Bury the Nose – Body of Books Review (Scholars of the South Tigris expansion)

Sometimes expansions comes out and they fix something that may have been a little off in the base game.

(Wayfarers of the South Tigris expansion, I’m looking at you a little bit).

Sometimes, though, an expansion just gives you more stuff to think about and maybe new avenues to approach how you do things in the game.

Body of Books (the expansion for Scholars of the South Tigris) is one of those types of expansions.

The expansion was published by Garphill Games and (eventually) Renegade Games Studios in 2025

Along with the base game, it was designed by Shem Phillips and S J MacDonald with art by Mihajlo Dimitrievski.

The base game is already in my Top 10 so it will be interesting to see what the expansion does for it.

(oh, I guess that’s why you’re reading this, eh?)

Body of Books adds a new science track (Medicine) which is cool in its own right, but the addition of “Pages” that you can tuck under your player board is actually what makes this expansion really sing.

Let’s talk a little bit about what’s under the hood.

As you know if you read my Scholars review, the game is about finding scrolls, taking them back to the various guilds, and then translating them into Arabic.

It’s also about moving up six different science tracks that will give you special bonuses, income, and points.

The new Medicine track is black and can only be accessed with the new black die that each player now has (you can gain more of these, too).

Track movement is done the same way as in the base game, except that you have to use a black die to do it. You can’t combine dice to make a colour like you do the secondary colours.

This Medicine science track is also tied to the other main new mechanic in the game: Pages.

You’ll be gaining experience tokens throughout the game and when the “book” symbol appears (like on the Science track), or if you use the Translate action with a black die, you can instead buy and translate pages from medical tracts.

For me, these Pages are the bread and butter of this expansion.

These Pages are tucked under your board similar to how your retired translators are tucked, and they also offer bonuses.

However, the red Pages have to be tucked under a certain action space. You don’t get to choose.

The gold Pages are endgame scoring or actions and can be tucked anywhere.

One of the neat things about the base game is the ability to tuck retired translators so that they make the action you tuck them under stronger, or give you a bonus when you take that action, or something like that.

We never really retired too many translators, so it never really happened too much.

Now that you can also tuck pages, tucking is much more useful and you will find yourself tucking a lot.

That’s why they had to change the system for tucking cards and how much it costs, along with now giving you an extra bonus.

On the right bottom is the tucking display for how much tucking costs.

The further you go down under the same action, the more it costs to tuck.

However, if you complete an entire row, that display card actually moves down one row, giving you a bonus (two of them in the picture have already been done but the third row bonus would be either upgrading an action card or placing/taking a gold from a translator).

This reduces the cost of further tucking.

In the base game, I don’t think any of us would even dream about tucking eight cards, but I did it above!

This aspect of the base game is so much improved with the expansion.

It wasn’t bad in the base game, in the sense that I wouldn’t hold it against the game.

But it wasn’t that interesting. A neat little bonus a couple of times.

Now it’s something you’re angling to do.

What was that I mentioned above about upgraded action cards?

In Body of Books there are six random upgraded action cards that, when you get that “up arrow on a card” symbol (shown on the tucking bonus display as well as the Medicine science track), you can replace one of your standard action cards with an upgrade.

The bottom right one, for example, would replace your standard “orange Science track” card, letting you place or take a gold from a translator in addition to your dice action.

The bottom middle one gives you a free black die for the action!

This aspect of the expansion didn’t come into play quite as much and while it’s a nice addition, it didn’t really feel necessary (though it is also a good way to get experience since each one has 1-2 experience tokens on it).

It adds a little to the game without being too much.

There are a few other additions, mostly to do with the black die as an action.

You start with a Page that gives your black die a +3 if you use it to interact with a Translator. Since the black die only has values 4-6 anyway, that means you can interact with any translator with a black action.

There are other rules for the black die in the other actions as well, including translating Pages instead of scrolls with the translate action, which allows you to use any translator(s) to do the action.

You don’t have to chain one language to Arabic with multiple translators.

This could help you retire your translators, adding to the tucking ability!

The addition of the black die and the Pages really make Body of Books a great expansion. You do need more workers if you want to use the black die for anything else, since it overrides all other dice (even the secondary green/purple/orange dice).

If you use the black die, you are doing a black action, unless you use a worker.

Thankfully they can be modified with workers just like any other die.

Body of Books basically adds options to the game, which some of the best expansions do.

It doesn’t “fix” anything because even the tucking of translators wasn’t “broken.”

It just wasn’t as interesting as it could have been.

The expansion doesn’t add too much overhead so you could include the expansion when you’re teaching the game to somebody, as long as you think they’re up for it.

Scholars of the South Tigris is already a lot, so you be the judge if the expansion is that wafer-thin mint.

Is Body of Books a required expansion?

No, not at all.

Scholars is a great game all on its own and it doesn’t need anything else.

However, Body of Books adds some cool stuff that just makes the game better in my eyes.

Check it out if you get the chance.

(This review was written after two plays with the expansion)