Biblios Card & Dice Game First Impressions

“I remember going to a monastery library when I was very young and being surrounded by ancient books. I fell in love.”

~ Hans-Ulrich Obrist

You are an abbot of a medieval monastery competing with other abbots to amass the greatest library of sacred books. To do so, you need to have both the workers and resources to run a well-functioning scriptorium. To acquire workers and resources, you use a limited supply of donated gold. In addition, you must be on good terms with the powerful bishop, who can help you in your quest.

(Technically this is the second play but the first time we played both the first phase and second phase of the game wrong so I left it :))

In Biblios, you’re trying to claim dice to score points by using cards.

There is a deck of cards and on your turn, you draw a card per player in the game plus one. One at a time you choose where it goes…

You give one face down to yourself, one goes face down out of the game and the rest go face up in the middle of the table. Players draft these face-up cards in turn order by the other players.

Mostly they just go into the player’s hands as cards the same colour as the dice or gold you use to bid with later.

But players can use some to manipulate, up or down, the value of the dice you’re trying to win.

When the deck runs out the game changes…

Now those cards you were putting aside are cards you bid for…

They are revealed and depending on the type of card you flip over is how you bid. Some you bid with a number of cards placed face down, others you use the Gold cards as their face value.

Once you auction all the cards, you count up the value of the cards in each colour and the player with the most in that colour takes the matching die.

The player with the highest total of dice they ‘won’ wins.

Biblios Summary

It’s an OK game, a bit repetitive… Like For Sale for grown-ups.

It’s a game I’d play if I had to but I doubt I’d care enough to concentrate on it.

Jesta ThaRogue