Overview

In Letter Tycoon, you play as a letter factory owner. By forming words, you earn money that can be used to buy "stocks" and register "patents" in letters. When anyone uses those letters, you get more money or special abilities. The player who amasses the greatest letter factory wins!

Gameplay

Each player has ten cards available to make words from--a hand of seven cards and a community pool of three cards that any player can use.

On your turn, you can either discard or play a word. If you discard, you may get rid of any cards in your hand and replace them with cards from the deck. This concludes your turn.

Play a Word

Use your letter cards to make a word using the cards from your hand and the community pool. At least 1 letter must come from a card in your hand. Minimum word length is 3; maximum is 12.

Depending on the length of your word, you will get an amount of money and a number of stocks. Stocks are not traded or sold--they are more like bonus points for making a long word. At eight letters, you cannot earn more money, but do earn more stocks.

After the worth of the played word is calculated, the bank pays royalties based on what letters were used. Each opponent receives $1 from the bank for each card in your word matching a patent they own. You do not earn money on your own patents and stocks. For example, Alice plays the word "JEWELS". Bob owns an "E" patent, so he collects $1 from the bank for each "E" used in Alice's word ($2 total). If you add to an opponent's word using a patent ability, those additions do not pay royalties to opponents.

After royalties are played, the active player may buy a patent. You can only buy a patent for a letter used in the word you played. But you can also save your money and use it towards a more expensive purchase in the future. You can only buy one patent per turn.

Finally, all played cards are discarded, including community cards. But you may discard any unplayed cards from your hand that you wish. The community pool is drawn back up to 3 and the player's hand is drawn back up to 7.

Special Letters

"Y" can be designated as a consonant or vowel, regardless of its role in the played word. This may allow you to use the letter in a way that is syntactically incorrect but strategic. For example, the word "YUCKY" uses a Y as a consonant at the start and a vowel at the end. But you may wish to designate the first Y as a vowel if you have the B patent, which allows you to score more points for a word that has vowels for the first letter and last letter.

If your word contains the letter "Q", you earn double the money and stocks from the played word, whether or not you own a "Q" patent. This ability also stacks with the special letter patents.

Special Letter Patents

Things to Keep in Mind

Money always comes from or goes to the bank. Players do not exchange money among themselves except in the case of challenges.

You can only buy a patent for a letter you used in your played word.

Each letter only has one patent (just like in the real world--two people can't own a patent for the same invention). And not all patents are worth the same.

A patent ability can only be used once per turn.

You can't earn royalties on your own patents.

Some letters are more common than others.

Challenges

After you play the word, but before you earn money and stock from its length, another player may challenge your word. If the challenged word is not in the dictionary, the active player takes back their cards. They must then discard a card as a penalty, then redraw. Play passes to the next player. If the challenged word is in the dictionary, the active player takes $1 from the challenger (or the bank if the challenger has no money).

BGA offers the option to use automatic challenges. With this option, played words are automatically checked by the system, not by players. The player is allowed a number of retries (3 by default), but if the player uses all their retries, they must follow as if they lost the challenge (take back cards, discard a card, lose rest of turn). Recommended for turn-based play.

You can choose which dictionary to use in game options. Note that this game does not support languages other than English (American/British).

Game End and Scoring

When a player acquires a certain quantity and value of patents, everyone gets one more turn (so everyone has the same number of turns). The goal number and patent value changes according to number of players. For example, in a three-player game, the first player to have 5 patents totaling $45 in value triggers the endgame.

The player who has the highest total value of patents plus stocks plus remaining money wins.