Library

Library
Info
Cost
Type(s)	Action
Kingdom card?	Yes
Set	Base
Illustrator(s)	Harald Lieske
Card text
Draw until you have 7 cards in hand, skipping any Action cards you choose to; set those aside, discarding them afterwards.

Library is an Action card from the Base set. It is a terminal draw-to-X card, meaning it provides +Cards (up to a limit) but no +Action. Its ability to set aside Action cards acts as a weak sifting effect.

FAQ

Official FAQ

• You look at cards one at a time, putting each one into your hand or setting it aside, until you have 7 cards in hand; then you discard the set aside cards.
• If you shuffle in the middle of doing this, you do not shuffle in the set aside cards.
• Only Action cards can be set aside. You are not forced to set aside Action cards; that is just an option.
• If you already have 7 cards in hand to start, you do not draw any cards.

Other rules clarifications

• If you have 6 or fewer cards in hand and your –1 Card token is on your deck, you'll remove the token and will draw until you have 7 cards.
• If you set aside any Action-Reactions that care about being discarded (such as Village Green or Trail), you resolve their Reactions after you finish drawing.

Strategy

Library is a draw-to-X card: that is, rather than drawing a fixed number of cards, it allows you to continue drawing until you have a specific number in hand. Library’s drawing power is therefore dependent on your hand size: it draws more cards when you play it from a hand of few cards. This gives it a different set of advantages, disadvantages, and synergies compared to more typical draw cards such as Smithy. The ability to skip past Action cards also provides some flexibility and sifting, although the fact that Library is terminal and cannot sift past Treasures or junk makes it difficult to use without strong support. It works best in engines with good thinning, Action-based payload, and abundant villages, and you’ll usually look to add a Library after you’ve started preparing your deck by thinning. In the absence of these supporting effects, it’s usually not worth using Library to try and draw.

When using Library (or more generally any draw-to-X card) as your primary draw, your approach to various archetypes of cards changes. Generally speaking, Action stop cards become much more attractive, as their biggest disadvantage (that they don’t draw) is less of a concern because playing them first then allows your Library to draw more. Library therefore works well with villages that don’t draw cards (e.g. Festival)—while you lose some reliability compared to Village, you lose no drawing power overall. It also negates the downside of discard-for-benefit cards; for example, discarding with Artificer leaves you with a smaller hand size, but playing Library afterwards voids this downside. Additionally, if you can decrease your hand size any other way (e.g., by first playing a payload stop card such as Vassal or a trash for benefit card such as Remodel), your Library can draw even more cards. Treasures, on the other hand, are much worse payload with Library, since they can't generally be played until the Buy phase, so they are stuck taking up space in your hand (although some cards change this, notably Villa and Black Market). For the same reason, trashing your starting cards (e.g., via Chapel) can greatly improve the efficacy of a draw-to-X deck, although it’s sometimes possible to use sifting effects such as Cellar as a substitute for this. Library also partially counters discarding attacks such as Militia. The flip side of this is that there is a hard limit on your hand size if you are just using Library for draw, so multiple copies don’t stack unless you can decrease your hand size between playing them (similarly, using Throne Room to play Library is much less desirable than using it to play Smithy).

The option to skip Action cards when drawing with Library is rarely very impactful, because these are usually the cards that you most want to draw and play. The effect is occasionally useful, however: it may allow you to skip useless Action cards such as Ruins, avoid terminal collision or drawing Actions dead if you have limited remaining terminal space, or sift through your deck for a key card that you specifically want to play, such as a village, Attack, or Traveller.

External strategy articles

Note: Article(s) below are by individual authors and may not represent the community's current views on cards, but may provide more in-depth information or give historical perspective. Caveat emptor.

• theory's 2011 article

Versions

English versions

Print	Digital	Text	Release	Date
		Draw until you have 7 cards in hand. You may set aside any Action cards drawn this way, as you draw them; discard the set aside cards after you finish drawing.	Dominion	October 2008
		Draw until you have 7 cards in hand, skipping any Action cards you choose to; set those aside, discarding them afterwards.	Dominion (Second Edition)	October 2016

Other language versions

Language	Name	Print	Digital	Text	Notes
Chinese	圖書館 (pron. túshūguǎn)
Czech	Knihovna
Dutch	Bibliotheek			Vul je hand aan tot 7 kaarten. Getrokken actiekaarten mag je houden of apart bewaren en vervangen door nieuwe kaarten. Als je hand is aangevuld leg je de apart bewaarde actiekaarten af.	Tweede editie (herdruk 2019/2020) "Vul je hand aan tot 7 kaarten. Trek kaarten tot je er 7 in handen hebt. … Als je hand is aangevuld Nadat je klaar bent met het trekken…"
Finnish	Kirjasto
French	Bibliothèque			Piochez jusqu'à ce que vous ayez 7 cartes en main. Chaque carte Action piochée peut être mise de côté. Défaussez les cartes mises de côté lorsque vous avez terminé de piocher.
German	Bibliothek			Ziehe solange Karten vom Nachziehstapel, bis du insgesamt 7 Karten auf der Hand hast. Aktionskarten, die du ziehst, darfst du dabei zur Seite legen. Sobald du 7 Karten auf der Hand hast, legst du die zur Seite gelegten Karten ab.	(2008, 2013) "Sobald du 7 Karten auf der Hand hast, Nach dem Ziehen…"
	Bibliothek			Zieh, bis du 7 Handkarten hast; gezogene Aktionskarten darfst du dabei zur Seite legen und nach dem Ziehen ablegen.	2. Edition (2018, 2019)
Greek	Βιβλιοθήκη (pron. vivliotheke)
Hungarian	Könyvtár
Italian	Biblioteca
Japanese	書庫 (pron. shoko)			手札が7枚になるように、好きなアクションカードを (何枚でも)飛ばしながら、1枚ずつカードを引く (飛ばすものは脇に置き、引き終えた後、捨て札にする)。
Korean	도서관 (pron. doseogwan)
Norwegian	Bibliotek
Polish	Biblioteka			Dobieraj karty, aż będziesz miał ich 7 na ręce. W miarę dobierania możesz odkładać na bok kolejne dobrane karty Akcji. Po zakończeniu dobierania odrzuć wszystkie odłożone karty.	(2015) II Edycja (2018)
Romanian	Bibliotecă
Russian	Библиотека (pron. bibliotyeka)			Тяните карты до семи в руке, по желанию пропуская любые карты Действия. Пропущенные карты откладывайте в сторону и затем сбросьте их.
Spanish	Biblioteca			Roba cartas de una en una hasta tener 7 cartas en la mano. Puedes ir apartando las cartas de Acción que vayas sacando. Cuando termines, descarta las cartas que hayas apartado.	First Edition (2008)
	Biblioteca			Roba cartas de una en una hasta tener 7 cartas en la mano. Puedes ir apartando las cartas de Acción que vayas sacando. Cuando termines, descarta las cartas que hayas apartado.	Second Edition (2016, 2021)

Trivia

Official card art.

Secret History

When I nabbed Festival from the 6th expansion, I took Library with it, since to me they went together. Actually it was a 3-card package, but the other card did not make the grade. Library seemed like a fine card to have around, so why not. At one point it came under fire for having confusing text, and could conceivably have gotten booted. We fixed up the text and ended up deciding it wasn't too complicated after all.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, The Secret History of the Dominion Cards

Name

Library was the kind of name I wanted in Alchemy, where the card started, and well I guess I've been influenced all these years by [Magic: The Gathering] equating card-drawing with knowledge. There is no such equating in Dominion; I decided early on that "+Cards" would have no flavor, because a card like Torturer wants to be named for the relevant new part of the card, not for the +3 Cards.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Dominion Forums, 2011