Scripts and Scribes: The Dice Game Review

Due to my interest in playing Biblios, I also wound up with an opportunity to play Scripts and Scribes: The Dice Game.

In Scripts and Scribes: The Dice Game, the goal is to get the most gold.  Every turn, the active player will roll all of the dice (1 gold die, 5 resource dice, and 1 adjustment die).  Then, depending on what is rolled on the gold die, various things might happen.  In a "standard" turn (when a coin is rolled), players take turns selecting groups of matching dice and moving their token up on the corresponding resource track, gaining gold, or adjusting the end of game value of one of the resource tracks.  If the gold die rolls an "auction for resources" then an auction begins, with the winner getting to use all of the dice - and then the active player rolls the dice again.   The gold die can also roll an "auction for gold" in which the players bid how few gold coins that they are willing to accept to permanently remove a token from the game - then the active player re-rolls all the dice.  Finally, the gold die might show a re-roll icon, which allows the active player to re-roll any or all of the resource dice, but must pay one more gold each time that he re-rolls a group of dice.  Play continues until three scoring markers are at the top of resource groups, someone reaches the top of the abbot track (a resource track that's not worth points at the end of the game), or one player has removed four tokens.  Then, whoever is winning each resource track gains gold equal to the value of that track (indicated by a die) times three, and second place gains the value of the track.  Whoever has the most gold wins!

The first pro that I have for the Scripts & Scribes Dice Game is how the "auction for gold" works.  Inevitably, you will have certain resources in which you are not going to be first or second place.  So, why bother even keeping the token for this resource?  The auction for gold lets you trade it in to at least make a few coins, since you knew you weren't going to make any otherwise.  Of course, if the auction for gold is rolled early in the game, then you have to decide if you're willing to sacrifice a resource that you have a good chance to win in order to get extra gold.  And, based on if this auction is rolled early or late in the game will adjust the value of your token - if you sacrifice it early in the game when you still have an opportunity to win any given resource, it might be worth 6 or more gold.  Whereas, at the end of the game, when everyone has a token that they can sacrifice, it might only be worth 1-3 gold.

The resource track

The next pro that I have is how the auction for resources work.  Instead of knowing exactly how much each player has bid, the auction is a combination of a silent auction and an open auction.  It is fair knowledge to know how many cards each player has bid, but not how much gold.  However, if you bid with a card, you cannot pick it back up later - so, if you only have cards worth 1, 2, 3, and 5 in your hand to start, you might have to consider which of these you're going to bid with to start the auction.  After all, starting with the 1 is "safe", but if you bid them in order, you are progressively bidding higher, whereas your opponents might be only bidding 1's - and since only the number of cards is open knowledge, you have no idea if you're horribly overbidding.  It allows your opponents to try to bluff you into bidding higher - or lower, if they throw less cards.

The next thing that you need to be aware of is that this is a dice game.  This means that weird things will happen that slaughter all probabilities.  I've played in one game where the "auction for gold" was rolled three times in a row to start the game (and the "auction for resources" was never rolled in that game).  I've also played where the opposite was true - "auction for resources" was rolled repeatedly, and "auction for gold" was never rolled.  You also might have all of the dice roll the same resource.  Conversely, you might have the opportunity to re-roll and spend gold trying to make all of the dice show the same resource, only to spend all of your money and never have it happen.  Dice games are very, very random - so be aware of that, and if that's not something you would enjoy, then you should probably avoid them. 

Dice are very, very random

So, Scripts and Scribes the Dice Game is the Dice Game for Biblios (also known as Scripts and Scribes, if you were wondering about how they are connected).  Biblios is a much "tighter" game than it's Dice Game equivalent.  Since that term really doesn't mean much, let me describe what I mean by it.  In Biblios, things are carefully balanced out, and as a player, you have several opportunities to plan ahead.  You won't know everything that will be available to you later in the game (there is a random element in the setup, and the other players also affect this), but you still know generally what will happen and can plan accordingly.  The Dice Game has strategy involved, but planning might be completely thwarted.  Whatever you plan for may never even be possible due to the roll.  So... now that I'm thinking through this con, I'm realizing that I may lean towards the disliking how random dice games are side of my "neutral" point in the previous paragraph!

Overall, I give Scripts & Scribes: The Dice Game a 7.5/10.  It had some really fun elements, but I think that I would overall rather play Biblios, and have a random element that isn't quite as drastic.  Yet, I think that Scripts & Scribes: The Dice Game makes for a good strategic choice that is easy to teach to new people, and the randomness helps them have a better chance to win.

If you like die games, you might also check out Take It or Leave It, Cookie Fu, Martian Dice, and Catan - the Dice Game.

I would like to thank Dr. Finn's Games for providing me with a review copy of Scripts and Scribes: The Dice Game.

Biblios Review

When asking for games with depth that can be played in 30-45 minutes, someone recommended that I check out Biblios. So.... I did.

In Biblios, the goal is to get the most victory points by having the highest score in (enough of) the five different categories.  To start the game, each category is worth three points.  On a player's turn, he will draw a number of cards equal to the number of players plus one.  After looking at each card, he must decide if he will keep it (one per turn), put it in the auction pile (one per turn), or put it face up in the middle (all the others).  After he has gone through all of his cards, the other players get to take the cards that he placed in the middle - thus each player gains a card every turn.  Any time one of the players gets a "church" card, they immediately adjust the value on one or two of the dice (and thus a category's value).  After the deck has been exhausted, the auction phase begins.  One at a time, all of the cards that were placed in the auction pile are auctioned off to players - who use cards to buy gold cards, and use gold cards to buy everything else.  After the last auction, players compare scores in each category and the highest total in each gets the scoring die.  Whoever has the most points from scoring dice is the winner!

Very ironically, I received my copy of Biblios at approximately the same time as I received a copy of Pax - and both games seem to have a similar core mechanic of "draw X cards, one at a time, and put them in different places."  I listed this as a pro in Pax, and it is also a pro for Biblios - this mechanic forces the players to make meaningful, simple, and yet difficult decisions.  If you make a mistake in the first round and accidentally give your opponents a powerful card, you're not going to instantly lose - but if you regularly give your opponents better cards than you keep, then you don't really stand a good chance of winning.  And, with more players, these choices get tougher.  You get to look at more cards with more players, and so you will have a much harder time deciding what to do with a mid-value card that you draw early.  Should you take the safe bet and keep it?  What if something better is drawn?  But, you also don't want your opponent to have it!

Scoring dice - what each category is worth

The next pro that I have for Biblios is that I think the auction works well.  I have played this game with two and three players, and the auction works well with both (and I would imagine works at least as well with four).  It's tough to find a two-player auction game that actually works, but for some reason this one does.  I think that there are a couple of factors with this - first, you know that any card you don't win counts directly against you.  With three and four players, you might be able to spread out cards in a category so that you can still ultimately have the highest score, even if you don't have a majority.  With two players, every card that you don't take goes to the same opponent.  Also, the game is built where you must buy things in the auction to win.  You put as many cards in the auction pile as you put in your own pile at the beginning of the game, so the chances of you winning any category without auctioning are very slim - the odds of you winning several categories without the auction are basically zero.

The third aspect of Biblios that I like is that not all of the cards are in the deck in each game (the number of random cards pulled out is different based on number of players).  Because of the rule that you have to have the most points in a category to score, you are often trying to get the majority in that area (at least I was).  The inner cover tells you the card breakdown, and so you can know when you have the majority.  But!  Not all of the cards are in the deck - and so you might have a majority without knowing it.  And, a player that is better at figuring out when they have "enough" cards, without wasting extra card draws and money on getting a guaranteed majority will probably win over a player that always guarantees their majority.

Church cards adjust scoring dice

The final pro that I will mention is that I like the church cards.  Now, with that said, I don't like being the one to get stuck with the church cards - I would rather increase my score in one of the categories.  However, the church cards are a good way to mitigate the fact that you know an opponent is going to beat you in certain categories.  They are also useful for improving the value of your majorities.  But, there is a touch of a bluffing element here, because if you are always increasing the value of the same category, your opponents will realize that you have a lot of points there, and they will focus on lowering it.  But, at least in the auction phase, you can prevent them from doing so, by buying all of the church cards - but that will get expensive really, really quickly.

I don't really have any "cons" for Biblios.  I found the game to be very fun, and I could play it repeatedly.  I think that it is a great filler game or lunch game, but I don't know that I would go to a gaming session explicitly to play Biblios (though I'd consider it), which is the only thing that keeps it's score out of the upper echelon.  And, with that said....

Overall, I give Biblios an 8.5/10.  I think that it is a brilliant, light game, that can be enjoyed by gamers and non-gamers alike.  If you have the opportunity to play it - do so!

If you are looking for games that can be played over lunch, you might also check out 1955: The War of Espionage, China, and Ra.