The Taverns of Tiefenthal

The Taverns of Tiefenthal offers 2-4 players the chance to run their own medieval pub! Taverns comes from designer Wolfgang Warsch. Ring any bells? Warsch’s previous title was much-loved The Quacks of Quedlinburg. Like Quacks, Taverns fits into that wonderful bracket of light-to-medium-weight complexity.

The aim of Taverns of Tiefenthal is to build the most valuable deck of cards over eight rounds. This is ‘deck-building’. The way you’ll earn cards, however, takes place through a dice-drafting mechanism. Rounds start with everyone turning over cards from their starter deck. You place cards in corresponding parts of your tavern. Some are guests, some are staff. Staff cards grant bonuses – some guaranteed, some potential, depending on the dice draft. Once you reveal three guests, you’ll stop turning cards (your small inn only has three starter tables).

Everyone rolls four dice. Players take one die from their pool and pass the remaining to the left. Take another die, and so on. You’ll want to take certain dice to place on specific areas of your tavern. Placing matching dice on guests, for example, triggers income. Placing certain dice on the deliveryman brings in extra beer.

You can spend beer and income to buy better cards, which will make your deck stronger. Guests with deeper pockets? More tables, so you can seat more guests? Meanwhile, the more staff cards in your deck, the better chance they have of coming into play. More staff, more bonuses per turn!

You can upgrade your tavern, too. You’ll want to spend money to increase your cellar size and money storage, so nothing goes to waste. Upgrading is costly. It increases your tavern’s productivity ten-fold though. It also attracts noble guests! These offer bigger bar tabs and also provide mega-points.

The Taverns of Tiefenthal offers a wonderful blend of mechanisms, and barrels of fun. Schmidt Spiele have also included a bunch of mix-and-match modules that you can add in with ease. Taverns is overspilling with replayability and variation. Cheers! A toast to you, Wolfgang Warsch, for another beer-utifil board game…

Player count: 2-4 players
Game length: 60 minutes
Age rating: 12+