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.

Rise! Kickstarter Followup

So, some of you may remember the Rise! Review that I wrote a few months ago.  Well, while I was writing that review, I was playing a prototype version.  Now that I've received a full production copy, I figured I'd share some better photos and a bit what has changed!

Here are the main things I noticed:

• I'm really impressed by how similar the game looks to the prototype that I received.  They referred to their prototype as a "professional prototype", and this helps me realize just how much pride they took in those protoypes!  The full version has better color (in the prototype "red" looked more like brown), but otherwise, the game looks almost exactly the same.

Faction Sticker

You can "paste on" a theme.  Specifically, there are six different "factions" that you have stickers for.  However, you will only be able to use your favorite four - one on each side of the red disks, and one on either side of the blue disks.  This, obviously, doesn't change the game at all, but it's a nice little touch.  The factions are Pirates, Knights, Aliens, Zombies, Wizards, and (of course) Ninjas.

Ballistic Expansion

It comes with the "Ballistic Expansion."  This expansion provides you with a few extra pieces that seem overpowered.  I haven't actually tried them out yet, but I'd recommend playing the basic game a few times before trying these pieces - then play with or without them, however you most enjoy the game!

And, again, if you're not familiar with Rise, I'd recommend you checking out my full Rise! review.

I would like to thank Crash Games for providing me with a review copy of Rise!

Innovation: Echoes of the Past Review

After enjoying Innovation, I decided that I should track down a copy of it's first expansion Echoes Of The Past. As I normally do in my expansion reviews, I will assume that you are familiar with the original game - if you're not, then please check out my Innovation Review.  There are four main additions in Echoes of the Past, and so we'll simply go through them: Foreshadows, Echoes, Bonuses, and Extra Achievements.  

Foreshadowing is the first new concept, and is probably the "most different" from what you experience in the base game.  Various new cards will give you a dogma effect that allows you to "foreshadow" a card.  When you foreshadow, you take a card of the appropriate value and place it in your "foreshadow" area next to your score pile.  Then, on any future turn in which you perform a meld action, you can play a foreshadowed card of value less than or equal to the card just played - and immediately perform it's dogma action.  This is a neat way of stacking up extra cards and getting a nice one-two punch on turns, but in the games that I have played, this hasn't really been done especially much. 

The next new concept is "Echo" effects.  Some of the new cards have text in the place of an icon (this is the "Echo" effect).  When you perform a dogma effect for a color that is showing one or more Echo effects, these Echo effects are performed first, just like additional dogma effects - they are even shared between other players that perform your dogma effects.  I like the Echo effects.  I think that they can be very useful, and I like that they are balanced by the fact that Echo effects takes up an icon space, which prevents the card from being overpowered.  And yet, if you have several Echo effects, you can really make certain colors incredibly powerful.

Artificial Heart has a huge bonus!

The third concept is Bonuses.  This is really my favorite new mechanic, though it's one of the more simple ideas.  Essentially, certain cards have point values in place of an icon.  This value is added to a player's total score (for purposes like determining if you can achieve).  However, to keep the bonuses from growing too powerful, you only get the "full" value for your most valuable bonus, and you get one point for each of the others.  So, if you have a "10", "12", "8", and "5" showing, instead of getting 35 points, you only get 15.  But, this is still a nice way of getting points by melding instead of always having to find ways to add points to your score pile.  Again, this is my favorite addition to the game.

The final new mechanic is "extra achievements."  Essentially, certain cards will allow you to achieve a card if able.  This includes achieving an Age that you have already achieved.  But, to keep this from being waaaay to powerful, each time that you achieve the same Age, you have to have add the Age's score requirement an extra time - so, the first time you achieve in Age 1 you have to have a score of 5.  The next time your score would have to be at least 10, then 15, 20, and so on.  This element just adds another way for players to gain achievements, which adds more diversity in possible strategies, so I also like this new concept.  (There are also some new "special achievements" that the expansion adds, which provide even more ways of acquiring achievements.)

Bangles uses three new mehcanics

Now, with the primary new mechanics covered, I should mention the setup.  In the basic setup (there is a variant that can be used also), you shuffle some cards from the expansion with some cards from the basic set, but the basic cards significantly outnumber the expansion cards (by the way, this makes the setup and cleanup a bit of a nuisance).  Because of this, some games will have a lot more of certain new effects like foreshadowing than others - after all, some games may not even have cards that allow you to foreshadow!  The thing that I really like about this new setup is that it changes the color distribution of the Ages - instead of having 2 card of each color (minus the achievement card) like in the basic game, you could actually have 4 cards of one color and none of another in a certain Age.  Realizing this and trying to capitalize on this knowledge can really be helpful - especially when using dogma effects where you are guessing colors and drawing cards accordingly.

Overall, I give Innovation: Echoes of the Past an 8.0/10.  I didn't find it revolutionary, but I did think that the new concepts were well implemented, and added some additional variety to an already enjoyable game.

If you like engaging card games like Innovation (and Echoes of the Past), you might also check out 51st State: The New Era, Friday, Glory to Rome, and Sentinels of the Multiverse.

I would like to thank Asmadi Games for providing me with a review copy of Innovation: Echoes of the Past via Game Salute.

Top Ten Cooperative or Solo Board Games - Summer 2012

Last January, I decided to start doing an occasional top ten list.  They're fun to write, and they can start interesting discussions!  Now, please keep in mind that this list is completely my own opinion, and that means that it only contains games that I've personally played.  If you think that I'm missing anything, feel free to let me know in the comments.

Most of these games I've reviewed, but a few of them I haven't yet.  If I've reviewed it, then I'll give you a link to my review.  With all that said, here come my

Top Ten Cooperative and/or Solo Games!!

 

10. Yggdrasil

You can tell that this is a list of amazing games when Yggdrasil only comes in at #10! Players take on the role of Norse gods protecting the holy tree by fighting off ice giants and all kinds of other mythical monsters.

9. Shadows Over Camelot

Shadows Over Camelot was a lot higher on my original list until I realized that it was cheating. I absolutely love this game, but only when playing with the possibility of a traitor. This dropped it down this far on the list - but it is definitely a highly recommended game!

8. Wok Star

Z-Man Games has promised to do a large print run of Wok Star for a few years, and having played the original Gabob version, I think that they would make a lot of money if they did so! This co-operative game uses real-time elements to force players to work together to ensure that everything happens before the timer runs out!

7. Space Alert

Another unique title, Space Alert forces the players to coordinate the defense of their space station.  But... it has a sound track!  How many games can claim that?  Each of the games only lasts about 10 minutes - but those 10 minutes are frantic as everyone tries to program his character's movement (and double check them to make sure he isn't the weak link on the team). This game really works a lot better than I was initially expecting, and gives a pleasantly stressful gameplay experience!

6. Hanabi

A game that I'm still looking to add to my collection, Hanabi refutes the claim that "all cooperative games can be played solo." Hanabi is all about trying to figure out how to communicate effectively with other players so that they know what they have available to play. The theme (shooting off fireworks) is a bit cheesy, but the mechanics help this game score highly on my list.

5. Lord of the Rings (Knizia Version)

Ok, so "Lord of the Rings" isn't an uncommon name for board games, but this is the co-op that Reiner Knizia created around 2003. This game seems to be one of the originators of this genre, and is still fun to play and sports a different feel than the other titles on this list. I have all of the (now out of print) expansions in my closet, regularly begging me to play them.

4. Flash Point: Fire Rescue

Ok, now we're getting down to some tough decisions. This game jumped up to the top of my list very, very quickly. I really debated placing it as high as #2 on this list! The theme really makes this game beautiful, but some slight fiddliness keeps it from cracking the top 3.

3. Pandemic

This game might not deserve a place quite this high on the list, but it is the game that introduced me to the genre - and made me fall in love with it. I know many people have claimed that they have "mastered" Pandemic - but, I'd imagine that they've played it dozens of times (and still occasionally lose). Shouldn't a game that calls you back dozens of times land pretty high on a top ten list? I think it should.

2. Friday

Ok, now to get more controversial - Friday is the only truly solo game on this list. However, after trying out Friday, I cannot recommend it highly enough. If you ever travel for business, I recommend that you invest the roughly $20 that it costs to throw a copy of Friday in your carry-on. It's brilliant.

1. Lord of the Rings: Living Card Game

If you've been following my site for a while, Lord of the Rings: LCG coming it at #1 probably doesn't surprise you. I think that this game is amazing - plus, with the continual release of new adventures, the gameplay is constantly shifting. More than any others on this list, I can see people investing hours upon hours in Lord of the Rings, and I can see their interest stay strong for years to come.

Honorable Mentions

It amazes me that some of these titles didn't make it. However, other very solid co-operative games include Defenders of the Realm, Legend of Drizzt, Castle Panic, Sentinels of the Multiverse, and Forbidden Island. There's also a little game called Ghost Stories - I need to play this game at some point to see if it should be on the list next time!

So, what do you think?  Anything that I missed?  Any "oh my goodness, how did he rank that so high (or low)?"  Feel free to let me know in the comments!