Biblios

The game runs in two distinct stages built from the same 80-card deck. In the donation stage you flip cards one at a time from the deck and sort them into three piles: one to your hand, one face-down into the auction pile, and one face-up onto the public table for the other players to claim. In the auction stage you flip the auction pile one card at a time and run a single-pass auction with gold-coin cards as currency. The defining gesture is the donation triage - you hold three or four cards fanned in your fingers, glancing at the value-board die positions, and decide which goes where based on what you and your opponents need.

Stage 1 (donation): repeat until the donation deck is exhausted - active player draws cards equal to (one for hand + one for auction pile + one per opponent for the public row), reveals the public-row cards, then chooses which secret card goes to hand and which goes to auction; the public cards are claimed by the other players in turn order. Whenever a die-shift card appears, the active player rotates one of the five category dice on the value board, changing how many VP that category will be worth at end. Stage 2 (auction): shuffle the auction pile, flip top card, run a one-bid-per-player auction using gold cards from hand. End: for each of the five categories (Scribes, Illuminators, Manuscripts, Scrolls, Supplies) the player with highest sum wins the VP currently shown on that category's die. Highest total wins.

Donation stage tradeoffs: take the strongest card for yourself but hand opponents two strong cards in the public row, or feed yourself a mediocre card while denying opponents anything they need. The auction-pile face-down decision is a bluff vector - a strong card you hide there might come back to you cheaply, or might be auctioned away. The value-board die manipulation is the meta-layer: pumping a category you dominate, or sandbagging one your opponent dominates, can swing 5+ VP. Option space per donation turn is small (3-6 meaningful triages) but the information asymmetry of the face-down auction pile makes every choice feel weighty.

Dominant skills: opponent reading (tracking who needs what color and what their gold reserve looks like) and risk modeling on the value-board dice (is it worth burning a turn to bump the Manuscripts die down because the leader is going for manuscripts?). Secondary: bluff and bid discipline in the auction stage - knowing when a face-up gold card is real ammo and when it is a tell. Memory load is moderate (rough card counting helps). Mental arithmetic is light. Strong players win on opponent modeling more than on hand strength.

Be a medieval abbot stocking your monastery library through donations and auctions, while the bishop quietly changes which books are most valuable.

Soft illuminated-manuscript pastiche: parchment-cream backgrounds, faux-medieval iconography on cards (quills, scrolls, dyes, gold coins), a few woodcut-style scribe illustrations. Charming and functional rather than striking - the art reads as competent flavor rather than a marquee draw, with no notable named illustrator.