Comments on: Scrabble Slam Cards

By: Nancy Czajkowski

Nancy Czajkowski — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 11:00:38 +0000

Nothing that exciting. We are big scrabble players and I guess I was expecting more. We still had an hour of fun. One good thing is this is portable!
Rating: 3 / 5

By: G. Donnelly

G. Donnelly — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 08:18:22 +0000

this game looked like great fun on tv so bought it. They are to be gifts so haven’t played yet. We love games so I think it will be a winner. Can’t give a fair rating yet though.
Rating: 3 / 5

By: Ethan D Van Vorst

Ethan D Van Vorst — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 05:24:23 +0000

I very rarely play card games outside of Rummy and the occasional game of Poker. However, one Sunday morning I noticed a coupon in the USA Today insert which advertised a buy one get one free offer for Hasbro/Parker Brother’s new card games. I picked up “Monopoly Deal” and this game, “Scrabble Slam”.

As card games go this one is pretty simple. A four letter word is laid out on the table (CHUM, LUMP, GATE, etc) and the remaining cards are dealt out to each player. Not all letters are present in the “deck” of 55 cards. There are no Q’s and no X’s, although there are couple of Z’s and several Blanks (which can assume the form of whatever letter you want them to take, just like the Scrabble board game). Each card has two letters on it, one on the front and one on the back, and this allows the player a lot of flexibility to change words that are on the board.

Each player then takes it in turn to lay down a single card anywhere on the 4 letter word. For instance, player 1 may spell GRIM and player two lays down a P to make it GRIP. Player 1 may respond with a T making it TRIP. As the game progresses it can become somewhat challenging to make words out and needless to say that you’ll want to get rid of the harder letters as soon as possible (Z, J, K, etc.) because if that’s all you have left at the end of the game you’re going to be in a world of hurt. The person with the fewest cards at the end of the game wins. If one wants to up the difficulty a bit simply up the number of letters in the word. Just making it 5 letters long had a noticeable effect and made it much more challenging.

I rate this game at 3 1/2 stars. It’s not really a great game but I’ve certainly played worse. It passes the time, which is what it was designed to do, and does so well enough.

Pros:
-Very, very easy game to learn
-Your kids will have fun and learn words along the way. Not a bad thing at all.
-At $5.00 at my local Wally World (do *not* pay the $20.00 they have listed here) this game is a great value.
-The game plays very quickly, clocking in at 20 minutes or less.

Cons:
-It’s not exactly the most exciting game in the world
-Depending upon the number of players and the number of letters on the board some players may get more cards than others, and that makes it a bit unfair trying to determine who the winner will be.
-The Dealer is going to see what cards everyone is getting, although only a MENSA candidate with a photographic memory is going to be able to remember who has what.
Rating: 4 / 5

By: cindy

cindy — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 05:05:43 +0000

not really at all like Scrabble, but a fast, find 4 letter words game. Everyone plays at once, so you have to be quick and loud! This has been sold out at the local Target’s and Walmarts around me, but I ended up finding one for around $5 at the last Target I found. Hopefully the price will come down here at Amazon soon. Picked up this one and Monopoly Deal – and everyone loved Monopoly Deal a lot more. All in all, for a 5 min game, fast and easy, this one was good! For 20 min of thoughtful fun, try Monopoly Deal!
Rating: 4 / 5

By: J. Catalano

J. Catalano — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 02:19:54 +0000

The premise of the game is to build four letter words. There are alot more than you think. I tried doing a round with five letter words and didnt get too far. I presume they did their homework in picking four letters. Its a fast pace game, it gets a bit dull when the players start throwing down DULL, FULL, DULL, FULL, etc. Repeats are allowed so it can get repetitious. Two player games are hard to come by so for a couple bucks, its worth it to pick it up to entertain yourselves a couple of rounds for a half hour or so.
Rating: 4 / 5