A New Addiction

Once in a while a game comes along that is so enjoyable that you just wanna keep playing it. It is mildly disturbing that most of the games I have felt that way about are not ones that I have bought for myself. No, the last few addictions I’ve had can be directly attributed to my friend Scott, a self professed “Euro-gamer”. He admits to loving almost all games that have been designed by European game designers, especially the designer he considers nothing short of a deity of boardgame creation, Reiner Knizia.

My previous Addiction was a game called “Ra”, http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/12. At it’s heart Ra is just a simple Auction game with an Egyptian theme, but it has an interesting twist that allows any player to force an auction on their turn. I was amazed that such a simple game could be so engrossing, but it was. The tension can be quite thick as every player waits with great anticipation for the next tile to be drawn, only to cry in frustration when another player calls an auction when the time is not quite right and they suffer the conflict of bidding on tiles that aren’t as valuable as they would have been if that jerk of another player hadn’t called the auction so soon. My new Addiction is very similar to Ra in its simplicity.

This new Addiction called “Thebes” http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/30869, was not designed by Reiner, but is “Euro” as it is designed by Euro designer Peter Prinz, and it was once again brought to my attention and purchased by my friend Scott. Thebes has a theme that grabbed my attention right away, Archeology. The players take on the roles of Archeologists who have 3 years to dig up as many valuable artifacts as possible. There are five ancient cities where these artifacts are found and the players travel around modern day European cities searching for special knowledge cards that will help you when you go on a “dig” to one of these ancient cities. One of the best mechanics of the game is how these “digs” are played out. There are 5 cloth bags, one for each ancient city, inside the bags are placed round cardboard tokens representing ancient artifacts, some are more valuable then others and their point value is printed on the tokens. The trick is that each bag also has a lot of blank “debris” tokens that are not worth anything, and they go back in the bag after your dig, but you get to keep the artifacts you “excavate”. You can probably guess that as the game progresses the ratio of Artifacts to Debris tokens swings in the favor of more Debris, this is counterbalanced by the assumption that later in the game you will have gained more special knowledge cards to give you more and more draws from the bag. In the end, the winner is determined buy adding up you total points from all the artifacts as well as how many “Exhibition” cards you’ve collected, assuming you had the right combination of artifacts to meet the requirements for the exhibition and are in the right city as well. You are also awarded points for being the player with the most knowledge on a specific ancient city, gaining that knowledge also requires that you be in the right city at the right time. It’s really quite a simple game once you get into it but it keeps you enthralled as you watch the other players travel around the board gobbling up the knowledge cards you need, or some of the other special cards you want. All the while you plot what you are going to do on your turn, so you can get as much accomplished before the three years is up.

I guess I find the game so addictive, because I always want to play it again. After playing a game I always feel like I could have done better. You tell yourself, “if only better cards had come up” or “if I had only had better luck in drawing from the bags”. This game is pretty unusual as far as “Euro” games go because it has a lot of luck in it, while most “Euro” games pride themselves on having little if any luck factor in them. But this game definitely has that “Euro” feel to it, despite having a large amount of luck involved, it still feels well balanced like a strong “Euro” game. Also I just love the Theme, I guess I’ve always fantasized about being an archeologist since I first saw Indiana Jones, even though this game doesn’t seem anything like an Indiana Jones Movie, it still stoked my imagination and made me think of traveling the world, gaining knowledge of ancient cultures, and then searching for their long lost treasures.

Well, as always, my friends and I have been keeping our eyes on certain games, hoping that one of them will become our next addiction. I will talk about what games we are scoping out next time.