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I got Super Scrabble for my birthday, after ridiculing it here (or at least ridiculing the marketing blurb). I played it against ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
cthulhia on Sunday; turns out it actually works pretty well. The main downside is that it takes much longer than regular Scrabble, both because there are twice as many tiles and because there's many more places to play each word. I was also worried about score inflation due to both the quadruple word/letter squares and the increased opportunities for double-doubles and triple-triples, but since they don't come into play until the midgame or later, they mainly help reduce the impact of an early blowout by making it easier to come back. There's also a greater chance for bingos, due to four blanks, ten Ss (instead of just four), and just having more room to roam. Anyway, if you don't mind a 2+ hour word game, it's worth trying out.
I also recently bought BuyWord, the Games 100 Game of the Year. At first I liked it a lot, thinking there's more strategy than in most word games (Scrabble, Overturn, and Wordsearch being the only real exceptions that I've found), but after a few playings I'm starting to think the decisions are not as interesting as I'd thought. In particular, you pretty much always want to buy every turn, since even a $1 profit is better than passing, and it's almost impossible to not make a profit while you still have your wild tiles. I'll probably start looking into the variant options, such as adding auction or trading elements; this would also help increase the interaction, since the basic game is almost (but not totally) multiplayer solitaire.
cthulhia on Sunday; turns out it actually works pretty well. The main downside is that it takes much longer than regular Scrabble, both because there are twice as many tiles and because there's many more places to play each word. I was also worried about score inflation due to both the quadruple word/letter squares and the increased opportunities for double-doubles and triple-triples, but since they don't come into play until the midgame or later, they mainly help reduce the impact of an early blowout by making it easier to come back. There's also a greater chance for bingos, due to four blanks, ten Ss (instead of just four), and just having more room to roam. Anyway, if you don't mind a 2+ hour word game, it's worth trying out.I also recently bought BuyWord, the Games 100 Game of the Year. At first I liked it a lot, thinking there's more strategy than in most word games (Scrabble, Overturn, and Wordsearch being the only real exceptions that I've found), but after a few playings I'm starting to think the decisions are not as interesting as I'd thought. In particular, you pretty much always want to buy every turn, since even a $1 profit is better than passing, and it's almost impossible to not make a profit while you still have your wild tiles. I'll probably start looking into the variant options, such as adding auction or trading elements; this would also help increase the interaction, since the basic game is almost (but not totally) multiplayer solitaire.
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