Thebes

[Zarniwoop]

The components of this game are extremely well made and very in keeping with the theme. Each location has a bag of "Treasures" to discover, each player has a dial to aid them in deciding how much time to spend digging vs potential reward.

This game has a great theme and the mechanics work really well to enhance the theme. The game is played over a set time (a number of years + weeks depending on the Number of players) where each action or move costs a number of weeks marked on a track around the board.

The further person back always goes first so making sure you optimise your turn is important, initially you move around the world collecting Knowledge, in the form of cards, each move to a city costs a week and each card collected costs a number of weeks depicted on the card. Cards can only be collected by being in the city marked on it. Once you think you have sufficient knowledge you can go to one of the Dig sites. Once there you look at your accumulated knowledge and using your dial determine how many weeks to spend digging this will then determine how many tokens you can grab out of the appropriate bag. In each of these bags are a number of different valued Artifacts as well as a number of blank cards, after you draw you keep the Artifacts which are now your VP's and replace the blanks into the bag.

During the game you can also use your collected Artifacts to put on exhibitions, in order to do these you will need a certain number of artifacts from each dig site and be in the appropriate city. These can then be collected and add VP's, but as new ones appear old one's are removed and later exhibitions require a lot of artifacts to put on.

This game is extremely fun to play and whilst it does involve an element of luck there are strategies and tactics needed to win the game.

Overall I would throughly recommend this game to anyone as it appeals to all levels of gamers.

The 4 player game as laid out in the rules plays differently to other numbers of players. This is because the game is played over 2 years in a 4 player rather than the normal 3 years. Having less time significantly changes tactics and strategies.

We've found that for a 4 player game if you set it up the same as a 3 player game it works much better.

[whitefire]

Gosh ! I hadn't even realised that this hadn't been reviewed or I would have done one ages ago.

Zarniwoop is spot on - this is a little gem of a game.

1) Play is simple and it's suitable for all ages

2) The materials and components are top quality and it will therefore take a lot of use

3) The strategies you adopt need to be flexible to take advantage of the changing situation - when someone else is targetting a particular exhibition or goal you need to constantly rethink your own priorities.

4) Oddly - and without conferring - I found that keeping to a three year game for 4 players works well too. The 2 year variant felt too rushed and meant that the strategies never felt as well executed.

This is a firm family favorite when we want to pass some light hearted gaming time - sort of on a par with Ticket to Ride Europe or Marrakech in terms of complexity and gamer level.

Well worth playing.