Ex Libris game review

Every now and then a game is put together that is just exactly what you want that fits all of your interests. I love books, this game is all about collecting books. I love fantasy, and this is set in a fantasy world with fantasy-themed books. I love puns and literary jokes, and every single book title is a pun or a joke on a literary idea. And of course, as to style of games, I love worker placement games, and this is a well-done worker placement game. All of that means Ex Libris is a fun addition to our gameschooling.

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Premise of Ex Libris

Here’s the simple concept of the game, you and all of the other players are trying to build the best library in your town. The mayor has finally expressed interest in making an official library and you want to be that official library.

The game takes place over several rounds, and each round you are sending out your assistants to pick out the best books. You have several goals:

1. Shelf stability, create the largest rectangle you can of solid books.
2. Have a wide variety of books in the different genres (there are six possible fantasy inspired genres).
3. Have as few as possible of the banned books, and as many as possible of the favored books.
4. Have as many books as you can of your favored genre.

 

Tips and tricks for playing Ex Libris

The first thing you do is pick your librarian. Each librarian has a special assistant with a special ability. These assistants give you a particular type of play style. Some of the assistants can be more aggressive and some will give you extra actions, or more books.

I don’t particularly like a more aggressive playing style, so I tend to look for assistants who can give me extra actions.

The rules don’t particularly say to do this, but I like to know what my secret favored book style is before I pick my librarian. I don’t think knowing it has any effect on assistants, but for some reason I like knowing ahead of time.

Going back to the categories, there are 6, which if you’re playing with 4 players (the max for the game), all of the categories will be used. Two are known: the mayor’s favorite, and the banned book. The last four are secret, each person knows what their favored category is, but not the other players. This can play into strategy as you start to figure out who has what category and you’re thinking, “I could discard this book card, but it’s got several of Superman’s books on it, and it’ll help him too much.”

A single round is filled with you placing all of your librarian assistants and doing whatever each location says to do. Usually it’s gaining at least one book and shelving that book. The one location that is guaranteed to be out every round is the Diviner’s Hut. The Diviner’s Hut lets you be the first player, and that can be incredibly powerful location to be.

Only one person can go to the Diviner’s Hut, and the later you place your assistant there, the more power you get as you draw extra cards. But, if you wait too long someone else will place their assistant there.

It’s all about trade-offs, and I love the thought process in this, and how someone else places their assistant changes where you place yours.

 

The tricky part of shelving books in Ex Libris

As you can see, each card has more than one book AND frequently more than one book category. This is where you’re doing a careful balance.

1. You will lose points if you have the banned book
2. You get extra points for the books not in your or the town’s favorite category that you have the fewest of, but it can’t be the banned book.
3. If the books are out of alphabetical order, you don’t get points for them.
4. You get points for your largest rectangle.
5. The final round is triggered once people have a certain number of books shelved.

So while I had fantastical fiction as my preferred category, I don’t want to go too obviously for them or else someone else might start keeping all of the books I have.

Sometimes it can be to your advantage to shelf a banned book because it has several of your favored books or the favored book of the mayor.

I also needed to get books from all of the different categories, that is why I lost the last time I played, I slacked on getting a wider diversity, so my lowest number category was practically nothing.

You can also run into trouble by shelving a book too soon.

Your books have to be in alphabetical order, most letters have several cards for them (like 10 books for the letter T, I think). If you shelf card 2, and then have the next letter, you have a decision to make, what are the odds you will get the next card in that letter or if you never will. There’s also the problem you can’t leave giant spaces open on shelves, because it’s not legal. It’s tricky all the way around.

Which is probably why I love the game.

More gameschooling fun

• Tiki Topple
• Unexploded Cow Card Game
• Marrying Mr. Darcy
• Mysterium
• Creation Rummy