Last Word Standing: How to Play
Have you ever wondered who the smartest person in your family is? Do you need to settle this once and for all? Well, in Last Word Standing, but if you win you can earn bragging rights for months to come and today I’m going to teach you how to play!
In last word standing, the objective of the game is to use letters to spell increasingly high-scoring words. The action cards the players play will give their words advantages in an effort to ensure that they have the last word standing. The first player to score 75 points wins the game!
To setup the game shuffle the letter and action decks separately and then place each of them face down leaving room for a discard pile for each deck. Each player picks a scoring marker and places it on the start box of the score tracker then takes the information card that matches. Give the first player card to the player who last looked up a word in the dictionary. They deal two letter cards and one action card to each player who may look at their hand of cards but should keep them a secret from the other players. Draw the top two cards from the letter deck and place them face up in the center of the table. Before starting the game agree on an official dictionary either online or offline. It’s up to you if you want to allow proper nouns or not!
Each round consists of 4 total phases.
The Card Claim Phase
The Word Play Phase
The Score Phase
The Exchange Phase
Starting with the first player and proceeding clockwise, start with the Card Claim Phase. The first player draws a number of cards form the letter deck equal to the number of players plus one and adds them to the community cards on the table. Each player in turn order chooses a letter card from the community cards and adds it to their hand. Should a player wish to claim a card preemptively they may discard an action card to take a card out of turn but be careful, other players can stop you with other action cards so make sure you have a back up action card so you can immediately try again if you really need a specific letter to spell the word you’re attempting to spell! If the player claims a card with a Draw Action card on it then they may also draw the top card from the action deck!
Keep in mind that each player is limited to 12 letter cards in their hand. Then we move on to the Word Play Phase!
Starting with the first player and moving clockwise, players may choose to play a word or pass. Playable words must be at least 3 letters long and must be spelled using at least one letter card from your hand. They may use any number of community cards and up to two letter cards copied from other players words using action cards.
The first word played in a word play phase is laid down to spell the word and then indicate if any community cards are needed to complete it. Action cards may be used to modify the words value. The value of the word is determined and then it becomes the standing word.
Play then continues in turn order and players can play words to challenge the current standing word, even if they’ve passed in previous turns. The only rule is that the new word played must have a higher value than the standing word! Any words that have been successfully challenged can be upgraded when that players turn comes around. If no words are played during the word play phase, then the players skip immediately to the Exchange phase but if there was at least one word played then play proceeds to the score phase.
During the score phase each player moves their scoring marker along the score tracker based on how many points they earned. The player of the standing word scores full point value for that word. All other player scored half of the point value of the last word they played, rounded down.
Then discard all letter cards played during the word play phase. This includes any community cards used to spell a word. Then each player with fewer than two remaining letter cards in their hand draws until they have 2. If there are fewer than 2 community cards on the table, draw until there are 2 for the next round! Then we move onto the Exchange phase so long as no player has reached 75 points, in which case the game would end.
During the exchange phase any player, in turn order may either discard one letter card from their hand and draw the top card of the letter deck or discard two letter cards and draw the top card of the action deck. Then the first player card passes to the left and a new round begins. If any one player has reached 75 points then the game is over and if more than one player has reached 75 points then the player with the highest score wins! If there’s a tie, you both win! And that’s how you play Last Word Standing!
Let us know in the comments below what the first word game you ever played was! Be Bold, Play Games, Be You! Happy gaming!