New Game: Illiterati

Illiterati is a fast-paced co-operative word game.  Players work together making words and binding books that have specific objectives. The letter tiles can also include a mix of four types of symbols that may be needed to meet objectives. There are two decks of Book Objectives and an Illiterati Villain deck. The Red objective deck includes categories of words like countries, things that fly, things smaller than a dime, animals, etc. The Blue objective deck requires words to have a certain construction, like only one vowel, anagrams, at least two double letters, etc. Each objective states the type of words (i.e. things that fly), the total number of letters to be used, and any symbols to be included. Each round has a 3-minute time limit on creating words and an Illiterati Villain attack. – – 1 to 5 players – – 30 minutes game play.

Each player starts the game with 5 letters.  They draw 7 letters at the start of each round after that.  Each player also starts with one book objective in front of them.  Once everyone has their letters in front of them the 3-minute sand timer is flipped over. The players can now exchange letters and talk as much as they want while creating their words. The key is to build words that fulfill the terms of the objective books in play.  In addition, players want to use as many letters as they can to build as many words as they can, even if they don’t help fulfill any of the objectives. At the end of the round any unused letters are placed in the library.  If the library gets too full a letter is moved to the burn tracker and the remainder are discarded.  If the burn tracker reaches 4 letters the players lose the game.  The final step of a round is to draw an Illiterati Villain card and resolve it’s negative effects. If the villain on the card matches one from a prior round, both card’s ill effects will need to be resolved. This could be to lose letters from words, draw fewer letter tiles on the next round, etc. The next round begins with players drawing tiles and a new objective book if they have completed their first one. Rounds continue until each player has completed one red and one blue objective book.  Once that is done a final book objective will be randomly drawn from either deck.  Collectively, players will work to complete this final objective which will be more challenging.

The game is won when each player has completed one red and one blue book objective and collectively the final chapter objective. The game is lost if the burn tracker reaches 4 letters or if the Illiterati Villain deck is exhausted.  The game comes with 3 levels of difficulty, so once players master the easy version it is on to greater challenges. If you are into word games, this one is going to be fast and fun.

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