Alphabet War: Review
Introduction:
Alphabet War is part Uno part word Game. Players are trying to shed their hand of word cards by adjusting a communal centre word. At the end of each turn the word still has to be an existing word, else the player wouldn't be able to have a turn and instead draws a card. Play the right letters and players can fill up their opponents hand while reducing theirs.
Game Anatomy:
Letter Cards:
The letter cards will cover letters across the alphabet. Each card contains unique art for the letter, and some instances of this even have some letters of the same type containing nothing and some force the next player to draw cards.
For purposes of counting how many letters are in a word the QE card counts as one letter.
Some of these letters contain a plus and a number at the top right of the card. This value will determine the amount of cards the next active player has to draw when their turn starts. As the players aim is to shed their hand, they want to avoid this by playing punch-uation cards.
Punch-uation:
Punch-uation cards are skip and reverse cards. These can be played on a player's turn as the last action or they can be played as a response to someone else ending their turn. Instead of gaining cards into their hand based on the new word. They can instead play one of these punch-uation cards to avoid this issue.
Setup:
- Reveal the top card from the deck as the starting letter.
- If this letter is a punch-uation discard the card and draw a new card.
- The minimum word count for a letter is three but as a group the players must agree on the maximum word count of four, five or six.
How to Play:
Players will play until one player has successfully shredded their hand. On a player's turn they are able to take three actions to adjust the communal word, allowing them to play letters from their hands. At the end of a player's turn there must still be a functional word at the centre of the table, this word must be a minimum of three letters. The three actions can be made up of any mix of these actions.
- Add a letter anywhere in the word (below would be this action twice).
- Remove any letter.
- Rearrange all the letters in the word.
- Swap a letter (below would be using this action twice).
- Play a punch-uation card. This card can be played out of turn as a response and when a player plays this card on their turn it ends their turn.
After the turn finishes any new letters played by the previous player that forces the next player to draw cards, will now result in more cards being drawn from the main deck. If a player is unable to make a new word they have to draw one card from the main deck.
Final Thoughts:
- A word manipulation game that plays fast, their is still the strategy of making a word from the letters in your hand and actions avaliable. Generally these words are smaller though which keeps the word game puzzle but makes it much faster on an individual turn.
- Some of the rules in the rulebook are unclear.
- Sometimes difficult to determine the new letters that are adding cards to the next player's turn. Would have been nicer if it was simply all cards in the word make the player draw cards.
Alphabet War is a game I'll be keeping and look forward to bringing it out as a filler or at family gatherings. The game is very straightforward, it is aggressive Uno but with building a communal word. On a player's turn they have three actions to convert the word in the middle to a new word by adding, removing, replacing even rearranging letters. They are doing this for two reasons firstly to remove as many cards from their hand as possible (hopefully three) and secondly to make the next player (hopefully the player in the lead) to gain more cards. Any letters played with a value in the corner will make the next player draw more cards. What makes the game fun is that instead of having to make new words with what the player has the puzzle is flipped to how best to modify the word in the centre to cause cards to draw to the next player, play as many cards as possible or to set up future turns of easily changed words. This is the kind of word game that suits a wide range of player preferences and I can easily recommend it.
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