One thing about Scrabble is that it is very heavily determined by which letters each player gets.
Of course, over the long term, things should even out and the better player will win a higher number of games, but in the short term, I have seen huge imbalances, where I have beaten much stronger players, just because I got great letters and they didn’t.
So, how about this variation:
[ol]
[li]All players share the same rack of letters[/li][li]All players come up with their own word[/li][li]The player with the highest-scoring word gets to put that word down on the board[/li][ul]
[li]If two or more players come up with words of equal value, then the first one to write it down gets to play it[/li][/ul]
[li]Once the best word is played, new letters are selected, and we go back to step 1 [/li][/ol]
This way, all players see exactly the same rack and there is no luck in determining the winner.
What do you guys think of the above variation?
I assume veteran Scrabble players will not like it. If so, what are the reasons? (Do you like the randomness?)
I think that sounds pretty awful. I thought that you’d suggest something like one rack that just goes around the table, so each player still has their turn, but they are using the tiles leftover from the previous player plus new tiles drawn from the bag.
Why awful? Because there’s no strategy, since you couldn’t then design the board or force the other person into a bad position to set yourself up for glory.
No offence, but that sounds worse than either the standard rules or the OP’s suggestion, because you would have an incentive to leave an unplayable combination for the next player. I think it would lead to boring, low-scoring games. I realise you weren’t putting it forward as your own suggestion, as such.
As to the OP, I have seen this suggested before somewhere - it may even have been in this forum, or it could be a Scrabble-like variant, but I don’t remember any more about it and haven’t played it. From the above post, it seems it like it already exists and works.
You could have 14 tiles face up. Use any 7 on your word and they are replaced.
You could also have semi-shared. You have a personal rack of 3 tiles and 8 in the shared pool. Both are replaced after you turn .
You could have it so you have to use at least 1 letter from your personal board (or not). Have to come up with which is replaced 1st (I’d say your personal board)
Well, it would be its own game. Unlike the OP’s suggestion, everyone would actually get a change to play SOME word (at least my reading of the OP’s rules could mean that only one player ever got to play). Being able to screw over the other player by leaving unplayable combinations is just an extension (a cruel, vicious extension) of the strategy of real Scrabble.
In terms of adding strategy to the game, how about the following:
At every turn, the points go to (a) The person with the highest scoring word and (b) The person whose turn it is.
For example, if Alice, Bob, and Charlie are playing, and it’s Bob’s “turn”, and Bob has a lot of points, Alice and Charlie have to decide between playing high-scoring words (thus giving themselves, but also Bob, a lot of points) and low-scoring words (thus depriving Bob, but also themselves of points). And, of course, if Alice and Charlie go for low scoring words Bob himself might win out that hand, in which case he’ll get twice the points (once for having the best word and once for this being his turn)
So, I think there can be some strategy involved, even if everybody shares the same rack.
I think an interesting variation, one I’ve never tried, would be to auction off some of the letters. Put two of the Ss and two of the Ts or the Q and Z aside and after every three words played, auction one letter off to the highest bidder with the bids paid for with negative points. So let’s say I really wanted the Q to make Quartzes on a triple word space, I would be willing to sacrifice 30 points to get that Q and my opponent could either let me have it for that price or up the bid.