Game only plays in 8 cards, so your success is decided with 8 decisions (basically). Select the best combo of cards to score you the most amount of points.
The most interesting factor is that there are 2 overall extreme methods to follow:
1) Start small and play ascending cards (netting you lots of bonus cards), but miss out on resources needed to score big cards.
2) Starting with big cards and work downward, which sets you up with all the resources needed to score the big cards, but never access any bonus cards.
Often times you will find yourself playing the middle ground of the two: ascending and descending to the last card. This is where the game is most interesting.
The catch is that you're always choosing 1 card from 3 each turn, and that means 2 things:
1) You don't have all the choices in the world for analysis paralysis to be a major problem.
2) This game is quite luck-driven. You are quite dependent on certain cards to arrive at certain times, and the cards you need for early-game, mid-game and late-game don't come to you, then there's not much you can do turn things around.
Artwork is colourful and symbology is easy to read. It's language independent, but it's still a filler game at best.
asy to teach.
The numbers card climbing up basically plays like Blackjack, which can be dull after a while, but the currency cards deducting from your sum offers more room to keep pressing your luck.
The inclusion of currency, and special currency for busting gives losing players a small catchup opportunity when dealingwith auctions or purchasing cards from the market. These two features gives you more areas to play in so it's not a completely linear experience.
That said, after a few playthroughs, I sort of wish there was a slight difference in point payout for having a longer chain. There were times where I could decide between where I slot a wild card, but either option netted the same number of points, so while that makes for a simpler game, it was also a bit of lackluster feature.
This game requires you to be into vocab and trivia. If you struggle with both, you will not enjoy this game.
If you're good with both, this game offers an intense activity of coming up with words in a short period of time. It challenges your vocab with the themes and requirements (such as coming up with "3 different words that all start with the same 3 letters", or "Foods that total to 12 letters or more").
Production quality is pretty good overall. The silk-screening on the letters are coming off with a few plays, but the cards, box, and sack are excellent quality.
Not an exaggeration, but the base game suffered from a couple of features that felt like an after-thought and was meant to be some catch-up score for players not participating in the game. The "Zero-Bid" avenue of scoring doesn't align with the rest of the game.
This expansion does away with that and offers an additional incentive for people to be the 2nd highest bidder. It also offers a new line for you to deduct from your total expenses, so it no longer becomes as clear who will have spent the most money at the end of the game.
It adds significantly more value to the game and it should always be included each time you play QE.