Palabra
is a word game, played with cards, invented by Jim Kondrick. The
essence of the game is "like Scrabble", but with cards instead of
tiles. It's one of the few games which everyone is always willing
to play, and which accommodates any number of players.
The Essentials:
Your hand is 7 cards, the primary play is to make a word,
which scores the sum of letter values, multiplied by the number of
stars on each card, multiplied by 2 if all the cards are the same
color. You can also play straights of 3 or more sequential letters, flushes of 5 or more cards all the same color which don't spell a word , or 6 or 7 vowels which don't spell a word. You can also play cards to shave, or steal points from the other players, or play a joker card to completely cancel another word. Read the complete rules here.
The Cards:
The
traditional deck has 120 cards; you can play with either a single or a
double deck, depending on the number of players. Sadly, the cards
are no longer being manufactured, and any original decks you can find
are going to be in poor condition, even if they are still in the
original shrink wrap. Card
Counts: 120 Cards in all 22 Blue, 22 Green 22 Red, 22 Yellow 14
Red/Blue 13 Yellow/Green 2 Jokers 3 Wildcards
Replacement decks with
126 cards can be ordered from The Game Crafter.
My decks include 2 Wild Vowel cards, 1 URL card, and 3 blanks. - in addition to the standard 120. These are
serviceable quality cards, printed on demand; They're not
perfect, but they shuffle and deal well, comparable to the ordinary
cards you can buy in drug stores. Be sure to count your cards. I've had some decks shipped with missing cards, but they should replace bad decks. Also, a note for the impatient;
TheGameCrafter might take a week before they produce your cards.
Replacement decks with 126 cards from makeplayingcards.com. My decks include 2 Wild Vowel cards, 1 URL card, and 3 blanks. - in addition to the standard 120. These
are better quality than the decks from TheGameCrafter, but also twice
as expensive. So maybe not that much nicer. If printed
in quantity, these decks could cost as little as $5 per deck, but
at the moment that's not "in the cards".
