Bookish Boardgame Review: Ex Libris, by Adam P. McIver

Hello readers!

Yes, that is exactly what you read: we’re having a boardgame review today. Of the cutest bookish boardgame I’ve ever seen in my life. I received this on my birthday last year and played it a couple times together with Clio’s Boardgames. Honestly, this is probably the most perfect game to give to a book lover. I will give more details on my review below, but spoiler alert: I loved it.

Players: 1-4

Time: 30-60 min

Level of difficulty: Easy-to-Medium

Boardgame Geek / Official Game Page / Renegades Buy Link / Amazon

This is such a bookish game, I loved it! You’re going to play a book collector trying to win the position of Grand Librarian of the magical kingdom, with gnomes and magical creatures (a witch, a bookworm, a giant robot etc) to help you build your shelves to impress!

Photo by: jordan3491

Basically you want to create a shelf which is varied, with no many banned books and full of books of your focus (mine was Monster Manuals in the first game!) AND in alphabetical order. You don’t have to do it all at once, and aiming for a couple of these goals is enough to give you victory if you plan it right and get a bit lucky.

It was lots of fun putting together an orderly shelf and reading the titles of the books! Each one is a pun on a beloved book (A Lich in Wonderland), a funny alliteration (Succumbing to Succubi) and other hilarious titles (XXX and other Naughty Numbers). Really, you can have a full hour of fun just by reading the titles. My first game with Clio took a long time because we kept giggling and reading them out loud. Our second was far more cutthroat and I got swiftly beaten (sigh).

There is also a solo gaming option, which I will try out and then post about soon!

This is what my shelf looked like at the end of the first game:

Isn’t this cute?

The mechanics of the game are not difficult at all to get into – just read the rules attentively and you’ll be good to go. it’s quite good even if you’re not used to playing anything but Monopoly (and gosh, this is incomparably better!). If you don’t like reading rule books, here is a video explanation on how to play it: