Stamp Swap is the latest game from Stonemaier Games and takes stamps and puts them into a polymino tile placement game, but with a twist of I split you choose. Stamp Swap takes place over a number of rounds (known as days), with the aim being to collect stamps in different colours and sizes to fulfil different objectives. You’ll effectively be collecting stamps, swapping them, and then looking to complete goals to score points. Thematically, at the end of each round (day), you’ll participate in a stamp contest to complete different objectives. However, you won’t complete them all. You’ll have to choose one that you won’t score. Without even going into how to play, I’ve near enough done that in the introduction! But let’s break it down further.
Stamp swap is broken down into three rounds, with each following the phases of collect, Swap, and contest. At the end of three rounds, whoever has the most points wins! Throughout the game, you’ll be collecting and swapping stamps of different sizes, colours, and themes, and there’s a bunch of special stamps, too.
During the collect phase, you’ll draw cards from the event deck equal to the number of players. The event cards will tell you what size stamps are and whether they are face up or face down. With the topmost event card setting a rule or condition that must be followed for this round. Players will then take turns to take one item at a time from the selection and add it to their collection area until each player has 6 items.
Next is the swap phase, where players will take the items from their collection area. Choose one to keep (not rare stamps). Before splitting the rest into a set of 2 and a set of 3. Then, starting with the first player, they choose one pile in front of an opponent to claim. The opponent keeps the other pile and then chooses a pile in front of an opponent. Repeat until each player has chosen a pile.
Before the contest (show) phase, where players place all items on their mats and add any new exhibitor or specialist cards. Players then score points for their exhibitors and choose one contest card to score, then place one of their markers on the contest card to show they’ve scored it.
Follow the above for two more rounds, and you’re pretty much there! There’s a final show where you score the final show contest card, forever stamps, stamp values, and specialist cards. Then that’s game over. Most points wins!
It’s pretty simple, right? Well, it is, and Stamp Swap doesn’t try to be anything else. Maybe that’s Stamp Swap’s biggest pitfall in that in a world of Polymino games. Apart from the theme, I’m not sure if there’s much else here to keep me coming back. The I split you choose feels almost at times annoying in that you draft a hand of tiles and then split them. Now you might pick a bunch of tiles you know your opponents might want, but as you’re drafting tiles which are facedown, you’ve no idea if it’s any good to anyone. You could look at your opponents board and loosely guess what shape they might want, or maybe theme, but then you’re drafting tiles for your opponent and yourself? In the hope, they take that choice of stamps from you during the split phase. This sort of links to the stamp contests, where your fate almost at times feels out of your control, not always but sometimes it feels like you’ve got to make do with what tiles you possibly don’t want, and that feels like the sense of rewarding decisions has been taken away from me as a player. However, I can’t help but feel warmed by the theme and I almost want to go collect stamps (there’s a local stamp fair next weekend – I almost want to go!).
Another area where I feel Stamp Swap just doesn’t hit the mark, is in its components. I’ve come to expect quality components from Stonemaier Games, and opening the box it felt like being greeted by a box of largely air! And the components feel thinner than previous games, from the player boards to the tiles, there isn’t that same feel of quality that Between Two Castles had, and the player board isn’t the same quality as say Wingspan.
As you know, I rate games on a scale of:
Buy or play
Wait for sale or play if you like game XYZ
Avoid
Overall, you know I rate games on a scale of:
Buy or play
Wait for sale or play if you like game XYZ
Avoid
Stamp Swap, falls right into the Wait for Sale or play if you enjoy Polymino games like Patchwork & Barenpark. There isn’t that level of puzzle like Cascadia, Harmonies or Calico, which I think is a real shame. It doesn’t make Stamp Swap less easy to teach though, and that balance between ease of teach and simplicity and depth of gameplay doesn’t feel as balanced as say Cascadia. It’s more comparable to Barenpark or Patchwork, or maybe New York Zoo. Would I play Stamp Swap again? Yes, but does it replace any of the Polymino games in my collection. No and that’s probably the challenge, there are just other Polymino games that do something better mechanically. Themewise, Stamp Swap is unique but I’m not sure if that’s enough to hold onto it long term.