Kutná Hora: The City of Silver

Incl. Pre-order promo card

Odd design choice in that there are 6 different resources and corresponding buildings, but each player only has the ability to control 3.

Game felt unnecessarily convoluted. To build a building it takes 3 actions : take the building to your player board, reserve a spot, then build the building...and you only have 25 actions in the game.

Players influence the market, but it's mainly arbitrary. It's annoying to constantly have to remove the goods value card to update it.

Game just wasn't fun at all. No engine building or comboing.

Game took 2 1/2 hours for 4 players (including teach) which is quite reasonable, but the game felt wayyy longer to me.

Did not play an entire game, but initial results are good: manage action cards, limited to certain building purchasing, and several angles to scoring all determined by players. The cost/value of resources is based logically and thematically on tile placement and really creates a sense of warning and tension around the the bale. Theme is extremely strong in this clever, Euro city-builder. Very nicely done!

I didn't really like how difficult it was to increase the price of goods versus how easy it was to decrease them. I also didn't love the unevenness of building the church that some actions were meh and others were wow. And the mines just weren't competitive at all. I don't understand the point of market manipulation when you don't gain a benefit from that manipulation and in fact its typically the players directly after you that will first gain that benefit.

I think the hitch in the giddy up here is the fact it takes you three actions to build something. Its hard to create a benefit that only you get when your actions are so clearly telegraphed.

It's a decent game but not a great one, I'll wait to see if adding an expansion makes it more compelling.

Lots of interesting mechanics that I enjoyed. The dynamic market is really compelling, but ultimately I found it to feel a bit arbitrary. You could know what direction prices would be pushed in by different actions, but not whether or not they would actually move or by how much. And since it takes 3 full actions to get a plot of land, get rights to build, and then finally build, you're not usually in a great position to pivot your strategy to take advantage of market changes. By the end, it felt like success or failure was based on what the market happened to decide, not based on a given player's actual strategy. My thought at the end was basically, "I scored a lot of points and got in 2nd place, but I couldn't tell you how."

I also felt like the mining aspect of the game was really disjointed from the building aspect. It was interesting in its own way, but I could easily imagine a reality where Kutná Hora was 2 different games: one about mining, and one about building a city.

That being said, I still found a lot of the gameplay to be interesting and satisfying, and I liked the way it flowed. I'd absolutely be willing to play again, and maybe my brain would wrap around it more and the market manipulation would feel more satisfying.

This game just keeps getting better and better with repeated plays.

played it at Origins definitely the best game I demo'd at the convention

Preliminary rating after one play.