WhaDiYoB? - The Thief of Baghdad (2006) and 12 Thieves (re-published 2017)

🕑 7 min read

Welcome back again, to our 'What Did You Bring?' segment! This week will be taking a look at a game which was last mentioned (favourably) in our NoBoG Blog 8 years ago! 12 Thieves by Thorsten Gimmler, and published by Queen Games. 

Under cover of the night, in the far away city of Baghdad, 5 opulent Palaces and their riches, have become the targets of what can only be described as organised flash mobs of thieves. Each Thieves Guild (player) has access to 12 thieves plus 2-4* palace guards on their pay-roll (*depending on the number of players). The aim of the game is to bribe your way into the treasure vaults of the palaces and then carry away chests full of gold and precious stones. The first player to secure the contents of 4-6* treasure chests (*player dependant), wins! 

If you were imagining some kind of 'Oceans 11' heist or caper, full of twists and turns with a rich theme... then please feel free to look away. The theme here is only lightly pasted on. At the beating heart of 12 Thieves is an area moving, hand managing, tactical, abstract puzzle game and race(?). There is a healthy dollop of luck needed to achieve more than other players in the same amount of time, but don't despair, if you like pitting your wits against your opponents and out thinking them, then you're in good company here. 

12 Thieves was republished in 2017 by Queen Games, after it's initial release in 2006, again by Queen Games - under the old name of The Thief of Baghdad. It was also nominated for Spiel des Jahres in 2007. I played the 2006 version, which contained wooden meeples rather than cardboard tokens. Interestingly, the games designer Thorsten Gimmler designed one of my favourite filler games too - No Thanks!. 

So, let's quickly talk about the mechanics and game play before I let you how I really felt about 12 Thieves. 

12 Thieves (2017)

Players take their turns in clockwise order, playing cards from your hand in order to move guards from one palace to another, and 'deposit' your own thieves into treasure rooms. The colours of the cards played correspond to the colour of each palace. So to get a thief into a treasure room, you  must have one of your own (coloured) guards posted at the palace of your choice, plus at least 1 more guard of another players (or a neutral guard), and the correct number (and coloured) cards. If you have your guard positioned, and the right card(s), you may sneak one or more of your thieves into the palace courtyard. Treasure chests in each palace require 4-7 of your thieves to be placed, to take them. Each palace has 4 chests to steal. 

Once your turn has ended, you draw 3 more face down cards from the deck into your hand in readiness for your next turn. 

As one would expect, there is more to this game than simply being in the right place at the right time, with the right cards. You may move your own palace guard from one palace to another, by again, playing a card of the same colour as either the palace you are leaving, or the palace you are going to. You may also, move one of the neutral (non-affiliated) guards by spending 2 cards, 1 of each coloured palace involved in that move. You might be asking why would you do this. Well, for a player to sneak a thief into a palace's treasure room, you must have one of your own guards, plus another guard to pay one card for each thief you drop off there. However, if there are 2 opposing guards at the palace, then you must bribe using 2 cards per thief to drop them off. If there are 3 opposing guards, then the cost is 3 cards each thief. So you can see that your passage to success may be made more expensive or blocked entirely by opponents jerking guards around just before it becomes your turn. Ouch, you jerk. 

The Thief of Baghdad (2006)

There are another couple of rules worth mentioning, before this chaotic masterpiece can be rendered fully in you mind. When you move one of your own guards from one palace to another (paying the card cost), that guard may also take a single thief of its own colour from the treasure room of the palace it is departing from, and deliver it, free from additional cost, to another palace's treasure room. So long as the maximum number of thief movements (and drop-offs) does not exceed 3 in the same turn, that is. The other rule is; if you can't do anything on your turn, or you simply don't want to do anything, you may instead go directly to drawing 3 cards, plus an additional wild card called a Dancer. This Dancer card can represent any colour you want it to be. It's very, very useful when you want to impress all the another thieves guilds with your forward planning and slick tricks. Totally not luck though. 100% skill. 

There it is!! A beautifully simple, yet thinky, abstract board game which will last you 30-60mins, depending on player numbers and levels of susceptibility to AP (Analysis Paralysis).

Be more donkey.

My final thoughts on this game are; give it a try if you get the chance - definitely before you consider buying it. 12 Thieves gets a healthy 6.4 rating on Board Game Geek, and that somehow feels right to me. The game is fairly cheap, and the production quality of the original release is way better than the latest 2017 release. However... it will not spoil your enjoyment of the game. One other thing I found about the game is, that there seems to be some useful 'cheat codes' you can use to hack the game. My first play, I was obsessed with what everyone else was doing. I moved guards around continuously looking for short cuts towards victory, but mainly to be chaotic, only to end up serving my opponents with 'open goals' - which amounts to palaces with only 2 guards of 2 separate affiliations. Believe you me, they took advantage of every opportunity I provided them with and used their experience with thievery to force me to lament a hand of cards which did nothing for my cause. ARGHHH!!!

By the time I got to my second game I had discovered the 'hacks', and then richly became enemy number one. As a result, I effortlessly glided to victory under a chorus of muted groans from my lesser gilded opponents. This game is easy to learn. It makes you feel powerful. It can also make you feel like a donkey. I love donkeys. Adopt a donkey! Do it!

Anyway, that's enough. See you next time.