by W. Eric Martin

In mid-July, German publisher AMIGO teased its late 2025 releases. I've already reviewed one of those titles, Reiner Knizia's Meister Makatsu, and today I can talk about another — a 2-5 player dice game from Carsten Rohlfs and Ralf zur Linde called Biddle.

Here's an overview of the game, which takes about 30 minutes to play:

Here are more examples of the 55 challenges included in the game:


Biddle includes a (German) cheat sheet that explains the iconography on these cards, such as:

• In the upper left, you need four 3s and two numbers that are distinct from one another. (One of them can also be a 3, but that's not required.)

• In the middle left, all dice can differ from one another by at most 2, e.g., 1-2-3 or 3-4-5.

• In the middle of the second column, you need a three-of-a-kind of an odd value, then a second one of a different odd value.

• At the bottom of the second column, you need a small straight, as well as three dice of values 4-6.

• In the middle of the third column, you can have no 2s, 3s, 4s, or 5s — that is, you can have only 1s and 6s in any combination.

I've played Biddle three times on a mock-up copy from AMIGO, once each with two, three, and four players, and as you might imagine, the game was more interesting with more players than fewer. With only two players, one player can make a bid, then the other player steps out, and that's that aside from the rolling, which is just one player rooting against the other.

With three or four players, you create teams each round, and the gameplay feels more satisfying and meaningful, both when you're going it alone against everyone else or teamed up with someone else.

A demo game during Gen Con 2025What's more, it almost doesn't matter whether you're the side rolling the dice or the side rooting for failure. Well, except that it does matter since the points scored on the success side are roughly twice as much as on the failure side. As AMIGO's Bernd Keller explained when teaching the game, rooting for failure is easy; doing something is harder, so that's rewarded more.

One interesting aspect of the bidding is that it doesn't end until you have two teams. If I bid five rolls and everyone else in turn order calls at five rolls, then I must either go down to four rolls (or fewer) or drop out. I'm forced to take action — and if I really thought five rolls was required, then I either have to cede that position to others, turning against what I thought previously, or gamble on doing the challenge with one fewer roll. Thus, you can potentially bait others into signing on to a challenge that you don't think can be made at the risk of being forced to try it yourself.

As the game progresses, you can track who has how many points, and that status will affect your bidding — or at least it should. In the three-player game, I was a few points behind the leader, but I goofed in my bidding and ended up on the same team as the leader in the final round, giving me no chance of overtaking them, no matter whether we scored or not. In the four-player game, someone made a last-ditch gamble on completing the challenge, then nailed it for 12 points and the victory.

Amazing to see a new take on the familiar Yacht/Yahtzee/Kniffel formula, but here we are. The dynamic of players being forced to divide into scoring and non-scoring camps — although they don't know which is which at the time — is welcome and engaging.