Overview
You are a book collector, always looking to expand your library. Across the six genres of books, collect the most varied collection, arrange it alphabetically, make sure your shelves are stable, avoid the banned books, and grab as many as you can of your preferred genre (a secret card given to you at the start) to win!
Ex Libris is a worker placement and set collection game, featuring different locations and abilities. On your turn, you will 'send out an assistant' (place a worker) to one of the available locations. Each location has a special ability, but limited slots per turn, so make sure you stop at your preferred places before they fill up. The abilities might allow you to draw cards, discard them, shelve them (see next paragraph), or rearrange them to your liking. Once a player has shelved 12 book cards, the game ends at the end of that round and final scores are tallied.
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| some game components; image from here |
Each card in the game has 2-4 books on it, of varying genres, along with a letter and sequence at the top left. To shelve a card, you put it in somewhere in your existing stack, but be warned: cards out of alphabetical order won't count at the end of the game. But you can't rearrange shelves once placed, and you get points if your shelves are stable (in a rectangular grid) at game's end. So arrange and place wisely!
At game's end, you get points for a variety of categories, as hinted in the first paragraph.
Review
I enjoyed this game. The alphabetization/shelf placement component is an interesting twist to the set collection/worker placement mechanic. Visiting various locations (randomly chosen out of a large pool) makes for a different experience each time. You can pick it up pretty quickly and it is solid overall, if not spectacular.
Rating: B+
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