Dr Feld and Mr Biblios

Stefan Feld has been on the table - figuratively - more often than not these past few weeks. We finally played Amerigo, and then played it again - and Macao has also been spotted recently. And then last night Andrew and I played Castles of Burgundy. What is it about Feld's games that make them (subjectivity warning) so good?

If that sounds like I have a theory I don't, I was just wondering. I'm sure there's heaps on BGG for anyone who wants to wade through it. I do like the fact there is a seam of luck (dice in Macao and CoB, the Tower in Amerigo) running through otherwise dry games though. 

Anyway we began expanding our Burgundian Realms with no hesitation, apart from the confusion I always have over shipping and laying boat tiles. Two different things! 

Graham Coxon supplied the watery soundtrack by singing the words Caspian Sea 50,000 times (jump to the three minute mark for full-on Caspian misery). I still don't know why he put that thing on an otherwise perfectly palatable album. It's a Whodunnit for the 21st century.

not my table, but the table of maeddes

Castles was a game of really fine margins. Andrew completed his mines just before I did. I jumped ahead of him on buildings. On the last round I had just enough workers to do what I wanted. But the clincher was the fact I was starting player on round four and grabbed the bonus tile for shipped colors.

Sam 197

Andrew 196

If anyone hasn't played CoB yet sorry about the above paragraph.  

And then we played Biblios. 

It's been a while since this game has seen the table but it remains a classic for us. It's such a wonderful combination of strategising, gambling and bluff, aligned with the tantalizing possibility of telling someone you love to eat shit when you hand them 1 gold (Extreme Biblios is otherwise identical to the base game). 

dice pic courtesy Zombiegod

I thought I had things in hand with a strong showing on blues, greens and reds, and I was blissfully increasing the greens value, unaware that Andrew was about to outscore me:

Andrew 9

Sam 5

And with the Mr Biblios crown atop his head, Andrew drifted regally into the night.