You’ve Got to Bid if You Want to Spell!

Want to buy a vowel? Then you’ll have to bid just right! In fact, you’ll have to bid for every letter you need! See if you can outbid your opponents without overpaying and make your winning word!

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What Is It?

✨Theme – Mythical Forest Creatures
🎯The Goal of the game is to be the first player to make a 5 letter word
⚙️Auction/Closed Bidding – Each round a card will be revealed from the deck. Letters and special powers are bid on for one player to claim. Players secretly put bids in hand and reveal at the same time. The highest bid wins but only pays the 2nd highest bid. In a tie for first, no one gets the card
⚙️Events – Some cards in the deck are events which won’t be bid on and will just impact the game somehow (i.e. having players bid on 2 cards, granting income, et cetera)
⚙️Spelling / Word Game

Who Is It For?

👥2 to 5 Players – Auctions just aren’t fun at 2 in my opinion. This is much better with 3+, but best with a full 5
👥Ages 8 & Up – You need basic spelling skills, but the word can be anything so it works with a wide age range.
👥Fans of spelling/word games and auctions, and don’t mind a few random events

PROS

🟢Aesthetics – Gorgeous art!
🟢Components – Nice quality cards, coins, and screens
🟢Rounds are quick
🟢Easy set-up/clean-up
🟢Bidding is fun because you kind of want to hedge your bets at times to ensure you win without overpaying so you still have money to bid with
🟢I like that if you bid zero, you get $1, so you can potentially save up for a bigger bid later

CONS

🔴Some rounds can feel a little flat because with ties no one gets anything, and it’s not super uncommon for 2 players to tie
🔴I didn’t think you really needed secret starting letters. It was fine, but just lends itself to more luck because a vowel can be a much more versatile starting letter than some consonants

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Final Thoughts

This is such a cute/pretty game. I think the art is fantastic, and very inviting. The ruleset is also very approachable, and since there aren’t many limitations on words (aside from things like your standard “no proper nouns, no contractions, etc) it can be played by lots of players of varying spelling skill ranges. Gameplay is very smooth with snappy rounds that keep all players invested at all times. I don’t usually love events, but there aren’t too many in this, and they don’t even always all come out, so they don’t feel bad in this. Overall, it’s pretty light and quick overall, so it’s easy to play a few times in a row as well.

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Additional Information:
My Final Rating – 7/10

Designer – Zac Burns
Artist – Matthis Schroeder
Publisher – Ex Systemate
MSRP – $24.95
Website