Stamp Swap — I Cut, You Choose, P vs NP

I played Stamp Swap, the latest (?) Stonemeier game. Very simply, there are three rounds of a) Drafting 6 stamps, b) each player keeping (reserving) one of their drafts, then splitting the remaining stamps into two groups and then selecting one group from another player while also losing one group, c) arranging their final stamps in the book and picking one of the four scoring conditions to trigger. Then you have endgame scoring.

Do stamp conventions force everyone to trade their stamps? Really? Also drafting and then an “I split/you choose” is an … odd choice.

Ignoring that, the “I cut, you choose” thing …. does it really work in multiplayer games? Particularly in games where objects values vary differently by player. In Stamp Swap, each player starts with a bonus (to one type of stamp) and may be going for different scoring objectives. So if I reserve my biggest stamp and I split the remaining groups into values of 5-5 (as viewed by me) that may be 4-5 or 2-8 or 0-15 for other players. (Maybe because one of those stamps will score 2 or 3 times based on the conditions that player is trying to achieve).

While it may be possible to split your piles in such a way that it is balanced for all of your opponents, doing that would take a long time (as you’d have to read their boards, divine their intentions, etc. I don’t know that it would take non-polynomial time, but … it would take longer than I want to spend on this game.

(And this ignores the fact that value is not discretely locked into the 5 items you are splitting, as there is the value in having more/fewer items to place in your book, which has scoring based on geometry).

So — what Stamp Swap appears to come down to in practice — is players divide their stamps up in such a way that they will be reasonably satisfied with whatever they get, maybe they make sure they aren’t loading up a 15-0 split for the leader (or first player to pick) and then hope for the best. If there is a wide variety of skill in splitting, then the winner will heavily determined semi-randomly by who the worst player(s) split.

Which is not to say there is no skill involved. There may be quite a bit. But — at first glance — Stamp Swap appears to be a game where the worst player(s) will throw the game to the eventual winner. Not deliberately, but through some inevitable forced imbalance they will have to select.

I have other complaints, the sort of thing that I’d note against an inferior design; but Stamp Swap tries to reach for something higher, even if it does so in a bizarre method that seems guaranteed to not work (drafting then I-split/you-choose?) and frankly compared to the big issue I’ve already noted the rest of my complaints are just white noise. I’m not quite willing to call it a Noble Failure, but it was not ignoble.

Now — viewed as a diversion, Stamp Swap is fine. (and looks gorgeous). If you had 5 world class players, it might be fascinating. But for me the problems it poses are only of theoretical interest.

Rating — Indifferent, I guess.

But I’ll tell you what. I’ll split my rating into “Try for yourself” or “Nah, I’m good” and let you choose.

But for some of you those look like “Hell, yeah!” or “No, I see a game of Talisman that needs one more.“