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Biggles the card game, revisited
Yeah so I bought a copy off Ebay and it arrived today. :D
Worth it.
The cover is actually just one of the cards with Biggles's face, glued to the box. It looked so after-market that I assumed it was done by a previous owner, until I looked up more pictures of the card game online and nope, they're all like that. A printing thing, maybe? The box is single-color printed, so perhaps it was cheaper to do that and then glue a card to the box at the factory (since they were already doing 4-color printing on those) than to do a full-color run of boxes of cards at a time when most packaging wasn't that colorful.
Anyway, so it contains two sets of cards, one with red backs and one blue, for playing the game.
They are honestly very pretty! Each one is a nice full-color painting (a lot of them from book covers or illustrations) and they're printed nicely, especially considering that they're over 60 years old.
Biggles, why is your life like this.
The instruction booklet is also very cute!
I love nifty little objects like this.
I haven't read it except just a quick skim, which suggests that the object is to block your opponent using red "trouble" cards to stop them from being able to play. However, as far as I can tell, the blue cards have just as much trouble happening. Also, the numbers are important somehow? I will report back after I actually read the instructions.
Meanwhile, I laid out all the cards to see what they all look like.
The red-backed cards (click to embiggen).
The blue-backed cards.
Each set contains desert cards and Africa cards (which are ... well ... definitely what they are). I was a little surprised to find that each of the two sets of cards (the red and the blue) has doubles of one set of images - the desert cards are doubled up in one set, the Africa cards in the other. Maybe just because they didn't have enough artwork to fill out enough cards to play the game? The cards fit nicely in the box, so it's clearly the intended quantity.
I liked the desert cards best. Especially these, which are beautiful. I think that's the ruined fort in Foreign Legionnaire?
So then I decided to see if the cards could be used for their hoped-for intended purpose: fic inspiration! I shuffled them and dealt out a few to see if inspiration was provided (discarding the racist ones). I got:
I definitely approve of its fondness for hurt/comfort cards here.
Worth it.
The cover is actually just one of the cards with Biggles's face, glued to the box. It looked so after-market that I assumed it was done by a previous owner, until I looked up more pictures of the card game online and nope, they're all like that. A printing thing, maybe? The box is single-color printed, so perhaps it was cheaper to do that and then glue a card to the box at the factory (since they were already doing 4-color printing on those) than to do a full-color run of boxes of cards at a time when most packaging wasn't that colorful.
Anyway, so it contains two sets of cards, one with red backs and one blue, for playing the game.
They are honestly very pretty! Each one is a nice full-color painting (a lot of them from book covers or illustrations) and they're printed nicely, especially considering that they're over 60 years old.
Biggles, why is your life like this.
The instruction booklet is also very cute!
I love nifty little objects like this.
I haven't read it except just a quick skim, which suggests that the object is to block your opponent using red "trouble" cards to stop them from being able to play. However, as far as I can tell, the blue cards have just as much trouble happening. Also, the numbers are important somehow? I will report back after I actually read the instructions.
Meanwhile, I laid out all the cards to see what they all look like.
The red-backed cards (click to embiggen).
The blue-backed cards.
Each set contains desert cards and Africa cards (which are ... well ... definitely what they are). I was a little surprised to find that each of the two sets of cards (the red and the blue) has doubles of one set of images - the desert cards are doubled up in one set, the Africa cards in the other. Maybe just because they didn't have enough artwork to fill out enough cards to play the game? The cards fit nicely in the box, so it's clearly the intended quantity.
I liked the desert cards best. Especially these, which are beautiful. I think that's the ruined fort in Foreign Legionnaire?
So then I decided to see if the cards could be used for their hoped-for intended purpose: fic inspiration! I shuffled them and dealt out a few to see if inspiration was provided (discarding the racist ones). I got:
I definitely approve of its fondness for hurt/comfort cards here.
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