After Alien Frontiers, the other table was still a long way off finishing their game, so I pulled out Biblios, the new version of Scripts & Scribes, another game that has a good reputation. The game is played over two phases: a gift phase and an auction phase. In the gift phase, the player will draw cards equal to one more than the number of players and decide, as each card is drawn, whether to keep it, add it to the auction pile or gift it. The other players then pick one gift card going clockwise from the start player. Once the card pile is exhausted, each card in the auction pile is then auctioned off. Players then compare hands and whoever has the most points in each of the five suits receives VPs according to the value of the die corresponding to the suit (the dice values being manipulated by certain cards used during the game.
It is pretty difficult to judge how well you are doing and how many points in a suit is enough. Nige thought he had one suit sewn up only to find I had more points in it (not helped by the fact that the suits do not contain identical points in them). Also, if everyone chooses to ignore a particular suit, you can be pleasantly surprised to win the VPs with very few points in that suit. Case in point was Mark K winning one suit with just two cards worth three points. And that certainly contributed to the reason why he won. Good game that plays very quickly and can require some tricky decisions. |