At last, a visit to the Copper Kettle Company!

My good friend Jack recently blessed me with his kindness. For Christmas, he went the extra mile and acquired for me a copy of a game I've been eying for a long, long time: Copper Kettle Company, commonly known as Kupferkessel Co. Kupferkessel Co is a game which has no English version, so it is hard to find in the US. Only one or two online sellers ever carry this game, one of them being Fair Play Games. I had made it known to friends and family via wishlist that Kupferkessel was available at Fair Play Games. Why had I not acquired it for myself? First of all, the game was rarely in stock, and had a tendency to sell out pretty quickly. Second of all, I never buy games at Fair Play Games. All of our game group orders have been through Thought Hammer or Boards & Bits. I didn't want to take the step of ordering a single game and paying full shipping fees.

Jack, knowing all of this, worked behind the scenes to acquire a copy of Kupferkessel Co. for me, running a game order without my knowledge. Before I go on, I'll share the interesting story Jack shared with me. He happened to order the game when it was in stock at Fair Play Games. To Jack's dismay, the game order never arrived at his house - UPS had lost it. So, for Christmas, he handed me an image of Kupferkessel Co. and told me the tale of the shipping mishap. Fair Play Games had courteously sent him replacements for every game except for . . . Kupferkessel, which was now out of stock. Then, in mid January, Jack showed up at my house with Kupferkessel in hand. Fair Play had finally obtained and shipped out a new copy.

For what it's worth, Jack assured me that Fair Play did everything they could to make the situation satisfactory for him, offering discounts, free shipping, price matching, etc - everything they could do to rectify the situation. Go, Fair Play Games!

The box, with a size reference.

My First Impression

By the next day, my wife and I had played Kupferkessel 4 times. It turned out to meet all of my hopes and expectations. The experience was improved by the efforts of two helpful BGG users:

Nick Pitman (MonkeyMagic): He designed an English rulebook downloadable as a PDF. It has the exact same format and size as the actual manual. When you print it out on your printer, it pieces together to form a booklet. There would have been NO WAY for us to learn this game without this wonderful contribution from MonkeyMagic.

Michael Weston (delta1119): He designed a quick reference page that explains everything briefly on a single page, front and back, which fits in the game box. This page was invaluable for our first few plays.

These helpful fellows made this German game easy to learn and play. So, on with the review.

Things my wife and I liked right away:

• The game is quick: about 20 minutes
• The components are great: big, easy to move pawns; wonderful art by Franz Vohwinkel
• The rules are easy to understand
• The mechanics are original, reminiscent of Mamma Mia

How the Game Works

The game board is made up of a 6-by-6 grid. The grid is created by placing square-shaped cards from a shuffled deck, so the board is different every time. Each card depicts a wooden cubby hole containing ingredients. What kind of ingredients, you ask? Why, the ingredients necessary for witches and wizards to complete magical potions. There are 14 types of ingredients, with 4 of each type, valued 1 to 4 points each. The ingredients include (as far as I can tell):

1. Roots
2. Mosses
3. Pumpkins
4. Raven Feathers
5. Bats
6. Whiskers
7. Mushrooms
8. A Chest Full of Snake Scales(?)
9. Eyes of Newt
10. Vines
11. Frog Slime (?)
    
12. Cobwebs
13. Ostrich Egg Inscribed With Arcane Symbols (?)
    
14. Dragon Blood (or maybe it's just steaming red wine?)

The cards, loaded with quality art.

One player uses a white pawn, the other player uses a black pawn. The pawns are about 3 inches tall, made of wood, and shaped somewhat like a figure wearing a witch or wizard hat. The mechanics are simple: you move your pawn around the board a number of spaces (determined by the top card of your cauldron) and then take a card from the row your pawn is next to. Refill the now-empty slot from the draw pile and it's the next player's turn.

What you get in the box.

As you accumulate cards, you put them on top of your "cauldron", which is just a stack of cards. If you have played Mamma Mia, this is much like the oven. You are not allowed to look back in your cauldron. Instead, you are required to remember what you've placed in your cauldron, which is actually quite easy to do, so don't run away just yet.

There is a scoring reference card for each player than reminds you of how to score your cauldron at the end. This is the interesting part of the game. The designer has devised an interesting scoring method. Knowing how scoring works is what empowers you to make good decisions as you pick up cards.

Scoring reference, front and back.

The game also comes with a small stack of recipe cards. These are an additional way to gain points. Again, these behave like the recipe cards from Mamma Mia. When you are going through your cauldron stack at the end of the game, if you meet the conditions on your recipe cards, you get the points for them. These are part of the variant game, included in the rule book. We played with recipes from the beginning. They are simple enough that you need not leave them out. They help to give you something to work for, so I recommend using them.

Commentary

My wife and I have played this game a handful of times since acquiring it, and I have only won one time. I thought my wife would like this game, and she does. And she's good at it. I have lost too many times to blame it on luck. For some reason, playing this reminds me of playing Lost Cities with my wife. It's something about having cards with points on them, and making useful combos out of those cards. My wife is talented at this particular type of thinking.

Despite my losses, I keep coming back for more, inviting another play. The process of play is enjoyable enough to offset any losses. First of all, the game is short. In about 20 minutes, we're done. It's kind of fun to imagine walking around the magic shop, browsing the shelves for ingredients. Second of all, the game is easy. You move your pawn, you take a card. This decision is typically quite simple because you have in mind a specific set of things you want to collect. The only difficult decisions will be deciding between two or more cards you need from a single row. I realize that this makes the game sound like it's very luck based. Yes, there is certainly some luck and randomness, but you always have the sense that you are deciding the best course of action. For instance, the card you draw determines how many spaces you will move on your next turn. So, you can theoretically try to arrange your number selections in a way that maximizes your efficiency in moving and taking cards.

Let me leave you with a couple more observations.

1. When in doubt, collect your own color. Each card has a number and a color on it. There are a few different colors to choose from. Included among these are black cards and white cards. Black cards count as double points for the black player, and the reverse for the white player. The only caveat is that if you only get 1 of a card type, it counts negatively. If it is a card of your own color, the negative points are doubled.

2. Not all recipes are equal. More complicated recipes don't necessarily earn you more points. There is a recipe which requires you to collect a whole bunch of plant ingredients. This one is only worth 10 points, while the 15-point recipes are actually easier to complete. You will need to keep your recipes in mind as you play, making decisions about how much effort you want to apply to the recipes. There is no penalty for failing to complete a recipe, so don't be afraid to just bail on a recipe that isn't working out. Go for sets of 4 of an ingredient instead - especially in your own color.

I recommend this game to anyone who frequently plays 2-player games. This seems like a great wife game to me - partly because it has been successful in my case, but also because it just has the makings of a wife game. Sure, that's a subjective claim, but that's my vibe - do with it what you will.

Unfortunately, the game is not easy to obtain, at least not for US residents. This game is an import for us. The components have no language on them, so the English rules are all you'll need to download from BGG. Keep your eye on the online sellers like Fair Play Games. Then, when they get their stock in, nab a copy before they're all bought up!

Designer: Günter Burkhardt
Publisher: Goldsieber
Players: 2 (with a 3-player variant)
Playing time: 15-30 minutes

My rating at the time of writing: 8 (rated after 6 plays)

Thebes: Is this game worth playing?

A few weeks ago, when I first acquired the game Thebes, I wrote a post called "Thebes: What's in the box?". In that post, I mentioned what a beautiful game it is and briefly mentioned that my wife and I enjoyed playing it after a couple plays.

Today, I am going to tell you my impressions after 6 plays. 4 plays have been 2-player, 2 plays have been 3-player. If you are like me, you want to know whether a game is worth buying. Hopefully I can help you make your decision regarding Thebes, if you're still on the fence.

Here's what I admired after a couple initial plays:

- Theme integration: the theme was tied into every part of the game, and the archaeology theme was attractive.
- Visuals: art and components are as good as they come. I love Michael Menzel's artwork.
- Collection mechanics: During the game you hoard lots and lots of cards and tokens to store in your area.

Here's what I admire after 6 plays:

- Theme integration
- Visuals

As eager as I was to purchase this game, as excited as I was to play it at first, and as much fun as it was the first few times around, I am sad to report that I am no longer having much fun playing Thebes. Let me explain.

The most common complaint on BGG about Thebes is the luck factor. What I mean is, when you dig at the dig sites (dip your hand into the bag of tokens) you can be really lucky and score lots of good treasures, or you can get unlucky with a handful of dirt. This is not a problem, in my opinion. This luck factor actually works well with the theme. The game sticks to the theme in every other way so why not here? Realistically, if you do more research, an excavator has a better chance of digging up better artifacts, in a more efficient manner. But even if you have the most research, you might dig and dig only to find nothing. This is well-represented in the game, and doesn't pose too much of a problem. Some people who despise luck in a game will quickly be turned off by this aspect of the game - enough so that they might bail on the game after one play. Really, watching someone dig up all the good stuff, while you pull nothing but dirt, can be very disheartening.

But, that's not my problem with the game. I didn't mind the lucky digs so much. There are other ways to gain points, and you have control over how you manage your time and invest your efforts.

The game really plays out in two areas. As would be true in real life, you research, then you excavate. You can choose how often to excavate, but the meat of the game is researching. Researching looks like this: move your meeple to a city or stay where you are, then draw one of four cards. You do that a lot in this game. If you are going to enjoy playing Thebes, you need to enjoy the process of researching. There are lots of things you can collect during the researching part of the game, including:

- special knowledge
- general knowledge
- rumors and legends
- assistants
- shovels
- congress meetings
- cars
- zeppelins

And, by a different process, you can participate in exhibitions, but it still feels like research. This variety of card types is a strength of the game. It gives you lots of ways to formulate your strategic goals. Working a lot on one thing will inevitably mean you have to sacrifice others. As I mentioned above, you have to enjoy this part of the game to really have fun. I found that after 5 plays, this wasn't fun for me anymore. It didn't feel tedious necessarily, just not rewarding. It didn't feel like well-spent time. It felt like an exercise with little point because the decisions weren't heavy, tricky, or important.

For me, the decision-making in a game is one of the most important aspects. If my decisions don't feel important, the game can feel more like going through motions than actually using my brain for the sake of gaming enjoyment. I want my decisions to matter. I want to feel the tension between options. Which choice will benefit me most? Which choice is strongest for my position and long-term goals? While Thebes gives you a smidgen of this, it is not very stimulating. Too many of my decisions felt like, "Okay. Sure - I guess I'll go dig now instead of grabbing 2 more special knowledge over in Moscow." or "Congress card or 3 special knowledge for Egypt? Do I really care? Both would benefit me. Eh, I guess I'll take the congress card. Yay." Your card choices will matter if you make obviously poor ones. But, good decisions seem to usually be apparent, as in Ticket to Ride.

Well, after having made my sad decision that the game had lost its flavor for me, I decided not to play the game anymore, shelving it and preserving it as trade material (unless my wife decides she wants us to keep it, of course). After a couple weeks had gone by, the game was selected for our Boardgame Wednesday meeting. I joined the Thebes group, resolving to give it another go. Someone else in the group owns the game and so brought his copy.

The three of us started playing and for the first couple rounds, I actually found myself thinking, "This game's not so bad. It's actually kinda fun." Shortly thereafter, I realized, "Wait. I'm not having fun." The rest of the game only drove home what I had learned after my first 5 plays. Thebes was still an unrewarding game in a beautiful package.

Once I find something that interests me, I hope to trade Thebes away to someone who will really enjoy it.

Now, before I finish, I have to explain a comparison I can't ignore: Thebes vs. Mykerinos. Surely, you are thinking, "Those games are totally different!" You're partly correct. Let me show you why I make this connection.

First of all, these games share the excavating theme. It permeates every aspect of Thebes, and is only pasted on to Mykerinos, but it is there nevertheless. But, let me tell you why I would almost always choose Mykerinos over Thebes, when I'm looking to play an excavation game.

Thebes is light weight, unrewarding, and lasts 60-75 minutes, on average.

Mykerinos, on the other hand, is medium weight, very rewarding, crammed with meaningful decisions at every step, and plays out in only 45-60 minutes. It is certainly one of my favorite games.

With these two games side by side, I can't imagine why I would ever choose to play Thebes unless the following were simultaneously true:

1. I was too mentally exhausted to think through the strategies of Mykerinos
2. There were no other games available to play

or

1. The people I was playing with needed a lighter game than Mykerinos, or already knowingly disliked Mykerinos
2. There were no other games available to play

The likelihood of one of these two scenarios ever happening is so low that I can't see when I would choose to play Thebes. Now, if it was my wife's turn to pick a game, and she chose Thebes, fine. I'll play because that's how our system works. When you pick a game on your turn, we play it. Although, coincidentally, my wife doesn't like Mykerinos one bit, so I intentionally never pick that when it's just the two of us. =)

So there you have it. A review from someone who started off as an eager fan of Thebes, and eventually became uninterested. I'm hesitant to get rid of a game containing Michael Menzel art, but if it's not going to get played, it does no good on the shelf.

Keep in mind, I know many people really enjoy this game. My guess it that many people will also find that the game will lose its luster after more plays. The only way you'll know if this game is good for you is to try it two or three times and see if the mechanics strike a chord with your brain. For me, what started out as a lush chord eventually lost its resonance.