This week's game...the game of monks, quills, and auctioning thrills that is Biblios.
Players: 2-4
Time: 30-40 minutes
Genre: Strategy Card Game
Biblios is a unique card game in which players compete to gather various tomes, scrolls, scribes and more to amass the greatest monastery. It may sound a bit odd and dry, but the simple mechanics of this game create for an easy to learn and intriguing experience. There are five colored categories, of which all begin at a value of 3 points. Throughout the game, players will collect three types of cards: Worker/Resource cards (which represent the five scoring categories), Gold cards (which is used in the second half of the game for the Auction phase), and Church cards (which allow players to increase/decrease the value of the scoring categories). Players will need to keep a watchful eye on what cards are being collected and what is potentially left available to collect to properly influence the values and aim for the proper path of victory. However, nothing is certain as a certain amount of cards are removed at random at the start of the game, meaning there will likely be less of a category than you may be hoping for. As such, players will need to take care not to put all their eggs in one basket and be able to adapt on the fly.
The game itself is divided into two phases of play: the Gift Giving phase and the Auction phase. In the first stage, one player will draw one card at a time up to the number of players plus one. For each card the player draws, one card must be given to each player including themselves and one card must be given to the auction pile. This becomes tricky though as the player must decide whom to give the card to before drawing the next card, making for some careful consideration of risk versus reward to not only yourself, but your opponents as well. Rotating between each player being the gift giver, this continues until the deck runs out, at which point the auction pile is shuffled to become the Auction deck. With this phase, players will take turns flipping a card from the Auction deck and leading the bids to acquire these last remaining cards using their Gold cards gathered from the first half of the game. Should a Gold card be the item up for auction, players then bid how many cards they'd be willing to discard to acquire this Gold, which allows for opportunities to stock up on more Gold at the cost of giving up on other categories. Another strategy players can employ should they be so bold is to bet more Gold than they have on hand in hopes to make the other player spend more. Should they get caught in the bluff though, and they'll pay the penalty in losing random cards. This phase requires a great deal of memory to recall what remains in the Auction deck and even more considered debate when and where to spend your Gold, as so much could change as players give up on certain categories and auctioned Church cards continue to alter the significance of the scoring categories.
Once the Auction deck is depleted, the game ends with each player tallying their total worth in each category and being awarded the assigned point value in that category, the player with the most points then having the greatest monastery and being the winner. With the adaptable nature required to play this game and the constant flux of decisions to be made, this game has great replay-ability as players devise new strategies with each subsequent play. I recommend this game for those who enjoy tactical thinking and have a good memory.
If you have any questions about Biblios, let me know in the comments. Otherwise, look forward to future installments of Tabletop Tuesday!
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