Allegory

Allegory (2021) is a collecting game where you use cards to create three stories with strong moral themes. You play by bidding for Theme cards and adding them to one of your three stories, matching themes and threading together morals. It is a game of bidding, selecting and utilising your resources in order to write a story strong enough for it to be passed down through the ages.

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You play as an author, whose aim is to craft three morality tales using the themes of nature, energy and spirit. You bid to decide the order of play and then select cards from a shared Inspiration pile. The first part of a round plays out like a game of poker, as you choose to bid, raise or pass. Once the order is decided, the winner takes a card and adds it to one of their Story piles.

As you play, this bidding and selecting becomes more complex due to the Lore bidding tokens. As your supply of these dwindles you are forced to balance choosing the best cards with topping up your Lore tokens ready for future rounds. Once someone has ten cards in their story, the game ends and you count up your scores. You score points for collecting sets of three themes, adding cards to your stories that match your secret moral mission and for your least high-scoring story. The winner is the player with the most points.

What starts as a simple card-collecting game, quickly becomes a balancing act of outbidding your opposition and not running too low on Lore tokens in case the perfect card appears. Like any auction you have to be tactical, and thoughtful and avoid getting swept along by the bids of others, leaving yourself empty-handed and unable to act.

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Our examiner, Rob Prior, first checked Allegory 22 months ago. It was re-examined by Jo Robertson and updated 14 months ago.