Game: Alpha Playing Cards

Thread: Alpha Playing Cards - Review

Vince Londini — 2007-04-16T01:22:57+00:00

Alpha Playing Cards by Tim Schutz
Review by Vince Londini
April 15, 2007

The unique factor about this alphabet deck is the semi-wild vowels. We find that with most letter-card decks you can easily get an unplayable hand, often because you have the wrong vowels. This deck features dual-vowel cards such as A/E, A/I, A/O, A/U...and so on for each vowel, providing 30 semi-wild vowels, 2 true-wilds, and 42 consonants. The cards seem durable enough, though the tuck-box is somewhat flimsy.

Dozens of games exist and dozens more could be made for this deck, but the deck ships with rules for 3 favorites (WordSnake, 6x6, and NewWord). These appear on a double-sided folded sheet. They're functional, but a booklet with rules for many games (a la the Rook rulebook) would be handy - if not shipped with the cards, than something like a 5.5"x8.5" booklet available for an extra $4.95 from the author (or something like that) would be nice.

For those who are more interactive and interested in playtesting and developing games for this deck, an active design community cooks up several new designs a year. Visit AlphaPlayingCardGame@yahoogroups.com.

We like WordSnake, BookWorms, and and Jacob and Angela's adaptation of 6 Nimmt! We adapted the classic Bali for these cards (unpublished) and contribute with playtest remarks on the Yahoogroups discussion.

I posted the following at Amazon.com where you can now buy Alpha Playing Cards:

"If you like word games, you'll enjoy the Alpha Playing Card deck. Including rules for several games, the cards could be used for an infinite number of games - you can even make up your own!

Our favorite feature of these letter cards, that makes this deck unique, is the double-vowel card. Too often in a word card-game, you get bogged down with the wrong vowels in your hand. The double-vowel cards give you more options.

We own several Alpha decks and have given them away as gifts for friends. In addition to playing the games described with the deck, we've adapted other word games for use with these cards.

If you like word games, give the Alpha deck a try!"

Ditto that last line
Vince

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ponchera69 — 2006-10-15T02:01:05+00:00

Hail to BGG

Thread: Session Report - Word Away by Jacob and Angela (6 Nimmt!)

Vince Londini — 2006-04-14T12:42:55+00:00

As members of the AlphaPlayingCardGames Yahoo! group (http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/AlphaPlayingCardGames/), we just got Angela and Jacob's rules to adapt 6 Nimmt! for the Alpha Playing Card Deck.

I won't summarize the rules, as Jacob and Angela are refining them. Let me just say that the point is to avoid capturing cards. And at the end of a round/hand you can make words with the cards you did capture (a 2nd chance to try to avoid as many points as possible). You score points for the letters you cannot play. Obviously, lowest score wins.

Our Game

Round/Hand #1 (L=8, V=1)
I took 2 5-card rows and 1 extra letter for 11 cards. I formed RUN, PIG, and TONE, but failed to play the N - 1 pt.
Lori took 1 5-card row and 1 extra letter for 6 cards. Lori formed LOX, but was stuck with a Y, I, T - 8 pts.

Round/Hand #2 (L=10, V=0)
I took 0 cards - 0 pts!
Lori took 15 cards and formed PLUCK, VOW, and GEM, leaving H, T, M, N unplayed - 10 pts.

Round/Hand #3 (L=0, V=1)
I took 5 cards and formed WANE, leaving an I/U - 1 pt.
Lori took 10 cards, but formed HERO, JUT, and SHE - 0 pts!

Round/Hand #4 (L=0, V=0)
I took 1 card because I misplayed, then 2 more to try to gather enough letters to form a word. Success - I formed LAD - 0 pts.
Lori also misplayed this round and took 1 card, then took 2 5-card rows for 11 cards. She got out of it by forming PRONG, HAS, and JOT - 0 pts!

Round/Hand #5 (L=4, V=0)
I took 10 cards and made QUID, RAG, and TON - 0 pts.
Lori took 5 cards and made JUG, but left a T, H behind - 4 pts.

Wrapping Up
The final score was L=20, V=2. A rare case of overwhelming victory by Vince as Lori usually trounces him at word games.

We decided to end the game when one player reached 20 points. That made for a handy 30-minute game, including learning the rules and jotting down questions to ask Jacob and Angela on the Yahoo! group.

WE LIKE IT!
Vince and Lori

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EJKemp — 2005-03-18T21:36:24+00:00

Thread: Re:Where can I get Word

tjgames — 2005-03-15T01:20:39+00:00

The booklet is no longer available. All the games that came in the booklet (plus ones that weren't published at the time the booklet was printed) are available on the tjgames website http://www.tjgames.com/alphagames.html

Thread: Where can I get Word & Letter Games for All Ages?

steveoliverc — 2005-03-13T15:57:30+00:00

Where can I get the book shown in picture #20870 called Word & Letter Games for All Ages? or can I get all of the games at the TJ Games web site?

BTW -- I've just gotten my deck of Alpha Playing Cards and love the WordSolitaire game. It's fun on it's own and I can see this helping me in my next game of I'm surprised there aren't more games listed at the web site -- I think this deck of cards has the potential to have many more games -- sort of the piecepack of word games? Maybe a design competition would get some more games going...

Thread: User Review

steveoliverc — 2005-03-13T05:47:59+00:00

WordSolitaire
By Tim Schutz
A game played with the Alpha Playing Cards
For one player
About 10 minutes

I had seen the BGG entry for the Alpha Playing cards a while back, and flagged it with the notification for new content. Last week, Tom Vasel did a review which renewed my interest in this deck of letter cards, which led me to the Yahoo group http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/AlphaPlayingCardGames/ where you can purchase these for $4.50. I figured I couldn’t go wrong for less than five bucks, and within a few days the deck arrived in the mail. These cards are a very nice quality, the graphics are crisp and functional (the letters are large and easy to read), and the letter distribution is well-balanced. The deck comes with a rules sheet for several games, and at the publisher’s web site there are several more. (Full details on the letter distribution and the full rules to WordSolitaire can be found at the publishers web site at http://www.tjgames.com/ )

Deal out six cards in a row. Find a word to spell, and place each letter in order onto the previous letter. For example, if you deal out W T E/O S A/E R (where the E/O and A/E are the vowel cards), you could spell WASTE by stacking the A, S, T, and E onto the W. Now your row of cards is reduced to two cards: E and R. Deal out four cards so that you are back to six cards in your row, and continue playing.

As in most Alpha Playing Card games, the vowel cards can be played using either of the vowels on the card, for example, either A or E on the A/E card.

There are two wild cards in the deck, which can be any letter you need at any time (they might end up in more than one word).

The game ends in a loss if you cannot spell a word.

You win if you end the game having played all the cards, and all the cards end in one stack.

The rules include a couple of advanced strategies. One is that you must use the top vowel of a vowel card (no flipping the card around to use the other vowel). The other is to remove both of the wild cards. I leave the wild cards in, but they must stay as the letter which they were first played as in a word.

So far, my success rate is about 1 in 3 when playing with the advanced variant. It is very challenging.

Some of the strategies I try include:
Try to make a word ending in a vowel, especially ending in E.
Leave another word in the cards that remain, so that you can make another word.
Always leave a vowel when possible (the game ends if you can’t make a word).
Use the higher-point (less frequent) letters before using the lower point (more frequent) letters.
Use duplicate vowels and try to leave a mix of vowels.
Make good use of the 2- and 3-letter word lists.
Other useful Scrabble-related word lists include vowel dumps, Q without U words, J words, and Z words.

Overall, I’m enjoying WordSolitaire both as a fun game and as practice for playing . I’m looking forward to trying other games with the Alpha Playing Cards deck, and recommend these cards to anyone who likes word games.

Thread: User Review

TomVasel — 2005-03-07T12:54:51+00:00

I have to admit that when I first heard of Alpha Playing Cards (tjgames, 1997 - Tim Shutz), I wasn’t terribly interested. But when I read a description that it was the word game equivalent of the piece pack, I acquired a copy. And I have to say that the description of the deck is spot on. There’s no single game that defines the deck - rather, it is a set of tools that one uses to play a variety of games. Considering how inexpensive this deck is, it’s certainly worth the price. The cards are of high quality, and several of the games are sure to tickle someone’s fancy.

The deck comes with seventy-three cards: forty-two consonants, thirty vowels, two wild cards, and a summary card of card distribution. Each card has the letter printed on it (or a question mark on the wild cards) as well as a point value for that letter. The vowel cards are unique in the fact that there are two different vowels on each card, giving them a great deal of flexibility. My cards have gone through a great deal of wear and tear and still look pretty new, so I’m pretty impressed by the quality.

The games that can be played with the cards are varied and can be found in various locations on the internet, as well as a few printed ones that come with the game. Most of the games can be found at the official internet site, http://www.tjgames.com/alphagames.html . I’ll mention a few that I’ve had a chance to play...

- New Word: This game simply has a player use the cards to make words, using some of the letters of the word the previous player made. It’s an okay game for adults but can actually be fairly useful for those teaching languages or spelling.
- War of Words: A two-player game that plays like a word version of Schotten Totten. Players play cards to form words at seven locations. The player to score the highest point valued word, or the first player to lay down a seven-letter word wins that location. The first player to claim three adjacent locations, or five locations total, wins the game. This is a favorite of mine, since Schotten Totten is one of my favorite two-player games. It’s a little harder to “prove” that you can’t be beaten at a location, but it’s a tremendous mind exercise. If this was the only game you could play with the deck, I’d be satisfied.
- Word Poker: This is played similar to poker, but with some changes - mostly allowing words to be added to the card rankings. I enjoyed this - not as much as regular poker, but it has a time and a place - especially when played with kids learning English.

As you can see from a couple of my comments, the deck makes an excellent teaching tool - probably one of its better uses. There are a few decks out there that have letters on them, but this is the best one I’ve used. I really like the fact that the vowel cards have two different letters each on it - it keeps the game from getting too stifled. The games are interesting with War of Words being my favorite. Considering the inexpensive price of the game, I think it’s definitely worth picking up - both as teaching tool, and an excellent deck of cards useful for playing a variety of games.

Tom Vasel
“Real men play board games.”

Thread: User Review

Zinger — 2005-02-14T17:48:35+00:00

As a pretext, I really like word games, so it comes as no surprise that I like a deck designed to be a game system for various word games.

The deck scores high points for flexibility, but loses out in enticement factor. That is to say, it's a simple deck of simple cards, which can be hard to lure players towards when they have other more interesting looking games at their disposal, something more tactile with tiles, or with a nice board, or with fancier cards. (On several occasions, people insisted on playing Quiddler over Alpha based on the box art and card art.)

However, I recommend getting it to the table, because their are some pretty fun games that come in this tiny tuckbox. After reading the rules that came with the game, I immediately went to the website and printed out a few more rules which looked appealing.

War of Words: This one was actually my favorite, a game inspired by Knizia's Battle Line. It brings both strategy, planning ahead and a large degree of intensity, which can be lacking in word games. Definitely a winner.

6 x 6: The first time I dealt this out, I received 6 consonants with which I could form no words. That left me a bit cold, but after trying...

Word Solitaire, I found that this may just be inherent in such solitaire games. There's a point where, by no real fault of your own, you're just screwed. Once you can get going, your skills in knowing when to use and keep vowels weighs against the luck of the draw. But after trying both solitaire games, I found I preferred Word Solitaire to 6 x 6. Either way, it's just a pleasant time-wasting diversion.

New Word: This one I tried with my family and they all seemed to enjoy it. Depending on strategies, the game can be either very static, or very dynamic, so it benefits to have to game plans at all time, one based largely on the word spelled on the table, and one spelled largely with the cards in your hand. It's a great feeling to trump someone's use of a rare letter by using their same cards in a bigger and better word. All in all, very clever game, and I found the best in the rules which come in the box.

Word Snake: I had a hard time judging this one based on the fact that it is a real time game. I tend to be much more dextrous than other folks I play with so cannot get a good reading from a competitive game. However, it seems as if it would be fun with players of the same skill level.

Lost for Words: Another game inspired by a Knizia design, Lost for Words is a word game spin on Lost Cities. Not a huge fan of that particularly mathematical offering, so I didn't veer towards this game too much. However, it is a testament to the versatility of this deck.

All in all, a worthwhile purchase for word game fans, and I recommend checking out the website to pick up some more interesting rules, as well as rules for kids' games.

Thread: User Review

wingedpotato — 2005-01-21T02:58:28+00:00

Alpha Playing Cards is a deck of 74 cards (30 “double” vowels, 42 consonants, and 2 wild cards). The deck is used to play a variety of games. My copy came with a list of 4 games plus a note saying that you could visit the website (www.tjgames.com) for more games.

I was immediately struck by how small a deck this is compared to comparable word game card games (Alpha Blitz, Letter Head, My Word, and Quiddler). This is due to the doubling of the vowel cards. Each vowel card has two different letters printed on it, one in each corner in large size, and the opposite letter in small size. Each card also has a point value assigned to it based on its frequency in English words.

I really enjoy word games so I was eager to try it out. Here are my impressions:

Design/Production Value: Although I like the mix of the deck, the quality of the playing cards and the very plain typeface of the letters left me cold. Also the layout of the vowel cards made it difficult in some instances to tell which vowel was being used or to remember there was another vowel that could be used.

Rules: The rules came with instructions for 4 games (6x6 Solitaire, Wordsnake, New Word and New Word Jr). In all cases the instructions were simple and easy to understand, and well organized.

Games: 6x6 Solitaire – This is a nice challenging solitaire game that engaged me more than regular solitaire ever does. The point values on the cards are a nice reminder of which letters may be difficult to get rid of later, and the deck comes with a menu card for those card counters out there. The game seemed a little hard to beat, but can be modified easily for different challenge levels.

New Word: This game is kind of like Scrabble without the geographical restrictions. Each turn you try to build a word out of cards from your hand and the current word on the table. Although we all liked it, the game suffered from Analysis Paralysis and tended to play kind of slow.

Wordsnake: This was the hands down favorite of my group. Players try to arrange a large hand of cards into words that connect by the first and last letters. This is played quickly and frenetically, which was a fun change of pace. The only drawback is that there is very little player interaction, just a little bragging at the end about how cleverly you connected your words.

Blitz: To test adaptability, we played the Blitz game from the Alpha Blitz card deck. It worked surprisingly well and everyone enjoyed the game.

Final Thoughts: It would seem the designer was hoping that this deck of cards could become as ubiquitous as regular playing cards, checkerboards, and Uno, and that players would have an endless supply of games to play. With that goal in mind I would like to see a deck that was a little more interesting to look at, and a little clearer layout-wise for the double vowel cards.

The games, however, are a lot of fun and the field is wide open for new games that could be played. Also the website contains plenty of games for children, so the educational value of this product is right on the money. Maybe if they could get the decks into classrooms, they might see their product take off. All in all I think this deck should be standard gear for anyone who likes word games and wants something small and portable.

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Verkisto — 2004-06-02T15:44:22+00:00

Thread: Re:Session Report

icheyne — 2004-05-25T15:54:14+00:00

I got some good feedback from Tim Shultz, the designer of the Alpha Playing Cards:

"I would have to agree that when it's not your turn in NewWord there is little to do, although the game itself is good. I find that people who really like word games, like Scrabble players, tend to like NewWord (maybe because they are used to longer down times like in a 4 player Scrabble game) better then regular board gamers. Even though NewWord can handle 6 players I think it's better when only 2 to 3 players play making less down time. You can use a timer to speed things up; I know Scabble Players do and they pause the timer when challenges arise. AlphaBid (a new game I am working on) handles 3 to 6 players, will have less down time because basically everyone is involved in every hand. I haven't had a chance to play-test it yet, but if you are interested you can find it on the Yahoo Group."

Thread: Session Report

icheyne — 2004-05-21T15:51:57+00:00

www.cheyne.net/blog/archives/000030.html

I bought these a while ago, after reading about them in Ron Hale-Evan's Games Systems articles at the Games Journal. We adapted a currently available commercial word game to use with the cards and it worked brilliantly. It's a bit unfair to divulge the name of the game, but I will say that it was real-time and fiendishly difficult.

I am very encouraged after using these cards and will definitely try some more games for them. Every serious gamer should have a copy. They are only $9, or free if you print them from the website. The cards are flexible and portable, so I'll definitely add them to my travelling games pack, along with my piecepack and regular playing cards. It's a shame there are so many alphabet card decks on the market, as it dilutes the buzz that might generate some demand.

Thread: Session Report

icheyne — 2004-05-21T15:51:57+00:00

New Word is one of the rulesets in the Alpha Playing Cards box.

New Word is simple, but hard. To start the game six letter cards are put down. Each player in turn makes a word out of the letters on the table and the six letter cards in their hand. After the word scores, the next player uses it to create a new word, with the help of the six cards in their hand. You get multiplier bonuses for longer words. The highest score was wrangler, 20 points, for the letters, x 4, for the 7+ letters in the word multiplier.

More complexity is added when someone makes a questionable word, as challenging it results in the player who is wrong losing a turn. I lost the game, but it was fun be unsuccessfully challenged over quin, when I was not sure if it was a valid word in the first place.

New Word is exciting and very tough, but there is little to do when it is not your turn, as it's difficult to plan until you know what letters are going to be available. We should have used a timer to cut down turn length. Unfortunately all the scoring time and challenging time make using a timer difficult. For our group, scoring time would have been reduced by increasing the threshold for words. 5 letters minimum word length would have been a better place to start.

Thread: Session Report

daw65 — 2003-06-06T14:15:06+00:00

Helen and I were the first to arrive, carpooling from work again. Helen went out to check out the vegetable garden, which Jim had just finished replanting. About when she finished, Susy arrived, for her first appearance at a game night. We were expecting a few more folks, so I figured we could play a quick game until they arrived. I brought out my Alpha Playing Cards, and we played New Word.

Dave jumped out to a big lead with his first word, which scored him 88 points (the next closest had 54 points). The second, third, and fourth words were all high scoring, with 11 of the 12 words made scoring over 100 points. In fact, a lot of those scores were identical, as people simply changed a vowel to make "packing" into "picking" and then "pecking", for example. In fact, a lot of the scores were kind of large due to the presence of the "ing" cards, which everyone tried to keep around to keep words seven letters or longer, in order to get the x4 multiplier. From memory, other words that people made included "questioning", "achieving", "rainbow", and "thieving".

Largest score went to Helen's second word, with a score of 136 (alas, I don't recall what the word was). Unfortunately, the smallest score also went to Helen, for her first word, which only scored her 30 points. The game doesn't really play in rounds, but I kept score that way, and it turns out that everyone did end up having nine opportunities. There was no clear leadership on a round by round basis: Susy, Helen, and Dave each scored the largest point value in a round twice, Jim once, and in two rounds there were ties.

The scores were close, and after everyone had made eight words Dave held a slim 27 point lead over Susy, with Jim just five points behind her, and Helen 27 points behind him. Everyone had only one card their last round, so everyone tried to keep the most letters around to get the biggest multiplier. Susy scored 40, temporarily putting her 13 points ahead of Dave. But Dave, too, was able to make a 40 point word, which was enough to preserve his lead and earn the win.

Thread: User Review

CaptainCaveman — 2003-03-11T15:03:32+00:00

Tim Schutz was kind enough to send me a free deck of his Alpha Playing Cards for review. Tim has done some great work, and his focus on gaming systems rather than just games is very appealing.

An Alpha deck consists of 74 cards - 42 consonant cards, 30 vowel cards (each vowel card has two vowels printed on it), and 2 wild cards. You can purchase a deck from tjgames, or print one out for yourself. There is a similar mass-market game called Quiddler that is similar, but I find the card distribution and extensibility better in Alpha.

I have played several different games with Alpha with adults and kids. It has already become a staple filler game for our family. My 2 sons (ages 6 and 8) enjoy some of the simpler games, and we've found interesting variations of the games that allow us to handicap the adults to let the kids be more competitive. Let's discuss a few of the games.

makeAword
This is a great, open-ended game for kids where the victory conditions can be tuned and tweaked to suit the audience. 7-10 cards (more cards make the game easier) are dealt to the middle of the playing area, and players alternate making the best word possible from the inventory. The cards are refreshed after each player makes a word. The winner can be determined by points, funniest word, word with most consonants, etc. This one is Matthew's (6) favorite.

6x6
A solitaire game in which you try and use up all of the cards in a 6x6 grid. This solitaire game is the better of the two - I found there were more choices to make and strategic elements than in WordSolitaire.

Alpha War
This is modeled on the game War played with standard playing cards. The deck is split in two, and players alternate dropping cards in the center of the table. Once three cards are on the table, a player can either make a word or pass. When a player makes a word, she gets to keep the cards. The goal is to capture all of the cards. Matthew enjoys this one as well.

WordSnake
This is an unusual game and one I expect to play more. There are no turns - play happens in real-time - it reminds me of some of the Icehouse games. Each player is dealt 13 cards, and a central pool of 9 cards is placed in the center of the table. The dealer calls "1,2,3, GO!" and players proceed to try and build a word snake - words with at least 3 letters, where each successive word begins with the last letter of the previous word. Play ends when a player uses all of their cards and calls "Stop!", or when all players pass. Players score points for letters in words, and lose points for leftover letters. The game is tense, frenetic, and fun.

AlphaRummy 500
This is rummy for Alpha cards. Melds are made by making words of 4 letters or more, with bonus multipliers for longer words. You can also play cards on existing words to make new words. My wife Julie and I played this one and had a blast - we expect to play it again.

Summary
If you would like a "portable Scrabble" that can be played quickly and is easy to teach kids, get this game! I strongly recommend it for educators and home schoolers. The price is right and you might even enjoy designing your own games.

Thread: User Review

Randy Cox — 2003-03-06T14:52:10+00:00

As stated by several others here, this is not really a game, but a set of Scrabble-like cards which can be used to play several games. That's OK, though I prefer for my game purchases to be focused on one game which is exceptional (not a game system) and if other games can be played with the same components, that's a bonus--but the key is to have a great game as a launching point.

I'm not sure that's the case with Alpha Cards. The cards are simply a distribution of letters (or, in the case of vowels, pairs of letters) with appropriate point values (based on the rarity of each letter in English usage). This is fine. The little quibbles I have here are 1) there are far too many vowels (30 out of 72 non-wild cards are vowels and each of those cards can be used to represent either of two different vowels) and 2) the vowel cards are different depending upon which orientation the card is facing (one letter is right-side up, the other is upside down).

This is particularly problematic in the New Word game, where one player places a word on the table and the next player must use at least one of those letters and at least one from their hand to make a new 4-or-more letter word. We were constantly having to turn cards upside down at the start of our turns to make sure we had the "right" letter face up. Probably would be a better game without forcing vowels to retain their "orientation" after playing them to the board--and it'd be much quicker. This game also suffers from the "change one letter" syndrome. A ton of words can score high tallies and you can simply rearrange the letters (technically, throwing out one "E" and replacing it with one from your hand, for instance) and score the same tally your prior opponent just scored with a slightly altered word.

But if those "problems" with New Word are too much for you, there are plenty of other game rules listed in the rule book. Word Poker looks very interesting as do the solitaire games. I can't say Word Rummy or Alpha War are very enticing, as the versions of those games (Rummy 500 and War) played with standard playing cards don't do much for me.

Another game, which seems to have been tacked on after the initial release of the game, is Word Snake. Now, for people who have played Tuf-abet, the similarities are striking. Not that there's anything wrong with that, because there really are only so many good ideas for word games sitting out there ready to build a game around. My problem with Snake is that a there are not enough cards in the deck for each person to have enough cards to work from (better if each player simply were dealt 15 cards--or more with fewer than 5 players).

But the point of Word Snake is to yell "1-2-3 Go" and have a mad free-for all with everyone trying to build connecting words from their letters, periodically grabbing a card from the pool in the middle of the board (small pool--only 9 cards). The rules state that you must use the pool card immediately in your "snake." However, the rules allow you to start over on a new snake at any time. So, one would think that a shrewd player would simply grab a card from the table and immediately make a short word to start their snake. Then they'd abandon their snake and grab the next best card from the center and start the snake again with another innocuous word. This would continue until they'd gobbled up most of the good cards from the center and they could start their "real" snake in earnest. I guess this game is just too frantic for me (I never saw the appeal of Falling, either).

Interestingly, of all the variants supplied with the rule book, the most common free-form word game I can think of (an anagram game, like Scrabble Scoring Anagrams) is not included.

This is a good point at which to note my other concern with this product--the rule book. The booklet I received was probably 4 times the size of the deck of cards (meaning there's no way to fit it into the box with the cards. I think the manufacturer should stick with rules to just two or three games and print them in a size which will fit into the box of cards. There's nothing worse than storing a game and its rules separately. (Well, in the small world of games, there is little worse).

But you shouldn't get the wrong impression about this deck of cards. I do like them and will surely play New Word, Word Poker, and the solitaire games again. Probably several times. But don't expect any of these games to be better than the handful of games you get rules for in Letter Head (didn't that game have a "Word Poker" variant, too?). Maybe this game should bill itself as New Word & More, much like Mu & Mehr, which is a fine game but the "Mehr" (more) is superfluous--a person purchases that product to play Mu (the "good" game) and they never even bother with the half-dozen extra games which can be played from the same deck. Alpha Cards would benefit greatly from billing itself as a specific game, with "more" possibilities.

I still rate this game at a very respectable 7 1/2, so I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys word games. I guess it's just missing a little polish or something. Still, thumbs up.

Thread: User Review

Steerpike — 2003-03-05T20:20:17+00:00

When you buy your Alpha Playing Cards you get a deck of 74 cards (42 consonants, 30 vowels and 2 wild cards) and a rules booklet. The cards are of good quality - they don't match the best quality playing cards for feel and thickness, but neither are they flimsy.

Each card has a very large letter (printed both ways up) in the middle, with a smaller letter along with the points value printed in the top-left and bottom-right corners. Alpha Playing Cards have their own particular card distribution and points value for each letter, but the thing that really marks them out is the use of 'semi-wild vowel' cards. All the vowel cards in the game have two different vowels printed on them, and in most games the choice is left to the player as to which of these the card counts as (although in some Solitaire variants the vowel has to be used as dealt - i.e. the letter in the top left corner). This use of semi-wild vowels is both a curse and a blessing. In some of the games (e.g. NewWord) it is very awkward because the value of the vowel card is 'fixed' once played, and it can be difficult to remember what way up the vowel card is meant to be if you are seated round a table. On the other hand, the semi-wild vowels solve at a stroke the problem in many word games of needing an excessive number of vowels, and also adds greatly to the options and permutations presented by a hand of cards.

There are presently rules for ten games in the booklet that accompanies the game (although I get the impression that the rulebook will evolve over time) - three children's games, two solitaires and five others. Some of these games are fairly straight conversions of standard card games such as Poker or Rummy, while others are more unusual. Word Solitaire is very addictive, Word Snake (where you use a hand of 13 cards and a pool of common cards to create a string of words where the last letter of each word is the first letter of the next) is both frantic and brain-taxing, and NewWord (where you use a combination of cards from your hand and cards in the word on the table to create a new word) is very pleasing as you can easily end up with 12 letter words or longer. All of these games have a slightly unpolished feel - there were some rule questions and situations that would have been caught with more playtesting. For instance, in NewWord you have to use at least one card from your hand and one card on the table to make a word, but it wasn't clear whether you could simply replace a letter with an exact copy from your hand (we ruled that you couldn't). Overall, the games provided are good and a lot of fun, but not great.

However, Alpha Playing Cards are advertised as a 'game-system' and it is as such that they should be reviewed. One thing missing from my rules booklet is the fact that you can go to www.tjgames.com to download rules for more games. Just looking at the cards will spark ideas in any would-be games designer. Within a day of getting my cards I had thought of ten (no, really, it's sad I know!) new games to play with them. I think there is potential for some really innovative ideas using Alpha Playing Cards - they are the word game equivalent of the piecepack. All it takes is for enough people to create some truly interesting games.

So, for $9 you could be getting a potentially limitless number of word games, and if you can't afford $9 you can print out an entire deck using the PDF files at the TJgames website. Either way, I'd call that a bargain.

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tjgames — 2003-02-28T17:28:17+00:00

Thread: User Review

rwhe — 2002-08-12T06:25:05+00:00

Alphabet decks such as Alpha Playing Cards are card game systems designed for word games; they usually have a single letter on each card, accompanied by a number indicating the "value" of that letter (as on Scrabble tiles). It would be interesting to see a "standard" alphabet deck develop out of the competing decks currently on the market, but meanwhile, since many decks are very similar, you can usually play games designed for one deck with another deck. For example, the Alpha Playing Cards, WhizORD, and A-B-C OY! decks are all very compatible. Of course, all three decks have different deck sizes, card distributions, and numerical values for letters, but these differences should be trivial when adapting games from one system to another. The main difference between these three decks is that Alpha Playing Cards have semi-wild vowels. That is, a given vowel card can be either an "A" or an "E", for example.

In terms of intellectual freedom, the Alpha deck is the most open game system of the alphabet decks I have seen. Designer Tim Schutz not only posts all the rules for his system on his site, but also provides colour PDF files of Alpha cards gratis, for download and printing.

The games provided with the Alpha deck are fun; my sister-in-law is addicted to the game NewWord and the solitaire games in the Alpha rules booklet. I have played a beta version of WordPoker with an Alpha deck, and it was a great deal of fun. Unlike the Poker rules provided with WhizORD, which only take into account letter values, Alpha's WordPoker rules provide for the analogue of a full house (for example): a hand containing a three-letter word and a two-letter word, instead of three of a kind and a pair. Only after hand types are compared are letter values for similar hands compared.

The Alpha deck is my favourite of the alphabet decks I have seen. The production values on the commercially-published deck are high, and I appreciate the freedom of the system. On the other hand, the "semi-wild" vowels innovation may make it difficult to play certain old standard alphabet-deck games, such as the Victorian game Anagrams, at least in the usual way.

--adapted by the author from "Game Systems, Part 2" in The Games Journal