Stamp Swap

review by David

Philatelists, rejoice! The time has come to gather, trade, display your tiny postal treasures at Stamp Swap & Show. In Stamp Swap, you are a stamp enthusiast and have 3 days (rounds) at the convention to create a beautifully curated album of stamps to present at the show’s contests and claim the top prize.

Each round is set up by drawing event cards equal to the number of players and splaying them vertically so each card covers only the text of the card underneath it. The top event card’s text will apply a new rule for each round for the players to follow. A draft pool of items will be generated from the symbols shown on all the event cards, some items will be face-up and some will be face-down. Once the set up is complete, the player turns begin.

Player turns of Stamp Swap are divided into three phases; Collect, Swap, and Show. In the collect phase, each player will take turns selecting one of the available stamps or exhibitor cards from the draft pool until each player has collected 6 items into their daily collection section.

After collecting 6 items, players will start the Swap phase. Each player will simultaneously split up their collection by placing any 1 collected item into their reserve and the rest into 2 piles of at least one item each in front of their player board for other players to collect. Once all players have done so, the first turn player will select any pile of items from an opponent and place them below their player board. The remaining unselected pile goes is placed below that opponent’s player board and then that opponent will take a turn to repeat the process until all players have collected two piles.

And then in the Show phase, each player will simultaneously place any exhibitor cards to the right of their player board and stamps they collected from the swap phase and their reserve onto their player grid in the correct up-right orientation, once placed the stamps will remain there for the rest of the game and cannot be moved in later rounds. Once all players have placed their items, they will score points for their exhibitors and place one of their show tickets on one of the contest cards that they have not already placed a show ticket onto to score for the round. 

At the end of each round, the top event card will be discarded and the other event cards will be shuffled back into the event deck. Any remaining unselected items from the draft pool will also be discarded. Players will begin a new round from the setup and at the end of round 3, the game will end with the Final Show scoring. The player with the most points claims the top prize at the show and wins!

I enjoyed the quick gameplay of Stamp Swap, we were able to get through a first playthrough with just the rulebook in 50 minutes and found it charming enough for a second playthrough in the same evening. Its use of the “Solomon Draft” in its mechanics to complement the open drafting gave every draft choice more weight as my group often found ourselves passing on some fairly valuable stamps, knowing that they still had a chance to snap them up from another player once they had to split the items up. And although I am not a stamp collector, I do appreciate how well executed the theme was and the beautifully illustrated depictions of each stamp that I think any philatelist would appreciate and enjoy.

Stamp Swap is available now from our webstore.