Friday, April 26, 2013

Scrabble Slam

Scrabble Slam.  A fast paced game of word generation. 

Description


Scrabble slam is an easy,  low stakes game of word generation.

The only mechanic to the game is a deck of 55 cards.  Each card has a wood like printing that makes it resemble the classic Scrabble letter tokens.

The difference between these cards and the tiles is that, excepting for the blank card, each card has a different letter on the front and back.  The two letters are displayed in the top left and bottom right corners (see picture).

The Game

 The game is very simple.  All the players decide on a word, usually with four letters like "SLAM" but you can vary the length without changing the style of gameplay.

The remaining cards are then split equally between the players.  When the game starts the players look through their hand of cards, either side,  for a single letter which will change the word.  For instance C could change SLAM to CLAM.  The player calls out the new word and places down the card covering the old letter.  Each play must change the spelling, that is to say, you cannot place an S on the S in SLAM, however you can reuses words.  so you could go SLAM, CLAM, SLAM.

There are no turns, you just call out the word and place the card as fast as you can.

SLAM, CLAM, CLAY, PLAY, PRAY, TRAY, TRAP, TRIP, TRIM, BRIM, GRIM, GRIT, etc...

When you play a blank card you declare a letter and it is treated as that letter.  

The first player to run out of cards wins the round.  If nobody can play a card, then the person with the least cards wins the game.

Video Demo and Review

Strategy

First and foremost,  know your words.  That is pretty much the most important part of any word game of course.  There is more to it than that though.

Try to get a good feel for the letters in your hand.  Many players get hung up on finding the letter first, then declaring the new word, then playing the card.  Players who have a better grasp of their cards can declare the new word first, then find the card, shaving off valuable seconds.


Sometimes two players will play a fast game all the way to the point that someone runs out.  Much more common though is that people will burn through the easy letters quickly, then play will slow down considerably when people have a handful of difficult last letters and cannot figure out how to play them.

If this is the case with your game play, there are two very good strategies to try.  First, if you know it is very likely that the game will slow down, then you may wish to prioritize expending difficult letters early in the game as you will have plenty of time to get rid of easy cards later later.

The second strategy is that if the game slows down, stop placing cards as fast as you find words.  Plan out your moves as far as you can.  Also, unless you agree not to in advance, look at your opponents cards.  Make sure none of your plays would benefit your opponent more than you. 

Take note that it is perfectly allowable to alternate back and forth between the same word: CLAM, PALM, CLAM, PALM, CLAM.   So, if you find a run of valid letter pairs in your hand, you can get rid of these quite quickly.

For  really serious players, in Scrabble, it is useful to memorize all the Q words and such.  As you have two options for every card (except one card that strangely has A on both sides) this is less important.   There is another word memorization strategy for Slam though.

In Slam words can change dramatically, but the location of vowels rarely changes, this is often the case because to move a vowel you must first remove one or add one then get rid of the existing one.

There are many four letter words with one vowel or two vowels, but there are only a handful with three vowels, and even fewer that can be derived from other four letter words. 

This means that knowing the words with three vowels in a row is very useful.  Here are a few :

AGON to AEON
BEAD/BEDU to BEAU
LIED/LIES/LIER/LIEN to LIEU
LULU to LUAU
MOTE/MOVE/MODE/MOKE/MOLE to MOUE
QUAD to QUAI
RAID/RAIL/RAGA to RAIA/RAYA
TOES/TOFU to TOEA

A few of these will even help you transition the locations of vowels in a word, which is infrequent in a game of Scrabble slam. 

Variant for Balancing the Game

With the popularity of Scrabble and Words with Friends, and vocabulary skills in general being inconsistent from person to person, it helps to have a balancing mechanic to prevent the game breaking down when one person is consistently much better than everyone else in the game.

If you have a word fiend in your group then here is a simple, quick balancing strategy.  At the end of a round of Scrabble Slam, find the person with the largest hand of cards remaining, this is very simple in a two person game.  Take half of these cards and set them aside.  Reshuffle the remaining cards and set up a new game as usual.  Prior to starting the new round though, give the stack of cards set aside previously to the word fiend.  They now have a larger set of cards they need to get rid of in order to win the round.

Younger kids

The minimum age for the game, as the rules stand is accurately at eight years.  However this can be a really fun game to play with kids when you partner them with an adult and the player/teams take turns.  This is really great at teaching spelling and introducing new words.

For  kids in the pre-spelling phase these cards can double as letter flash cards. 

Opinions

Simple rules, quick set up, quick game play, and sub $10 price range make this game a hit for parties, casual gaming, or for serious game nights, killing a few minutes while waiting for another game to get over.  Bonus points for doubling as flash cards and a solitaire, personal challenge game.

The package it comes in quickly breaks down though, so if you want it to travel, I suggest getting a robust card case. 

The random distribution of cards has little impact on a couples game but becomes a larger factor as you add players, thus limiting their card choices. 

Stats

Price $6
Age 8+ / 4+ when teamed with adults
Players 2-4/ 1+ 
Length 15 minutes
Style Quick Card Game, Quick Word Generation
Randomness Low to Moderate
PortabilityHigh (best with after-market case)
StopabilityHigh

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