Quibbles is a quick and quirky card game. The manual opens with an introduction full of alliteration about the Quibbles. Quibbles are a kind of cubist, colorful creatures. They multiply, but also deduct. Your goal is to collect 21 of them. Are you quirky enough or will you mostly quibble with your opponents?
Background
Michiel de Wit is the creator of Quibbles and you may be familiar with his game Rollecate. Michiel is also co-author of Victory Tank and the man behind GaminBiz: a small game publishing company based in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. You may know GaminBiz as the publisher of the Dutch versions of Fika and CuBirds.
Setup and objective
At the beginning of the game, a number of cards are placed face-up on the table to form the market. Each player also receives a handful of cards. The goal is to put cards in front of you and then collect 21 points, but you may not just put cards in front of you because, as in Cubirds which was also published for GaminBiz, you need to collect enough of them to put them down. To put down a 6, you need at least six of these cards in your hand. To place a 5 you need at least five of them. Are you getting the hang of it or are the numbers flying around your ears?
Gameplay
The simple but otherwise unremarkable math doesn’t stop there, by the way. During your turn, you can split, combine or draw cards.
If you choose to split, you discard a single hand card and may take sets of cards from the market that add up to as much “worth” as the card you just discarded. You may take multiple correct sets, but cards may not be part of multiple sets.
If you are going to combine, you can discard multiple cards (maximum value of six) to take a single card of the same value from the market.
You can also add a card to the market to then take two cards from the draw pile. By the way, there is no limit to the amount of cards in your hand, but beware of collecting adrift. When a player runs out of cards in hand, everyone discards their entire hand to refresh.
After your action, you may also collect. You then discard cards or to place a card in front of it subject to the rule I described above.
At the end of the turn, you replenish the market to six, but if the market has 10 cards, the entire market is refreshed.
Verdict
Quibbles is a quick card game somewhat akin to card games like Pearls or Elixer Mixer, as players split and combine cards to collect cards from a common market. Collecting and discarding cards is also somewhat similar to CuBirds.
Perhaps not the most innovative card game, but the combination and mechanics makes for a fresh and smooth game that has a surprising amount of tactical depth. You have quite a lot of influence over the cards on the market and thus the supply for other players. By playing your cards cleverly, you can also wipe out a large hand of cards. A cool game that will probably cause a lot of squabbling!
