Thebai

• Designer: David Turczi
• Publisher: Board&Dice
• Players: 1-4
• Age: 14+
• Time: 90-150 min
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

Dark times loom over the kingdom of Thebes. The blind, old king Oedipus left the throne in disgrace and asked Polynices and Eteocles, his own sons, to rule the city together. But power corrupts and ancient feuds call for new blood to be spilled. Soon, Polynices finds himself leading an army from the rival city of Argos against his own brother. The Theban nobles support Eteocles as he maintains precarious rule over Thebes. The young king calls for defenders to man the seven gates of the city, while the invaders’ seven champions lead the attack on the gates. Meanwhile, the famous citadel of Thebes, the Cadmea, lies in disarray. It is as if the Fates themselves have lined everything up against the current rulers of Thebes!  While the common folks prepare for war, the noble families whisper among themselves that the time for new leadership has come, and the time to rebuild the Cadmea is now!

In Thebai, players assume the role of influential leaders from noble families during the tumultuous late Bronze Age. Throughout the game, players are tasked with rebuilding the Cadmea, the citadel of Thebes, while restoring the city’s exports, praying to the gods of the city, and protecting the lives of the citizens as grand heroes spill each other’s blood outside the gates. The game lasts 10 rounds, each divided into an Action phase and a Fate phase. During the Action phase, players use one Citizen die, and then move their Archon on the Cadmea. During the Fate phase, players may get additional scoring opportunities, depending on their accomplishments and for protecting the city gates. After final scoring the player with the most Victory Points is the winner.

Setting up Thebai will take a little bit of time.  From left to right, place the Devotion board, City Board and Council board on the table.  The City board gets an Invader and a Gate to left of each row and a Commander card to the right of each row. A starting set of Cadmea tiles is placed in the center of the building area.  A display of Fate tiles and Contract cards are set up as well.  Each player gets their own player board where their Cadmea tiles are stored. They also get their Archo, citizen dice (values set by initial turn order), Strategos and Councilor tiles as well as one of each commodity to start. 

The game is played over 10 rounds, with an Action phase first followed by a Fate phase.

The first step in the Action phase is refreshing the dice on your player board, but only if you have no Citizen dice in your supply (as they are all in play). Take all the dice back from your player board without changing their die face.  Additionally, take a new die, the face of which is set based on how many columns are empty of Cadmea tiles.

Next, each player must use one of their Citizen dice.  If it is placed on the player board, they must go in an available space, and the player then does the action shown above that die space (gain commodities, advance on the Devotion track, take a contract, place a Cadmea tile onto the main board, etc.).  If the die is placed on the City board, it must go in a space adjacent to at least one placed Cadmea tile. For free, you can resolve and one action on an unoccupied Cadmea tile.  If you are between two tiles, you can pay Drachma equal to the power of the placed die to use the effects of both tiles.  You have to place at least one die on your personal board for each refresh.

Third, players now move their Archon on the city board – moving across adjacent tiles generally via occupied dice spaces.  If you cross a space with an opponents die, you must promote it and change it to the next higher face.  Dice can “ascend” if they are at the highest value and are further increased.  Citizen dice move to the Council board and score VP and will be used in later Conflicts.  Ascending Hoplite dice allow you to place Strategos tiles in the board row, and if you are the first to place in that row, you get a Commander card. If you cross a space with your die, you must demote it one step.  You can pay to cross one empty gap.  You then take the action of the tile that you stop movement on.  Alternatively, you can simply remove your Archon from the board and gain a coin.  If your Archon is not on the board in this step, you simply place it on any empty Cadmea tile and take the action of that tie.

Finally, you can place a Metic tile if you want – it must go on an action space on your board of matching color, and you take the action as if you played a die there.  The Metic tile will be discarded from the game on the next refresh of your personal board.

At any point in this phase, you can fulfill exactly one contract.  Pay the cost on the card and gain the shown rewards.  Finally, tuck the completed contract under your personal board – they will be used for endgame scoring.

When the Action phase is over, the round moves into the Fate phase.  The tiles will be resolved in order (and you will be able to see the current tile and up to the next 4).  There are two types of Fate tiles: Comfort and Conflict.  A Comfort tile is generally positive, and each player applies the effects of the tile – sometimes scoring points for certain in-game things or each player may get to promote a die, etc.  A Conflict tile specifies a particular row of the board for the fight, with the invaders having a power based on the number of the fight in the game plus a modifier on the Invader card dealt in setup.  A player wins if they have equal or more power on their Hoplite dice and/or Strategos tiles in that row, gaining positive VP on the amount they exceed the Invaders.  The strongest player also gains the Gate tile.  A losing player loses VP equal to the gap in their strength to the invader.  If a player has no strength at all, they lose 3VP per Invader strength!

After the fight, any dice on the Council board are moved onto available spaces on the statues – each one claiming a unique endgame bonus scoring condition.  After the fate tile is resolved, flip the current tile over and flip over the next one in sequence so that players can plan ahead.

After the end of ten rounds, there is a lot of final scoring:

• Score each of your Councilor bonuses
• Score VP based on the rightmost empty column on your player board
• Score your dice in the city, VP equal to the sum of the dice there
• Score 1/4/9/16 VP for a set of 1/2/3/4 unique Contract/Gate suits
• Score 3/7/12 VP for 3/4/5 Contracts/Gates of the same suit
• Negative 3VP for each unfulfilled Contract in your hand
• Score 1VP for each 3 drachma/commodities left over

The player with the most points wins. 

My thoughts on the game

Well, as you would expect for a game from Board&Dice, this one is quite a complex game. Though I realize that my above capsule description seems to make the game simple; it’s really not!  The complexity in the game comes from the sheer number of possible options open to you at each of your actions in the game.  This is a multi-layered puzzle because your options depend on which Cadmea tiles have been played – you must remove tiles from your board in order to open up actions there; but then also, all of the tiles played to the City board can be accessed by everyone else…

Making this decision even more complex is the constrained number of actions – you essentially only get 20 actions in the game.  One each round from placing your die, and then one from moving your Archon.  At the start of the game, it is a bit more straightforward as your choices are fewer; but man, by the midpoint of the game, your options will definitely push even the fastest of players into a bit of analysis timeout if not outright analysis paralysis.  

Our learning games have been a bit above an hour per player, not including the rules teach which itself was close to an hour.  Even if there isn’t a rules teach, the setup is a bit convoluted, and I would guess that you will need to invest fifteen or twenty minutes just to get this game started.  The length of the game will directly increase with higher player counts because each player gets all their actions in all ten rounds.  There will definitely be substantial downtime between your turns in a four player game; and unfortunately, you really won’t be able to fully plan your turn until you see what the board situation is at the start of your turn.  That being said, the game feels well balanced at 4 players, and the higher number of Cadmea tiles on the board and competition for action spaces feels like it is likely worth the extra time.

Given the limited number of actions, you will want to save your Metic tiles to maximize their one-time effect, essentially gaining you an extra action on a turn.  Some players also feel that the bonuses from a fulfilled contract are like an extra action – but I also like to point out that it surely took a number of actions to gain the things needed to fulfill the contract… so is it really an extra?  Further, if you are able to increase the numbers on your dice, you can get stronger actions on your player board, so that’s another way to be more efficient with your actions.  And of course, these high valued dice can later be moved to the City board where they can hopefully be promoted and grant you Councilor endgame bonus scoring.

There are definitely ways to generate some chains of actions – and players who are able to do this will likely be more competitive.  For instance, you might place a Cadmea tile and generate a roof bonus; with the reward of increasing a die, thus promoting it to gain you an endgame bonus.  Alternatively, maybe you finish a contract which lets you “rush” your Archon – which means you simply pick it up and place it on any empty space; and this extra action might then lead to more chaining…  There also are plenty of bonuses to be had on the tracks on the Devotion board, so advancing on one or both of these will also help maximize your actions over the course of the game.

Each player will likely veer off into their own strategy, often determined by the Councilor bonuses as well as the asymmetric player boards and actions.   Contracts have been the main thrust of my games thus far as they pay off for both sets of suits as well as the size of each particular suit.   You have to concentrate on the Contracts over the duration of the game because you can only fulfill one contract per Action phase, so you’ll really want to try to do this every turn you can.  Also pay close attention to the Contract rewards as they widely vary – in fact there are a few contracts that have the same cost but different rewards.  Make sure to take advantage of the best exchange rate possible for your commodities!

The only other thing that I make sure that I do is to participate in each fight.  The penalty for not being in a fight is quite severe – 3VP per attacking power; and it really feels hard to overcome this penalty if you want to compete for the win.  The penalty really does feel overly punishing here, but I trust that Turczi and B&D have done the right amount of playtesting to know this is the right number… 

The components are well done, especially the wooden Cadmea tiles.  They really look nice and feel substantial. There are a lot of icons in the game, but the back page of the rules seems to summarize most of them, so just keep that handy as a reference.  

As you would expect with a Turczi design, there is also a solo game here – it gets its own rulebook!  I’ve only tried it once, but it felt very challenging, and the game time came in just more than an hour.  The solo game pits you against Antigone, a bot, that you must outscore in order to win.

Thoughts from other Opinionated Gamers

Ryan P: I’m a big fan of Board & Dice as a publisher, so I was pre-disposed to like Thebai. Thebai surpassed my high expectations – in fact I think it’s their best release in many years. Each subsequent play has been more enjoyable than the last with more interesting gameplay developing each time. Thebai is interactive and complex in the best ways. The competition for gates, dice spots, councillors, strategos, and archon spots all contribute to a highly interactive experience. The board starts small, keeping it relatively simple, but the players develop both the action spots and paths as the game grows in decision space. Interestingly, the tightness seems to ebb and flow as dice get removed and replaced and routes evolve. The game is definitely AP inducing – I’m one of the faster players in my groups, and even I had slow turns. But I always remained engaged, which to me is the crucial point – time on the clock is less important to me than the time I can feel passing. There is a key rule in the BGG forums that isn’t really in the rules, and totally changes the game – You can forego a 3* promotion for a VP. That absolutely should have been made more clear as it really changes the game for the better. There is also an icon on the back page that says it plays a hoplite, but in reality it is to play or move a hoplite, which again is another big miss in the rules that really screwed up our first play. But once we got past the small issues, my group found it to be a standout design that is likely to stay around for a long time. Tangent: Turzci is my pick for designer of the year. He was the only designer involved in two games I considered a must play for 2025 (Thebai, Keyside), and neither are his highest rated game of the year by the masses (Captain’s Chair).

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it!  Ryan P
• I like it. Dale
• Neutral.
• Not for me…