What’s the worst crime a game can commit? Being boring? Mediocre? Having a terrible rulebook? I’ve often said the most undesired reaction to any sort of creative output is a shrug of the shoulders and an ‘It’s fine, I guess’. For me the worst thing a game can do is make promises with its setting and theme that the mechanisms can’t deliver. I want my games to perfectly combine theme, setting, and mechanisms to give me a compelling game experience. Stamp Swap does just that.
Stonemaier Games publishes Stamp Swap, and it is designed by Paul Salomon, with art from Conner Gillette.
Stamp Swap is the Ronseal Quick Drying Woodstain, look it up on Youtube, of boardgames. It says Stamp Swap on the cover and that is exactly what you are going to do. The game sets you up as Stamp Collectors attending a 3 day, 3 rounds, convention. By obtaining, trading, and, showing off the best stamps you hope to come out on top with all the points.
The core of this experience, is an ‘I cut, You choose’ setup. This was a mechanism I had heard about, but had never experienced. At the start of each day you will layout a bunch of stamps and cards. The stamps are a variety of sizes, but all four sided of course. Each one has its own theme, like monuments, flowers, or space. They are also a variety of colours. Stamps are worth points at the end of the game. Some stamps are damaged, negative points, or just worth zero, at least on their own. The way you lay out these items also adds a different rule each time, giving each round a slightly different flavour and emphasis.
The cards you add to the stamps represent different exhibitors and other folk you might meet at the convention that may help you out with a variety of powers. Even the first player position is up for grabs in the choices you are about to make.
This smorgasbord laid out, you then start picking from it. One at a time you’ll build a collection of stamps and cards. Stamps can be face up or down, making some picks a risk. You’ll proceed to split these into two piles that can be as equal, or as wonky, as you want. Cards and stamps go into these piles, everything is up for grabs. You can reserve one item for yourself, but everything else goes into the piles.
Now, you don’t get to keep these piles of possibility. These towers of temptation. Heaped happiness made real. No they are not yours. Not yet at least. You must now risk one of them being taken. You split, they choose.
I really like this mechanism. It is absolutely agonising, and I mean that as a compliment. You gather and collect the stamps and cards that you want. Of course, if you only collect what you want, then you are going to have give up some of that in the swap. Choosing to sprinkle your choices with other people’s desires then maybe you can get them to take the piles you want. Maybe laced with a few nasty surprises.
This mechanism is not only central to the appeal of the game, but also reinforces the theme of Collectors and the choices they make to get what they want. You have to trade, negotiate, and entice. The simple act of splitting up your spoils, contains all those ideas. Well not necessarily your spoils after the next step.
The first player chooses an opponent and picks one of the piles in front of them. Everything in that pile now belongs to the first player and the other pile to their opponent. Now the opponent repeats this procedure, choosing a pile from another player, and leaving them the other. Round and round you go until everyone has done this. Of course it is possible that someone ends up with both their piles remaining, in which case they get to keep both of them. Blessing? Maybe. Depends on what traps you set.
This ‘Swap’ complete, you now get to ‘Show’ what you have. Stick your stamps down, collect your exhibitors together. Your stamps go in a grid. The Stamps have to be laid out so that the points are in the top right, which means getting the right stamps for your plans can be a little trickier. What you are trying to do on that grid changes each game.
Each player has a particular theme of stamp that they get points for, introducing a little asymmetry. There are also 4 goal cards and a ‘final show’ objective that is scored only at the end of the third round.
Each goal can be achieved on one of the three rounds, so you are forced to miss out on one. Of course this means you must commit to one of them early on day one, where you will definitely not be optimising the points. Even more difficult decisions to make, and one that makes the game feel a little spiky as you try and figure out which one to take the inefficency hit on.
A goal could ask you for different groups of a single theme, or a large contiguous group of one colour, alongside a variety of other objectives. These shared goals give a feeling of community. Yes you are competing, but also puzzling together how to square all these goals into the most points. It feels like friendly rivalry, not cutthroat competition.
Stamp Swap is a simple production which is mostly excellent. Shiny stamps that are points only and have no theme, stand out with gold foil finish. There is consideration for colour vision deficiencies with the border of each stamp changing based on the colour. The only slight issue I have is that it is sometimes hard to tell the theme of a stamp. We had a few moments where we couldn’t tell if something was space, monuments, or vehicles. The monuments do have their name on them in very tiny writing so you can tell them apart, just watch out for it. I feel like an icon on the border of each stamp could have alleviated the issue.
That production criticsim aside, Stamp Swap is the best of Stonemaier Games that I’ve played. Its setting is unusual, the theme of collecting and coveting, easy to connect with. The game supports the setting and theme with a set of compelling mechanisms that I have found engaging every time. It is easy to teach, and I hope it might make a good game to show off what modern design can be like. I’m going to stick in the collection and see if it finds its way to the table often enough to stay. In the meantime I give it my stamp of approval.
Stamp Swap was sent to me by Stonemaier Games for review.
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