Ever heard of Alphabet Lore? It is a small web series about letters created by Mike Salcedo. These letters have personalities and interact with each other. It eventually turned into a fast-paced series about a rogue letter attacking the others, who form teams and try to survive. Well, guess what? We now have a fast-paced, card game based on the series called Alphabet War and carry on reading to hear what I thought about it.
Alphabet Lore?
Firstly, I have no experience with the web series; I just did a bit of research after reading the back of the box. After talking with a few though, It does seem to be a well-known series with quite a few fans. It is certainly nice for the game to have a bit of background and lore behind it. Even if I didn’t know anything about it previously, it’s always nice to learn and discover new things.
Alphabet War
The premise of this one is simple. Be the first player to get rid of your cards by manipulating the central shared word. How you use your letters, how you force your opponents to draw more cards and clever word-play will win you the game.
Setting up is an easy one: give each player 8 cards and place one card in the centre of the table; this will start the shared word. After that, you just take turns clockwise, well initially anyway, taking up to 3 actions on your turn.
Actions
You can take up to 3 actions on your turn out of a possible 5. You can take any action, any number of times, until you have used 3. The only caveat is that at the end of your turn, the shared word must be a real word, spelt correctly.
Your first action possibility is to add a single letter to a word. Nice and simple and a sure-fire way to get rid of a few cards. Your second is to remove a letter from the word. While not as good for getting rid of your hand of cards, it is certainly required at times to enable you to make a new word and get rid of other cards in your hand.
Your third option is to replace a letter with another. Nice and simple and kind of like the last 2 actions combined. After that, you have the rearrange action, allowing you, for one action, to rearrange all the letters in the current word. Again, while not being a good way to get rid of cards, it's a very underrated action to enable you to spell another word and get rid of your other cards. Don’t sleep on that one.
Finally, we have playing a PUNCH-uation card. Which I think needs its own section. More to follow.
Taking a PUNCH-uation, in the face!
Certain letters have a little number on them and are red in colour. For every one you add to a word, the next person must draw that number of cards. You are basically attacking them. PUNCH-uation cards can be used as a defensive measure. Play the Question Mark to reverse the turn order and force the attacker to draw them instead, or play the Exclamation Mark to skip your turn entirely and make the next player in turn order draw them instead. Any number of PUNCH-uation cards can be played until it stops at a player to draw.
Playing one of these cards ends your turn immediately; they can also be played as part of your normal turn to just skip someone's turn or reverse the direction of play. Mostly though, in my experience, they are used to defend.
The Components
There’s not a great deal in this little box. Well, I say box but Alphabet War is one of those annoying tuck-boxes that rips in about 6 seconds. While I don’t personally like them, I know it does cut costs and keeps the footprint small. All there is is a deck of cards really, and while they are not the highest quality set of cards I have seen, they are very thick and will withstand a lot of plays.
Final Thoughts
The game is touted as Uno mixed with Scrabble, which I can see. Making words and working out how to get rid of your cards can be rewarding, while attacking your friends never gets old, in any game.
I do feel the basic premise may be a bit simple for some; me personally, I quite like word games so this was not really an issue. Alphabet War is not the sparkliest of games, but I will never turn down a game, and for the price, you can certainly do a lot worse.
Scores
Zatu Score: 70%
Artwork **
Complexity **
Replayability ***
Player Interaction ***
Component Quality **
You might like:
- Very easy to play and learn
- Making words is always fun (especially rude ones)
- Everyone in the family can play
You might not like
- Very simple
- Analysis paralysis can be a thing with certain players
Similar Games/Recommended: Uno, Scrabble, Exploding Kittens, Unstable Unicorns.
