Thebes

Thebes - Race to dig out ancient treasures before your fellow archaeologists.

Players acquire knowledge and other kinds of support in their travels, which they will use when they travel to excavation sites. Players earn victory points for finding artifacts and hosting expeditions, but need skillful tactics and a little luck to find true success!

Thebes is a game of competitive archaeology. Players are archaeologists who must travel around Europe 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.

Game Play:

1. The players acquire knowledge and other kinds of support in their travels, which they will use when they travel to excavation sites.

2. The time wheel shows the players how many discoveries they may find at any of the five excavation sites, depending on how prepared they are and how long they choose to dig. Sometimes they will find valuable artifacts and other times, they will find only sand.

3. Players earn victory point for finding artifacts and hosting exhibitions, but need skillful tactics and a little luck to find true success!

Awards

• 2009 Games 100 Best Family Strategy Nominee.
• 2008 Nederlandse Spellenprijs Nominee.
• 2008 BoardGameGeek Golden Geek Best Family Game
• 2007 International Gamers Award Best Strategy Game Nominee.
• 2007 Deutscher Spiele Preis 9th Place
• 2007 Spiel der Spiele Hit Games with Friends Winner.
• 2007 Dice Tower Awards, Best Game Reprint Winner & Best Family Game Nominee.
• 2007 Spiel des Jahres Nominee (as original Jenseits von Theben release).
• 2006 Deutscher Spiele Preis Best Strategy Game Nominee.