Biblios game review

 Biblios is one of my favorite fillers. Since I bought it, I've probably played 30 games. A little bit for a filler, you might say. I have two excuses:

 1. When you have over a hundred games in your collection, you go to game stores, you often play on your friends' boards, etc., even 10 games for some home toys is a good indicator.

 2. Biblios belongs to the category of thorough fillers. That is, the party leaves for 30-40 minutes. It is not for you to fill the counter of duels in the "Scottish Duel".

RULES

 The game takes place in two large asymmetric phases.

 Phase 1 - sorting the cards and putting them on the hand. Players take apart the entire deck. It is done like this: a player takes one card at a time and must immediately decide whether he takes it into his hand (1 card!), puts it in the auction deck (1 card!) or lays it out for other players (1, 2 or 3 - depending number of opponents). After 3-5 cards are dealt, other players deal with 2-3 face up cards. The move is passed to the next player.

 Phase 2 - auction. Here, players trade for cards by opening them from one of the auction decks. At the same time, you need to pay for colored cards with numbers with money, and for money cards with the number of face-down cards discarded from your hand.

 Cubes? There are dice in the game, but you don't have to roll them. They lie on a special field with the number three up. During the game, cards can be dropped that change the value on the dice by +1 or -1. The top value of the die is the victory points that are awarded at the end of the game.

 Whoever has the largest sum on browns will receive points from the upper face of the brown cube, etc. The sum of the points on the received cubes determines the winner.

IMPRESSION

 The rules are simple as two by two, and the process is very gambling. That is why we periodically use the game as a gateway for newcomers. With whom did we play it and with random companions on the train, with friends, with parents. Everyone likes the game. In my opinion, she simply cannot cause any negativity...

 The first phase clearly tests players for greed. Someone takes a lot of gold and will be the king of the auction, someone collects specific cards of a pair of flowers, hoping to take away 2 dice (in a game of four, 2 won dice is 75 percent of the overall success), someone sits and resents that he is not lucky.

 The second phase forces players to spread their cards across the distance. The highlight of the auction is that you only know a third/quarter of the cards that will come out. But maybe your bet is on them? The trick of the game is that it is not clear who will win until the very final opening of the hands: that is why the auction almost always takes place with fire from the first to the last card.

 In Biblios, knowing the number of different types of cards in the deck helps a lot, so when playing with newbies, I always show and remind them which color contains how many cards. A player who knows this ratio can sometimes even calculate whether or not to take a particular card.

 Biblios is designed for 2-4 people, but for some reason it never occurred to me to play it dueling. To my taste, the mechanics are not very good at their disposal, but 3-4 players are just that. But the fewer players, the more random cards are removed from the starting deck, which also brings its own specificity to the process.

 Well, replayability and intrigue are added by cards that change the values of the dice. Their feature is that they need to be played as soon as you take it for yourself in the first phase or win it at the auction.

CONCLUSIONS

 Conclusion: I'm probably not very objective, but Biblios is a cool game. One of my favorite and time-tested fillers. 8 out of 10!