2008.10.19
Digging a new game
Last Monday I had Brian and Pam over for dinner and board games. It had been a while since I last had them over, and so I felt it was time. We only played one game: Thebes.
Thebes has been criticized for having too much luck. There is luck involved both in which cards are drawn and in which treasures you find when you excavate, but I think that skilled players will still manage to win more often than not.
In fact, I can’t imagine playing Thebes without the luck factor. Luck plays two very important roles in the game:
- It levels the playing field. Thebes is meant as a fairly light family-oriented game. New players, less experienced players, and young players all stand a reasonable chance at winning even against seasoned veterans. For me, this means I’m more likely to play the game and teach it to new people. If new players make poor decisions for the first part of the game while they are still learning, they are not penalized to the point where they can no longer win. It also makes it a good “learn as you go” game – I teach the game by giving a brief intro to the general aims of the game, the time-based turn system, and then I just explain the cards as they appear.
- The presence of luck is key to the fun factor in the excavation mechanic. When you make a long journey to the heart of Mesopotamia and spend months excavating, there’s a definite tension as you draw the tokens out of the bag to see what you uncover. You might leave the dig site with more riches than you could have imagined, or you could head back to Paris with a pocket full of sand and tales of the one that got away. If the excavation mechanic were instead changed to use a table-based, deterministic method of awarding points, the game wouldn’t be nearly as much fun to play.
Even though luck plays a factor, as a player you have access to enough information to make informed decisions and to maximize your chances for success. Since all of the player’s cards and treasures they have obtained remain visible at all times, experienced players will be able to make a call as to what their best options are. For example, if there are only 3 treasures left in Egypt, each worth only a single point, you may be better off going to Greece even if it means you have to spend more time there to be able to pull a reasonable number of tokens.
If anyone out there is waffling on the decision to purchase Thebes, I would suggest you take the plunge, or ask very nicely at your friendly local gaming store to see if they have a demo copy you can try.
The best endorsement I can possibly give the game is that Brian and Pam decided to purchase a copy for themselves even before we finished playing the game for the first time. It’s a very worthy addition to your Eurogame collection.
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