Collecting stamps, also known as philately, is the subject of a new card game from the publishers of River Rats. A slight reworking of a classic James Ernest game known as Lamarckian Poker, Stamp Showdown is a game for 2-6 players using a standard deck of cards. Let’s check it out!

How to Play Stamp Showdown

Four Suit Studio cleverly repurposed a standard deck of cards into a co-operative boss battle with their game, River Rats. Stamp Showdown pulls a similar trick, transforming a standard deck of cards into a collection of stamps. All you need to play is a deck of cards and a way to keep score as the game progresses. Any standard deck of cards will do, but there is a dedicated, official Stamp Showdown deck, which you can see in the images throughout this review.

The object of the game is to make the best poker combination from the cards in your hand at the end of a round, with each of the game’s four rounds consisting of seven turns.

Setup is easy; you’ll remove specific numbered cards from the deck to accommodate different numbers of players, then each player is dealt four cards. To start the round, four cards are drawn from the top of the deck, then laid face up in a row in the center of the table. This is the market.

To start a turn, all players then choose a card from their hand and place it face down in front of them; once all players have done this, they simultaneously reveal their card.

The order of play is determined by card value, with ties broken by suit order. Reverse alphabetical order of the suit names is used here: Spades act first, then Hearts, followed by Diamonds and then finally, Clubs. The first player takes all cards from the market which match their played card’s number or suit, but if nothing matches they may take any single card from the market. Their played card is then placed in the market row, and each player follows the same process with their played card.

In the example above, the player who played the Ace of spades would act first, taking the 2 of Spades and replacing it with the Ace. The player with the 7 of Spades would then take the Ace of Spades, and the third player would take the Queen of Hearts, replacing it with the 5 of Hearts.

This continues until all players have taken their turn. Once the last player has completed their trade, all cards left in the market are discarded, and a new turn begins with four new cards dealt to create the new market.

Once the deck is empty, the showdown takes place; each player chooses the best poker combination from the cards they have available in their hand, and the best hand wins. Points are awarded, with the winning player receiving points equal to the number of players in the game. So the winner in a four player game gets 4 points, or 3 in a three player game, for example. The player in second place gets a point less than the winner of the round, and so on until the player in last place who receives zero.

Then a new round begins, and the player with the highest points total after four rounds wins the game.

Is Stamp Showdown Fun to Play?

Despite a theme that feels somewhat pasted on, Stamp Showdown is a superb game. The refinements to James Ernest’s original, Lamarckian Poker design, such as the removal of the terminology of “Sparks”, make for a much more accessible and stronger experience overall.

The gameplay is incredibly straightforward and very fast-paced, with surprisingly robust strategy at its core. Stamp Showdown really does great things with a single deck of cards and the poker-based mechanics. The official deck is really nicely illustrated too, supporting the theme with images of historical figures and settings on stamps.

The Card Gamer Verdict

Stamp Showdown is currently crowdfunding via Kickstarter. Check out our coverage of other games which use standard decks of cards to play, such as River Rats and Strataugury.