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. 

WhaDiYoB? - Fearsome Floors (2003)

🕑 8 min read

Welcome once again, to our 'What Did You Bring?' segment!

For the purposes of this post, player names have been changed to protect the innocent and the murdered.

In Fearsome Floors we have been kidnapped by a wicked scientist and fed to their monsters! Our entire party has been dumped at the entrance to dingy dungeon hallway filled with stone blocks and slippery pools of blood (fresh from the last party of guests?). The only hope of escape is a thin slither of day-light in the distance and the fact that we have protection in numbers. So, I don't need to run faster than the monster... just faster than that weakened old man or the defenceless child. HA-hahahaha! 

As we all enter the hallways and apprehensively advance towards the exit, we hear a horrifying howl in the darkness... and just like in the Squid Games, the race is on to survive!!

This game was designed by Friedemann Friese, and was originally meant to incorporate his 'friends' escaping from him on a dance floor. I have 2 problems with this. 1. Why were they running away from a green/blue haired games designer on a darkened dance floor? And 2. Where has all this congealed blood come from!!?

Joking aside, apparently Friedemann landed upon the revised theme of escaping a horrific basement monster, more than 5 years after his original idea had landed on the play-test table. I for one am glad he did; because the new theme is so enjoyable and engaging. Let's talk about the game play and why you might want to try this game should you get the opportunity. 

Firstly the game screams family fun, even if the theme is horror, it's not really gruesome. It's more like Scooby-doo and the Mystery Inc. gang being chased through a haunted house, full of teleporting portals that only the vile villain can use. Before I speak more directly about movement and mechanics, please take a moment with me to bask in the glory of the wonderful monster token in this game. Rio Grande Games has given to us a multitude of printed card-board arms, legs, bodies and heads to assemble as we see fit. Slotting them together to create the strange standee is really easy and satisfying. 

At the start, we are all given several counters of our chosen colour. Depending on how many players there are you will either have 4 coloured counters (1-4 players) or 3 counters (5-7 players). Turn order is very simple, each player gets to move one of their escaping 'party member' counters in turn until all players have moved their entire party. The maximum number of spaces a counter (party member) may move is shown on the top of each one. This number ranges from 1-6. Once a counter has been moved, you flip it over to the opposite side, which does 2 things. It shows us which player counters have been moved this turn, and it reveals a new number for the next turn. Because in a brilliant turn of events, each party member has 2 different speeds! Remember that, as it will haunt you and possibly trip you up when you least expect it later.

Once we have moved all our party members, then the fun can truly begin when the monster activates and starts shambling towards us all. To move the monster, all you do is shuffle the monster's 'tombstone tokens' and randomly pick one off of the top. This will tell you how far it will move, usually between 5 and 10 spaces. The cruel creature will continue to proceed forwards until it finishes all of it's move, capturing victims as it proceeds. HOWEVER, as it callously creeps towards us, it will also take a look down intersecting corridors, and as soon as it perceives a prey, it will immediately change direction and head towards them for the remainder of it's moves. The monster cannot see behind itself, around corners, or past stone walls. It will keep moving, only changing direction as it catches a glimpse of a party member. 

From a safe distance you may want to run one of your party into the line of sight of the gruesome giant, just so that it changes direction and eventually captures one of your opponents! A risky move... as they can hide around corners just as the monster reaches their corridor, leaving the murderous monster to eat one of your very own family instead. 

This game does not overstay it's welcome, and is full of extra little details which make the game worth your time. For example, if the monster is forced to simply walk into a side wall, it teleports to another area of the basement and continues it's ravenous rampage. Plus this sadistic savage can push stone blocks into players pieces and even crush them against walls! Perhaps that's where all the blood came from? If one of your party members is captured (eaten), then it is sent back to the start, where it's race begins again. The game ends when a player manages to escape 3 of their counters (1-4 players), or 2 of their counters (5-7 players). 

Why do I like this game? Maybe I should have started with this, so here goes. 

Even though Fearsome Floors is 23 years old, and the mechanics come from a different board gaming era all together, they are still incredibly engaging. As players you have the option to simply run your party members as far away as you like, hoping to escape the gaze of the monster, or perhaps goad it into doing your dirty work for you. It's hilarious. Sorry, did I not say that enough already?

At higher player counts, the game play becomes intensely chaotic, and conveys the same sense of dread you get when driving to an airport, and you convince yourself that you left the oven on. Maybe that doesn't sound so fun after all... THEN an opponent does something even more moronic, letting you off the hook. Let's all laugh at them now. Forget about me, I intended to leave my oven on all along!! 

Since this game only lasts between 30-45mins (player number dependant) you can easily play through it twice, or drag out another board game to quench your appetite for crunchiness. Your choice. 

If you'd like to know more about this game then you can find the Board Game Geek link here!

See you all at NoBoG later!