Ex Libris

EX LIBRIS

Ah libraries, the quiet building where they hide all the books. I first got a chance to play Ex Libris at SHUX last year and immediately thought that it was something special.

Ex Libris is at its core a set collection game. You want to amass a personal library of books, sort them in a particular way and score the most points for your collection. You have a few normal helpers and a single special one with unique abilities to achieve this task. Getting the books and placing them (along with a few other options) is done via placing these helpers on an ever rotating series of locations. Each location has it's own action and varied ways of resolution.

But getting books and placing them is not enough. They need to be placed in alphabetical order, which means there are hard decisions, such as when to skip a letter or when to start a new shelf row (you can have up to 3). Drawing, trading, stealing, moving and swapping books around in a fervor before someone has got enough books in their collection to end the game gives the game a good sense of urgency.

But having a lot of books is again not enough to win on its own. You want books from certain categories, not too many of any one, not too few, just more than anyone else. Make sure you remembered your personal book preference. You don't want banned books. Make sure your shelves are supported and sturdy (rows and columns). And what ever you do don't place them out of alphabetical order. These decisions all tally up on a smartly designed dry erase board for easily seeing who did the best just on their collection.

Ex Libris starts with a solid set of rules and mechanics. Then it adds a ton of lovely extras that give it just that little something special. Each book card has unique and often clever or funny titled books on it. Each special worker is it's own distinct wooden meeple. The art is beautiful and it has one of the nicest boxes I have seen in a while.

I only have two quibbles with Ex Libris, and both are related to the location cards. First the text is far to small and does not stick out enough from the art on the card, making it really difficult to read from any distance. Second the text is abbreviated from the full rules, which while in the back of the rule book, doesn't help during play without having to reference it each time. As players need a decent amount of space to build their collections the first issue can affect everyone as the locations end up deep in the middle of the table and the second issue really bogs down play with new players or anyone not really familiar with each location.

With each play, the random order the locations come out in, the way the book deck gets shuffled and each player's unique special helper means few games of Ex Libris are going to play the same. Easy to understand core rules and well presented scoring reference keeps the game smooth. Ex Libris is quick and clever. I like it a lot and feel it's a great addition to a games collection.

Hmmm...a game about collecting games...