Thebes: A Whiff of Academia

Since I’ve always found archaeology fascinating, buying the boardgame Thebes was a no-brainer. The bonus: Playing the game gives one the ‘feel’ of academia packed into an engaging 60-90 minute experience. I have the 2007 Queen version of the game. I played it two dozen times the first couple of years, but then it tapered off to an average of one game per year. Reading about the Phaistos Disc reminded me how much I enjoyed the game and I managed to play it this past week!

Below is a combined review and session report of the game. I apologize for the fuzzy pictures. I have shaky hands and I didn’t want to slow down the game while I was snapping photos.

In Thebes you are an archaeologist at the turn of the twentieth century. The goal of the game is to earn the most victory points (VPs). The main way to do this is by digging up artifacts, but you can also earn VPs by being the foremost expert in an archaeological site, going to conferences, and putting up exhibitions of your finds. Here’s a snapshot of the board early in a three-player game.

I’m the red player with a figure in London (top left) where I have been gathering knowledge.  In the top right are the cards players collect when they visit various European cities. The bottom right quarter shows the five archaeological sites: Greece, Crete, Egypt, Palestine and Mesopotamia. The edge of the board has a 52-spot time ‘track’ representing the weeks in a year. This is one of the most innovative parts of the game: Travel and different activities take up time measured in weeks. Instead of taking turns in a ‘round’ like most other games, it is your turn if you are ‘last’ on the turn track, i.e., you’ve spent the least time up to that point.

During your turn, you either (1) visit a city and take one of the four cards available, or (2) go to an archaeological site and dig for treasure. You advance your turn marker along the track but how far it moves will depend on whether you are traveling a long distance and/or doing something that takes a long time. In the game above, I had just traveled to London so I could accumulate specific knowledge about Greece (the card with the three orange books). The clock in the top right of each card tells you how many weeks you have to spend. Cards with fewer books require less time to acquire. The card below that (the car) allows you to reduce travel time between locations. The shovel card allows you to draw an extra tile when digging for artifacts. The final card is “rumors of the people” and gives you one-time-use knowledge for Palestine (green). Each archaeological site has its own associated color.

In this game, I made a quick early rush to collect knowledge in Greece. Above you can see that I’ve accumulated 7 orange books, the most recent 3 from a visit to Berlin. Next to them is my time wheel, another innovative part of the game. I have just adjusted the wheel to indicate I have knowledge = 7 represented by the white number in blue background. The wheel then tells me how many tiles I will get to draw (in red) depending on the number of weeks I spend digging at the site (in black). For example, I can stay 7 weeks to draw 6 tiles or 10 weeks to draw 8 tiles. The more information you have, the more tiles you get to draw and the less time you need to stay.

As I was pondering whether to go to Greece during another player’s turn, 1 more orange book turned up so I grabbed it before heading to Greece. My fellow players were still gathering information so I was the first player to dig. The first player has two advantages. The minor advantage is receiving a “surface-level” treasure. You can see in the initial game board picture that each site has one circular tile. The major advantage is that you get first dibs on the treasure trove. Each site has thirty tiles: 13 tiles are artifacts that give you victory points, 2 tiles give you knowledge in other areas, and 15 tiles are “dust”. I drew nine tiles on this expedition and did quite well as you can see below. The number on the wreath tells me how valuable each treasure each, i.e., how many VPs I would earn. More than half of the tiles I drew were treasure!

Each site has a slightly different distribution of treasure. Above you can see the 6 tiles of treasure I obtained (1 surface, 5 from the dig) and a card showing the distribution of treasure value in Greece. I got the three highest valued treasures (the 6 VP city seal of Troy, a 5 VP Parthenon decoration and a 5 VP Zeus statue) along with some lower value treasure. The rectangular orange chit with an X now shows that I have dug at Greece this year and I must wait until next year before I can dig at the same location again. What happened to those dust tiles I drew? They go back into the bag! The next person who digs at Greece will have a harder time getting treasure as the ratio of dust tiles is now higher!

While I was off digging at Greece, the other two players were accumulating information mainly at the other four sites. They went on to dig at those sites before I got a chance to go. Why might you want to dig at several sites? Because exhibitions require that you have artifacts from two or three sites. Here’s another snapshot of the board in the middle of the game. You can see the three available exhibition cards below. These “small” exhibitions give you VPs if you travel to the appropriate city and you have the number and color of the artifacts indicated. I would need to dig at other sites to do an exhibition. (My competitors are digging at Crete and Mesopotamia.)

Here’s my tableau of cards after traveling around Europe mainly to gain more knowledge in different areas. (You can also see the three markers on the time track. It is the Green player’s turn.)

Below the shovel card, you can see a conference card I picked up from Wien. One conference card is only worth 1 VP, but two are worth 3 VP, three are worth 6 VP, etc. My competition had been going around to conferences while I was off at Greece. But while they were off digging, I picked up a little knowledge about Palestine (green), a chunk of knowledge about Egypt (yellow), some knowledge about Mesopotamia (blue), and sadly only a tiny bit of knowledge in Crete (purple). Sadly, there will be no Phaistos Disc for me. On the right are general knowledge cards that can contribute to any of the sites. They take longer to acquire but are well worth it!

I then quickly headed over to Egypt and was the second to dig there. While half the tiles were dust, I actually had a great haul including the 5 VP Rosetta Stone!

After that I went to Palestine. I was the third to dig so there would likely be slim pickings but a number of the higher VP treasures had not yet been found. You can see a lot of dust below but I snagged the highest possible treasure, the 7 VP Dead Sea Scrolls from Qumran! (There was a lot of joyful yelling from me and groans from my competitors at this point.) I also got a Roman coin and the Tel Dan stele.

Even though I was also the third at Mesopotamia, I had a surprisingly good haul. This allowed me to do three exhibitions (two “large” and one “small”) before the game ended as you can see in the picture below.

I had the highest haul of treasure and the most points from exhibitions at the end of the game, but I came in second. While I was doing my exhibitions, one of the other players edged me out by being the foremost expert (collecting the most books) in multiple areas. The other two players also had done four conferences apiece to my measly one.

Why do I enjoy Thebes? I get to pretend I’m an archaeologist in an era where I’m competing with others for knowledge, glory and artifacts. The game mechanics fit very well with the theme! The two nifty innovations (the time track turn order and time wheel for digs) work very well. The random draw from the bag with increasing chance of dust is very thematic! Slim pickings if you arrive late. But sometimes you get lucky and snag a treasure of high value regardless! It’s like academia. Sometimes you get lucky and hit a gold mine, and sometimes you just eat the dust. Lots of things don’t work. Like academics, I can choose to go to conferences, or I can choose to present my work at exhibitions. I can opt for a narrow strategy of focusing on just a couple of areas, or I can try to diversify. I didn’t show you all the cards but there are also “research assistant” cards. You can hire R.A.s to help with your dig. (One of my friends who was a grad student in geophysics at the time called them ‘lackeys’ probably because that’s what it feels like when you’re out in the field.)

All this is packed into an immersive 60-90 minute experience with nice game components and even a chart that tells you what all the treasures are! The game designer, Peter Prinz, did a fantastic job. So if you enjoy the theme or would like to experience a whiff of academia, I highly recommend Thebes.