Beyond Thebes

In Thebes the players take on the role of archaeologists in Europe in the early 20th century. Players travel around the cities of northern Europe collecting the things they will need for their explorations – knowledge, assistants and equipment – which they then use to excavate the sites of Egypt, Crete, Rome, Mesopotamia, and Palestine. The excavations involve drawing cardboard tokens out of the appropriate bag; some have artefacts of varying value (points), which can be put on exhibition at museums (for extra points), and some are dirt, which goes back in the bag after the excavation is over.

This is a brilliant family game for all ages (from around 10+):
- the theme is very convincing
- the rules sound a little complicated on reading, but the game-play itself is quite simple
- there is room for strategy, but there is so much randomness in the excavations that even the player making “bad” choices can still win the game (making it an ideal game to play with children) – there will be plenty of moans and groans as you pull out all the dirt, while your opponents keep finding the treasure

All in all this game is a lot fun to play (as long as you don’t take it too seriously). The thrills and spills of archaeological adventures without getting your hands dirty.

Archaeology and exploration are themes that lend themselves well to boardgames; travelling, digging up or otherwise finding rare ancient artefacts and returning to bring them to the attention of the world, collect fame and wealth by doing so.

Thebes is set at the very start of the twentieth century, with the players taking the part of archaeologists scouring Europe for knowledge about the five dig sites of the game; Egypt, Greece, Crete, Palestine and Mesopotamia. In addition to knowledge of a specific site or general knowledge (harder to find and more time-consuming), that players can acquire equipment and assistants to make their tasks more profitable (for example a research assistant counts as extra knowledge, a car reduces travel time between locations). Knowledge and equipment are represented by cards denoting what the item is and where it can be found.

One a player considers that they've got enough knowledge to carry out a dig, they head to a site of their choosing and start excavating. The more knowledge one has the more successful the dig will be, but if another player gets there first subsequent players will have fewer artefacts remaining to find. The longer one spends digging the more artefacts you are likely to find.

Thebes uses an ingenious system of tracking the players' turns and thus the overall game length. Every action you can take (moving, collecting the item cards, excavating) takes time. Cards take a fixed time (1 week to acquire one point of knowledge, 2 weeks to recruit an assistant, for example), moving takes 1 week per city on the journey, and digging can take up to 12 weeks (which the player chooses). Depending how many people are playing there are between two and three years in the game; thus as you move and take actions, you get closer to the end of 1903 which marks the end of the game. Intriguingly this means that the players actions can represent doing things in the past of some of the other characters! The player that is furthest back (on the time track) will go next, so the players are kept relatively close to each other but this presents interesting options. Balancing when to take long actions that will give big gains against taking small actions with lesser gains but being able to take a subsequent action sooner is a key part of the game.

All that said, Thebes is a light game with a significant element of luck in it; possibly light enough to be a gateway game for the right people, although it's a bit heavier than Settlers of Catan for example (it has a larger element of luck, but a few more rules). The first part of the game tends to be a race around the map of Europe to collect the best cards then, once a player decides they have enough for a dig, they visit the archaeological site they wish to visit (most knowledge they acquire relates to a specific site) and decide how long they wish to excavate for. Each player has a lovely game component, a "time wheel" which cross references dig duration and knowledge, resulting in how many chits can be drawn from the site. Each site has its own bag of chits, which is where the
second major luck factor comes into play; many of the chits in each bag are worthless, while the artefacts that can be found are of varying values. While, averaged out, pulling more chits from the bag for a given dig site would give a more profitable dig, one can randomly draw well or badly on that dig.

At the end of the game points are awarded for the value of artefacts discovered, exhibitions undertaken, lectures given and most knowledge acquired for each dig site. The game works best with three or four players; with two players the swing of points from a un/lucky dig can make a huge difference.

There's a lot to like about Thebes; it's visually very appealing, with well-designed and well-made components. The theme and game fit together very well.
It's very engaging, but relies on luck too heavily for the 'serious' gamer. It's very suitable as a gateway game or even a long-ish filler.