Beyond Thebes Review by Count Zero

Indiana Jones always made archaeologists look good, and now its your turn to be Mr Jones. Thebes brings archeology to the games table in a light but fun way. Players each play the part of an archaeologist spending up to three years researching, digging for artifacts and put on exhibitions, all in the quest to get the most victory points and win the game.

Opening the large box you get a playing board depicting Europe and some of the middle east. This is nicely produced and features the 5 cities where you do your researching (London, Paris, Rome, Berlin, Moscow) and the 5 locations for your digs (Crete, Greece, Egypt, Palestine, Mesopotamia).
A stack of cards depicting exhibitions and knowledge improvements as well as a couple of other types. 5 cloth bags, 1 for each of the dig site. A host of counters depicting treasures and artifacts as well as dirt. Some wooden figures and markers and finally 4 time wheels that have to be punched out and put together.

Setting up the game is pretty simple, all the tokens are put into there respective bags and placed to the side. Each player takes a coloured adventurer and places him on the Warsaw location and a matching coloured marker goes on the outside time track.
The cards are shuffled and separated into three stacks. The exhibition cards are then placed in these stacks and they are finally all stacked on top of each other. The top 4 cards are placed on the board in a marked area.

These cards are vital to the archaeologists, they show a number of bits of information. At the top is the location on the board where this card can be found. Also, how many weeks it will take to get this card and finally what the card gives the archaeologist. This is generally knowledge of a particular dig site. Its all colour coded to make life easier. So for example you may see a card with a yellow book on it, the top would read London, 2 . This would mean that if the archaeologist travelled to London and spent 2 weeks there he would take the card and it would give him 1 knowledge point of Egypt.
As well as the colour specific knowledge cards for the 5 dig sites, there are also general knowledge cards that provide knowledge for all of the dig sites. These are highly sought after, but they cost much more in time to research them.
Other cards give the players assistants that must be collected in multiples to give knowledge bonuses, shovels that give dig bonuses, several transport cards that cuts down the travel time for players, finally there are rumour cards which are like the book/research cards but are one use only.

After the board is setup players can perform one of three actions, they can either travel to a city and spend the time required to pick a card, travel to Warsaw and swap the 4 displayed cards for 4 new ones or finally travel to a dig site and perform a dig. Whatever is chosen italways takes time, and this is recorded on the time track around the board. Time is a big factor in the game and it also determines the playing order. Whoever is behind plays next. In some cases this allows a player to take multiple turns. For example if player 1 decided to spend 10 weeks in Egypt looking for artifacts he moves his token on 10 weeks plus the travel time to get to Egypt. This gives player 2 a number of weeks to play his turns until he is inthe lead on the time track. So he could go to London and research some knowledge on Crete for 2 weeks, then move on to Paris for 4 weeks of research on Greece.

When you decided to visit a dig site and look for artifacts, this is where the luck part of the game comes in. You count up the number of knowledge points you have on the location, this can be made up of specific and general knowledge as well as from other bonus cards. This value is selected on the dig wheel, this will display a column of numbers. You now need to scan down the column looking at the number of weeks you are spending digging, this will give you a value. This is the number of tokens you can pull from the locations bag. Any artifacts you keep, blank or dirt tokens are put back in the bag. It may sound a little tricky, but the mechanism works really well. The luck factor can be a pain, after spending 10 weeks and drawing 10 blank tiles you know you have wasted a huge chunk of the year.
There is a limit on the number of digs you can do a year, its one per location. This is enough as you will generally not have enough time inthe year to continually dig for treasure.

About half way through the card stack exhibition cards will start to be drawn. These represent a location and again the number of weeks required to win the card. They will also depict a number of artifacts that the player is required to own in order to put on the exhibition. There are only 10 of these cards in the game and as they are one of the revenues of victory points they are always sought after.

After 2-3 years of hitting the books and digging in the deserts the game will end and its time to add up the points.
Players get points for the artifacts that they have found. For the exhibitions they have put on. Congress cards give points depending on the number you own and finally the player who has the most specific knowledge in each site gets bonus points. The player with the most points wins.

For the main Thebes is a pretty light game, its fun to play without being too much of a brain burner. Luck plays a part with the digs, but half the fun is rummaging around in the bags looking for those elusive artifacts. The game is put together very well with great pieces

Summary

Presentation
This is a very well produced game. Queen games have used quality components, the bags and wheels add to an already theme oozing game. 9/10

Clarity of Rules
The rules are pretty basic and quick to learn. You should be up and running after a quick read 8/10

Game Length
The game length is altered depending on the number of players, but on average a 3 player game takes about an hour and a half 8/10

Value

You get allot of game for your money, its well worth the price tag 8/10

Overall
Thebes is a great game and one that I think would make a good gateway game. The luck factor has given it some bad comments on the geek but if you can handle a bit of luck then add it to your basket now (8/10 not an average)