Bable

About the game

What is Bable?

Bable is a challenging cooperative card game where no one speaks your language. You build the mythical Tower of Babel together with your fellow players. However, you may not perform any actions during your turn; instead you have to give orders to other players. Meanwhile, your languages are slowly changing, making it increasingly difficult to understand each other. Players work together by giving each other commands. While building, their languages slowly change, making it increasingly harder to understand each others commands. Do the players manage to construct the tower before the chaos is complete? The goal in Bable is to complete building the tower before they run out of actions. Players construct the tower in 4 distinct Layers, containing (from bottom to top) 4, 3, 2 and 1 Building cards. Players must complete each Layer before its corresponding Idea deck runs out. Players always have 4 actions in hand (build, draw, give and reveal) that help construct the tower. The actions are referred to by their symbols, as the words associated to the actions will change during the game. Players are not allowed to perform actions on their own turn. Instead, on their turn they give assignments to other players to perform actions. An important actions is the build action, which allows a player to place a Building card in the tower if they pay the associated cost in Materials. —description from the designer

How it plays

Mechanics

On the shelf

Categories

Questions players ask

Questions to bring to BoardGameBrain

• How do setup and the first turn work in Bable?
• When does scoring happen and what ends the game?
• How should the table resolve an unusual timing or rules interaction?