Paperback

Paperback tasks 1-4 players with building the best words they can from their own ever-evolving decks of letter cards. Designed and published by Tim Fowers (the same great mind behind Burgle Bros.), this wordy wonder is a niche classic that is adored by many gamers, myself included. Let’s dive into this novel deck-building card game to see what makes it tick.

A Solid, Leathery Spine

At its core, Paperback follows the classic deck-builder formula; each turn, you draw a hand of five cards from your personal deck and use them to buy better cards from a common shop. Where Paperback deviates from this, however, is that your cards are only worth anything if you can spell out a word with them. Each card has one or two letters on them, while each deck starts with five valueless wild cards that can be used as any letter to facilitate your wordsmanship.

Using these, you’ll gradually improve your deck as you fill it with more expensive letters that will then net you more and more money on future turns. The ultimate goal in Paperback is to earn the most Victory Points, which are usually found on the expensive Fame Cards. These also function as wild cards, and once two stacks of Fame Cards are emptied, the game will end. On its own, this is a tantalizing premise for anyone that enjoys a good word game, but we’re just getting started.

Many of the expensive letter cards you’ll purchase from the shop will also have added abilities that might be worth more if they’re used at the start or end of your word, or may let you draw more cards next turn. These can only be activated if you use those cards in a word, however, which adds a brilliant layer of strategy between taking the cards with the best abilities and the letters you’re most confident spelling with. 

Small complimentary modules help to expand on this formula by introducing variable player powers, common themes to aim for and more, but the cooperative rules are the real star of the show. Instead of fighting for possession of the Fame cards, players instead team up to purchase them from a pyramid structure before a round limit expires. This tears down any barriers between you and your cohorts and levels the playing field. Suddenly you’re all pulling in the same direction, offering buying advice and shouting out possible words for your allies to form. Though it does require some intricate deck-building requirements to buy that final 17c card, this mode is incredibly enjoyable. 

Lovely, Neat Pages

As strange as it might seem, one of the most charming aspects of Paperback – for me, at least – is the neat organisation featured inside the box. Despite being quite small, it’s tall and long to accommodate your entire library of cards, with dividers for each denomination of card making setup and teardown simple and satisfying. There’s even enough room leftover to fit in the Unabridged Expansion if you like! Considering the great lengths that board games go to in order to entice us with miniatures, tokens, and trinkets, I really wish more would feature tidy storage solutions like this.

The artwork and visuals of Paperback may not be such a clear-cut victory, however. While some detractors may see the basic colors and simplistic drawings as plain, there’s an amazing level of clarity in the cards. The bright colors make the letters pop without getting in the way of the card text, and the worn vignettes provide the believable appearance of real pages and covers from your favourite novels.

Pobody’s Nerfect

One of the biggest weaknesses of the deck-building genre are bad draws, and a couple of unlucky hands can really spoil your fun. This problem is certainly prevalent in Paperback, as a hand of exclusively consonants can make forming a word into a real challenge. This problem can even be exacerbated if the only cards you can afford in the shop all have awkward letters like C, V, or RE. Thankfully, Paperback does try to alleviate these issues in a couple of ways.

Firstly, players can offer their hand up to their opponents, challenging them to spell a better word than the one they’ve made. In return, the player that crafts a word which the owner decides to use will receive a discount cube for use on a subsequent turn. This is great for short-term assistance, but don’t expect it to close the gap between you and your cryptic crossword-solving in-laws; players that are just naturally better at word games still have a large advantage.

Of course, this is true of any word game, and players should be aware of this going into it that they may have an uphill battle against their wordsmith relatives. There is another equalising factor, however; there is always one Common Card available – usually a vowel – that helps to reduce the impact of bad hands. This is a great way of improving your scoring chances, but having an I, U or spacebar may just throw more spanners into your literary machine.

Final Thoughts

Paperback can be easily described as “Scrabble meets deck-building”, but this clever little card game is so much more than the sum of its parts. Not only is it delightfully illustrated and organised, but it’s also an excellent introduction to deck-building mechanics for newcomers to modern board games. If your parents or extended family are happy to play a round of Scrabble but contort their faces in bewilderment when you try teaching them anything from this decade, Paperback may just be the game to break that deadlock. The flexibility of playing it competitively or cooperatively is not to be underestimated, particularly if you’re playing with multiple generations of gamers.

Paperback does also have a sequel from Tim Fowers in Hardback, though I’ve found the simplicity of Paperback makes it a more welcoming experience. There’s even a great digital version for iOS and Android that adds AI opponents and online multiplayer! This helps to alleviate the relative difficulty of finding the physical game – which is undeniably nice to have and to hold – but I think we could all benefit from some aids to socially-distanced gaming at the moment, don’t you?