re better at word games in general, you’re going to do well. If your opponent is only making 3-4 letter words, and you’re consistently finding 5-6 letter words, you’re going to be doing better.
5. Both games have a significant luck of the draw factor, though WordSnap might have a bit more of it. If you’re drawing nothing but vowels, you’re going to have problems in both games. Letter distribution is very similar in the two games, though Q and Z are the only ones in WordSnap where there’s only one letter. WordSnap also has four wild tiles as opposed to two in Scrabble, and these are also the double word scorers. With Scrabble, you know exactly where the multipliers are and can strategize around them. In WordSnap, you draw them, so that increases the luck of the draw factor.

IS IT BUZZWORTHY? There’s nothing really new here in terms of gameplay. If you’re not really a fan of Scrabble, or games of that ilk, there’s not much here that would convert you. However, I do think the construction of the pieces makes this a worthy alternative to Scrabble. So if you’re looking for something that isn’t Scrabble, I’d give this one a look.

Thanks again to SD Toys for providing a review copy of this game, and thanks to you for reading!

This edition of Off the Shelf will look at small deck-building game that I first learned through an app. It’s called

Star Realms is a 2014 two-player game designed by Robert Dougherty and Darwin Kastle, published by Wise Wizard Games (originally White Wizard Games, but rebranded in 2021). Dougherty and Kastle are champion Magic: The Gathering players, and had a goal to make an affordable strategy game. Star Realms is a space combat game where players are building their fleet and trying to blow their opponent out of the sky.

As with most deck-builders, players begin the game with a starter deck. In this case, it consists of eight Scouts (with one purchase power each) and two Vipers (one attack each). Players also get 50 Authority, which is their health for the game. It can be tracked using cards in the game, or on a piece of paper. The trade deck, which consists of 80 cards is shuffled and five cards are laid out in a trade row players can buy from. Additionally, some Explorer cards are set to the side, which can be purchased for 2 and give 2 purchase power (plus 2 attack if you trash them). The start player draws three cards from their deck, and the second player draws five.

On your turn, you can play all cards from your hand. Attack points go into an attack pool you can use against your opponent, while purchase points can go to buying new cards for your deck. Attack points can be split between any bases your opponent has in play and their Authority as you see fit. More on bases in a bit. When you purchase cards, they go directly into your discard, and you can buy as many as you want on a turn. Each card is immediately replaced on the trade row when you buy it.

Cards in this game come in four different factions: Trade Federation (blue), Blobs (green), Star Empire (yellow), and Machine Cult (red). If you play multiple cards of one faction, you often get a bonus – cards become stronger and do more damage, or give you more money, or let you draw cards, or give you other benefits. So it’s good to try to get cards from the same faction, but having cards from other factions is OK too. Some cards also have abilities that are triggered when you trash them from your deck. Then you don’t have the cards anymore, but you’ve got a powerful one-time blast of something to use.

Some of the cards are bases, and when played, they stay on the table. These can be attacked as normal, and each has its own defense. You have to completely destroy one for your attack to work, however – if you send three attack against a four defense base, it doesn’t do anything. Some bases are outposts, and these will absorb damage. In other words, you have to destroy them first before you destroy other bases or attack your opponents’ Authority. If you have attack left over after attacking one of these bases, it can be applied to another base, or even to the player themself (as long as they don’t have another outpost in the way).

When a player is done with their turn, they discard all cards played, all cards purchased, and any that might be left in their hand for whatever reason. Then, they draw a new hand of five and it’s their opponent’s turn. If there aren’t enough cards in their deck to draw five, they shuffle their discard and use that as the new deck. Play continues like this until one player has brought their opponent down to 0 Authority. They win.

I believe I got my copy of Star Realms for Christmas in 2014. I played the physical version a few times over the next few months, but I haven’t played the physical version since 2015. Most of my plays have come on the app, which I don’t count for play logs.

One of the best thing about Star Realms is its portability. It’s a whole game in a small package, just coming in a tuck box. It’s easy to carry around, and it’s just cards, so there’s nothing else to deal with. There are a good amount of cards in the box, and there are of course expansions if you just want more. I don’t have any of the expansions, but I might be interested in getting at least the ones that let me play solo sometime.

Gameplay is basic deck-building stuff. It deviates from the Dominion model in that you are allowed to play every card from your hand and buy as much as you want to. Also, it’s attack-based rather than VP-based, which makes more sense considering the theme here. But, other than that, you’re putting newly purchased cards into a discard pile, reshuffling that when your draw deck runs out, and trying to build synergies between the cards so you can do maximum damage.

The four suits of the game are really helpful in building combos, especially since a number of them have extra actions you can do if you play another card of that suit. And the suits all have general tendencies you can focus on. The Blobs are primarily focused on combat. The Star Empire is also combat-focused, and also have the benefit of making your opponent discard cards. The Trade Federation gives you money to spend. The Machine Cult helps you thin your deck. It’s likely that you won’t have a deck full of one of these types of cards, but it’s good to kind of focus on something so you have a better chance of triggering those extra abilities.

The Base mechanism in play here, where certain cards just stay out on the table, adds an interesting layer to the game. Especially because a lot of the bases act as shields, preventing the player’s main authority count from being attacked until they themselves are destroyed. Plus, these bases can be used to make combos, which makes them very strong and desirable to get out.

The game uses a trade row, which is another way it differs from Dominion – this is more like Ascension. It does lead to some luck of the draw – if you buy a card only to reveal something extremely good your opponent can snatch up on their turn, it can be frustrating. But, luck of the draw goes both ways.

Thematically, the game has a pretty good storyline behind it that I hardly ever think about. It’s red cards, blue cards, green cards, and yellow cards, and I’m just trying to hit my opponent as hard as I can while preventing them from hitting me. It’s a combat game, so you’re fighting, which never seems to bother me as much in a two-player game as with larger player counts – it doesn’t feel like you’re ganging up on someone, you’re just playing the game. And that’s fine.

I do like Star Realms a lot, and writing this up has me wanting to play it again. I’ve got it ranked #16 on my current Off the Shelf rankings out of the 46 games covered so far.

And that’s it for today. Thanks for reading!