March has seen various boardgame ‘classics’ return to the table: ‘Carcassonne’, ‘Castles of Burgundy’ etc. The only new game was ‘Hardback’ which Elaine received for her birthday. Elaine enjoys word based puzzles and games, and we already have ‘Paperback’ also published by Tim Fowers Games.
We were interested to see if ‘Hardback’ was significantly different from ‘Paperback’, or whether it was simply a derivative game. Both games are deck-building word games, but ‘Hardback’ does feel significantly unique to make it stand apart. In ‘Hardback’ any card can be used as a wild by playing it face-down. This makes formation of words easier, but wilds don’t yield the benefits of the card. To form words longer than your hand size of 5, you use ink markers to add extra cards/letters but these have to be used in your word and cannot be converted to wilds (there are also ‘Tipex’ markers to cancel the ‘ink’ restrictions). Additional cards can be bought to add to your deck, each giving different benefits, and these fall into 4 ‘genres’. Using 2 cards from the same genre in your word yields bonus benefits. ‘Hardback’ is a race to 60 prestige points, so it is easier to see your progress compared to opponents, whereas in ‘Paperback’ scoring is more hidden and the game length variable. The game comes with a few expansion rules etc., we have yet to make up our minds which work best and which we will avoid. Overall, I think ‘Hardback’ is a nice addition to our games collection and is sufficiently different to ‘Paperback’.
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