Thebes — board game details

About the game

What is Thebes

Thebes is a game of competitive archeology. Players are archaeologists who must travel around Europe, northern Africa, and the Middle East to acquire knowledge about five ancient civilizations -- the Greeks, the Cretans, the Egyptians, the Palestinians, and the Mesopotamians -- and then must use this knowledge to excavate historical sites in the areas of these civilizations. Through the course of the game, expositions are revealed, and an archaeologist who has treasures from the requisite civilizations may claim the prize (this is a change from the first edition's handling of exhibitions). The archaeologist who learns the most about the civilizations, claims the greatest-valued artifacts, and collects the most exhibitions will win out over his or her colleagues.

The key element to the game is that it is played out over a period of two (or three) years, and each action a player performs takes a certain amount of time -- traveling is a week between cities, gathering knowledge takes time for the level of the knowledge, and actually digging at a cultural site takes time to yield a certain number of artifact tiles. The game uses a novel mechanism to keep track of this. There is a track of 52 spaces around the outside of the board. Each time a player moves and takes an action, he or she moves their player token forward in time. Players take turns based on being the one who is furthest back in "time". So, a player can go to an excavation site and spend 10 weeks digging for artifacts, but that will also mean that the other players will likely be taking several actions in the interim while that player waits for the "time" to catch up.

In addition, the artifact tiles for each civilization are drawn from a bag that also contains dirt. When a player excavates a site, that player pulls tiles from the bag, but some may only be worthless dirt instead of valuable treasure. That dirt is then returned to the bag, making the first draw more likely to provide useful tiles.

This is the new entry for the Queen printing of Jenseits von Theben. As the new game changes several mechanisms of the original, and is available in a much wider release, the two games should be regarded as separate entities.

Specs

Game details

Players: 2–4
Age: +8
Duration: 60 min
Difficulty: Medium
Type: Board game
Year: 2007
Mechanics: Point to Point Movement · Set Collection · Turn Order: Time Track
Categories: Ancient · Exploration · Travel
Designer: Peter Prinz
Publisher: Devir · Queen Games · Arclight Games · Corfix

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Community data

Thebes on Meeplay

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240Plays logged

82Own it in their collection

7.1Average rating

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Reviews

What the community says about Thebes

M

Meeplay_81869/10

Es un juego sencillo de explicar y de jugar pero muy divertido, su tema está acorde al azar que trae pues se trata de reunir información para luego poder excavar. Lo mejor del juego es la acción de escavar, pues ese momento de meter la mano a la bolsa y sacar solo arena o pocos tesoros es emocionante, algunos dirán que tiene azar, pero ¿que excavación no tiene azar en la vida real? Escala muy bien y va rápido a 2 personas, mejor a 4.

P

PacoPunta7.1/10

gran juego, con un sistema de turrnos muy bueno, basado en el tiempo que tarda cada arqueólogo en sus trabajos. tiene bastante azar, pero es lo que le da el toque divertido al juego. Para echar un buen ratito de risas.

D

davidarribas5/10

Lo divertido de este juego es sacar de la bolsa y que se reparta la suerte, todo lo demás es obvio y algo plano, aunque me gusta el planteamiento del mapa y cómo corren los turnos.