Friday, September 23, 2022

Paperback Writer

     So, those of you who know me really well know that my favorite band of all-time is The Beatles. I was completely obsessed with The Beatles that started for me when I was in 6th grade, and I discovered my parent's Beatles records, which I played ad nauseum towards the rest of my family. This post has notihng in common with The Beatles per se`, but I wanted to introduce a new board/card game I have been playing a lot called "Paperback" You know, like Paperback Writer by The Beatles....Anywho....

    Paperback is a deck builder game. for those who don't know what a deck builder game is, I will tell you. It's a game where you start out with only a few cards, usually bad ones, but when it's your turn, you can use some of the cards in your hand to buy other, better cards, and so as the game goes on, your deck gets bigger and better, and they will help you to win the game.

    In Paperback, you start out with five wild cards that aren't worth anything, and five letter cards that are the most common letters, like R or S or T, and they are worth one "penny". On your turn you draw five cards from your shuffled deck, and you use the letters and wild cards to spell out a word. After you play your cards, if you used any of the letter cards, you get one penny for each letter. For example, if I had three wilds and a T and an H, I could spell TRASH. Because three of the cards are wild, you don't get pennies for those, but I would get two pennies for my word. Then you use the pennies you earned for your word, and you buy more letter cards that will give you more pennies as you play. Once your deck runs out, you reshuffle them, so after a couple of turns, your cards are getting mixed up and giving you better letters to make higher scoring words. 

    Once you have enough pennies after playing a word, there are "Paperback Novel" cards, which have great artwork, and they are worth points at the end of the game. They also have different prices for the paperback book cards.. Some of the books cost more than others, but they are worth more points. After two stacks of Paperback Novels are depleted, the game is over and whoever has the most points for selling the most paperback novels wins the game.

Here is a picture to show you what the playing field looks like...


    All of the cards are cards you can buy by earning pennies. The cards on the left are the cheapest, and each column to the right costs a penny more. So the far E card is cheap, but the TI and EN are worth one penny more. The ST and the NT are worth one more, and so on. Some of the letters also give you a special ability. For example, if you play a card that says that the cards next to that card will get an extra penny, or will allow you to draw more cards so that you can spell longer words which would get you more points. At the top, you can see the Paperback cards with the fun pictures on them. I really love the Mod style of the game. 

    The ages are ten and up. The game can go as fast or slow as you want it. The game ends when two of the paperback card stacks are depleted, but you can choose how many paperback cards you want in each deck. If you want a quick game, put two paperback cards in each pile. If you want the game to last a little while longer, you can put up to six cards in a stack, or even just make it to where you only have one paperback book, but it's the one that costs 12 pennies, which will keep you busy for a while.

    The company that makes the game is called Fowers Games, www.fowers.games   is the website. They also have an app for your phones and tablets. There are two different Paperback Apps. One is the normal game, and the other app is the other game, plus the expansion deck that you can also buy for the tabletop version. We have been having a lot of fun playing this lately, and I have been excited to share it with you all. If you are into card and board games, this is a great one to pick up. I collect board games, and I think I might post a blog about my game collection. I am also thinking about writing one for my DVD/Blu-Ray collection. I have some movies that aren't that great, but when  video rental stores were a thing, Hollywood Video would order tons and tons of DVDs when a popular movie would come out so that they were "Guaranteed" to have it in stock to rent, but after a couple of weeks, they would sell most of the DVDs for three bucks a piece, or sometimes they would have sales where you could get five for five bucks, and instead of renting the movies, which cost a dollar more to rent over buying a movie, I would just buy the movies, so yeah, I have a few movies in my collection that were only paid for because they were cheap, and I hadn't seen most of them at the time.

    Anywho, I hope you are all doing well.  I haven't really haven't changed the way my blog posts end, like telling you I hope you are healthy and to be smart, and be kind, So much so that I'm not going to do it this time! Have a good one!


 

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