Stamp Swap: Rapid Review
Information:
Mechanics: Set Collection, I Split You Choose, Drafting, Polyomino
Player Age: 14+ Player Count: 1 - 5 Players Time to Play: 20 - 60 Minutes
Game Designer: Paul Salomon
Player Age: 14+
Game Designer: Paul Salomon
Rundown:
Stamp Swap is a three day (rounds) convention where attendees will collect, swap, and display their stamps in an attempt to score the best in their chosen contest each day. This is done by drafting stamps either face-up or face-down until six are drafted by each player. Then everyone will split their gained stamps into two piles, one will be taken by an opponent and the other will be added to your player mat, alongside the pile you select to take from an opponent.
Alteration:
This is a fast point-salad game filled with many differentiations between plays. The four parts of this alteration are the stamps, events, attendees, and contest cards.
Stamps:
When it comes to the stamps there are points, colour, size, and theme that keep them unique. The points vary and include faded stamps that award negative points, cancelled stamps awarding no points, standard positive points, and rare stamps that have contains a gold colour and no theme but award the highest points.
There are five colours (purple, yellow, blue, green and brown) and five corresponding themes (space, monuments, animals, flowers and vehicles).
The stamps sizes come in four different options of rectangles and squares. There is also a double tile consisting of two stamps.
As well as a forever stamp which is a small 1x1 square perfect for filling in one small area. At the end of the game the forever stamp will also award bonus points to the player with 1st, 2nd and 3rd most.
Event Cards:
Event Cards will determine which stamp types are drafted and whether they are hidden or revealed. It will also determine if there are any infinity stamps or attendee cards added to the lot. At the start of each round, a number of event cards equal to the player count are revealed. The biggest form of alteration that comes from the event cards is that each event has a special ability that will change how the drafting will occur. Only the top event’s ability will be present, the other events are to simply show which stamps/attendees are face-up/face-down in this draft.
Attendees cards:
Attendee cards are like stamps in that they are drafted and compiled each round. Except they are not placed in the grid on the player board and will either award the player an ongoing ability or bonus points based on their collection at the end of the game. These attendee cards are called exhibit cards.
Contest cards:
There are five groups of contest cards and each game will display one of each colour. These contests cover theme, size, stamp colour, and cancelled stamps. Each player will choose to score three of these (one at the end of each round).
They will score the top blue contest card at the end of the game. As the player chooses at the end of the round which contest to score, it creates a lot of agency and replayability for the players as they try to optimise their collection in the best way possible.
Phases:
There are three phases to each round; collect, swap and show.
Collect Phase:
In the collect phase players draft six stamp/attendees, one at a time.
Swap Phase:
In the swap phase one stamp or attendee can be kept and reserved (excluding rare stamps). The remainder of the drafted items must be split into two piles. If the stamp was drafted face-down then it will remain face-down when compiling. Starting with the first player, everyone will select one of the piles to gain from another player (swap).
Show Phase:
Once a player has their two piles (the second pile is your pile that wasn't swapped) they can add these stamps to their player board. All stamps must be kept in the same orientation (with the point value being in the top right corner). After this, each player will choose their own previously un-chosen contest to score.
Scoring:
Following the third round, several scoring conditions will now be tallied;
- Each stamp in your collection will have its value totalled.
- Each attendee card will have its value scored based on the collection, and each player mat will also score the built-in exhibit card.
- The final blue contest will be scored.
Interaction:
I haven't seen a game that combines drafting and I-Split-You-Choose in two separate phases before. This makes the drafting phase very important for how you interact with the other players. Due to this, you must plan for how you will make one pile more appealing while you try to divert attention to the stamps you most want to keep.
Determination:
- Great combination of drafting and I-Split-You-Choose.
- Fast gameplay as there are only three rounds but plenty of decisions.
- Plenty of alteration between games with the different stamps, attendees, contests and events.
- Great mechanism of choosing when and which three contests score per individual player.
- Depending on the contest in the game, the placement of the stamps may not feel too crucial.
Stonemaier Games has once again taken an initially unappealing theme and created an endlessly engaging system around it. With Stamp Swap you are ultimately building a portfolio of stamps where the main focus isn't on how you place the stamps, but on how to get the most out of them. This is both for your drafts and, more importantly, the ones you gain and keep from the swap phase. With this unique theme, plenty of variability and engaging drafting/I-Split-You-Choose mechanism, Stamp Swap has easily earned a Go-To Golden Game Seal.
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