Stay warm with Fire in the Library

by Public Service Associate Paul

The scent of burning parchment fills your lungs as you gasp back to reality. You find yourself sprawled along the gilded marble floor of the Grand Library, where every book, every manuscript, every whispered secret bound in ink and paper – the sum of all human knowledge – lives. As your blurry, doubled vision begins to right itself, you notice the flicker of golden chandeliers that illuminate this grand hall is now being drowned by the rising inferno that engulfs the shelves around you. The once mighty shelves that always stood like sentinels, now crumble to embers, taking all the wisdom they once contained and turning it to ash before you.

A distant crash echoes through these cavernous halls as more structural beams burn away and collapse around you. Unsteadily, you scan this infernal wreckage for answers. Through safeguards of spell and steel, this place was to endure the march of time. Smoke chokes the air around you, curling around these ancient tomes that have stood for millennia, and now they are moments from annihilation. You stumble forward. In a moment of clarity you think if you could save just one truth, just one piece of knowledge from this catastrophe perhaps, just perhaps, all would not be lost. 

In Fire in the Library despite the best efforts of you and your fellow Librarians, a fire threatens the sum of all human knowledge. You must save as many precious tomes from the flames as you can before the consuming inferno collapses the Library forever. To do this, you and the other players must press your luck to save as many books from the flames as you can. In doing so, you will earn both knowledge points, as well as bravery points, and you’ll need both when it comes to calculating the winner at the end of the game.

Setup

In order to start playing, you’ll need to separate each of the library cards by color/type. Once you have your Fables (purple), Geography (white), History (black), and War (yellow) cards separated into piles, order each stack sequentially with the highest value card on the bottom of the stack and the lowest value on the top. Now you have 4 ordered stacks that should be placed in the center of the table within reach of all players forming the four sections of the library. Then you’ll add all the book tokens and 7 of the 17 fire tokens into the library bag, setting the remaining 10 fire tokens aside for later. Then you shuffle the tool deck, place it near the library, reveal 3 tool cards that will make up the tool market and now you’re almost ready to start saving these priceless tomes! The last things that each player needs to do is choose a librarian figure to place near the scoring track with its corresponding player reference card, draw 2 tool cards, and take a turn order card. 

Playing the Game

Fire in the Library will occur over a series of rounds, how many is determined by how fast the Library burns. Each round will consist of 3 steps, first the turn order is chosen (in the first round of the game this is already determined when drawing your turn order card during setup). Then each player takes their turn trying to save as many books from the library as possible, and the round ends with the burning of another library section. During the round end phase, players may also discard one of their tools and replace it with the tool decks top card.

How to Save the Books

While it is your turn, and you have open spaces remaining on your Turn Order card, you may draw a token from the library bag, revealing either a book or a fire token. If it was a book that was pulled, place it on the first empty space on your turn order card then you can choose to try to save another book. Once you are done saving books you can score your knowledge gained ending your turn. Your turn can also end if you run out of open spaces on your turn order card, or if they trigger fire spreading.

Knowledge and Bravery points

At any point during your turn (before triggering fire spreading) you can end your turn and gain knowledge points equal to the current value of each book saved, based on the color of the matching library section. You gain bravery points based on the number below the token farthest to the right on your turn order card.

Fire Spreading

If a player triggers fire spreading, the first thing they can do is play tools with the fire spreading icon. If that tool removes the fire spreading then the fire has stopped and the active player can resume saving books. But if they are unable to stop the spread their turn ends immediately and they skip the scoring knowledge step and take the following actions:

1) All collected books that turn burn in the fire, remove the top card from each section of the library that matches the books color. If only fire tokens were drawn, remove the library card with the lowest burn index.

2) Check if a fire icon was revealed by the library cards, if so, add another fire token to the library bag.

3) Return all tokens on the turn order card to the library bag unless a tool says otherwise.

4) Choose an item from the tool market or draw the tool decks top card, and replenish the market to 3 cards.

5) Move to the next active player’s turn and repeat.

Ending the game

After the fire has spread enough times, the game ends when any destroyed library card worth 10 is revealed. This signifies the collapse of the building, and the loss of all its remaining contents. At this point all players should total all of their points together and whoever has the highest is the winner of Fire in the Library, and also the bravest most knowledgeable librarian around. You’d be more excited to celebrate your victory if not for remembering all the priceless knowledge that was lost.

If you are interested in the world of Fire in the Library come check out our board game collection in the front lobby where you can take it, or any of our fun and exciting board games home with you today!

*No libraries were harmed in the making of this post*