Kutná Hora Review

Silver has been discovered and it's up to you as guild leaders to smelt it and develop into a prosperous city. Kutná Hora, based on the real life city in the Czech Republic has players spending actions to buy land, develop it, mine for silver, and build a beautiful cathedral while managing the supply and demand of goods. Each player has a set of cards with two actions on them. On their turn, they'll play two cards (one on the final turn) and choose which of the actions they'll perform. There are 6 possible actions. Plot and Rights grant you access to land and buildings, respectively. Building lets you place the building tile on the map and one of your houses to claim it as your own and grant some bonuses. Mine allows you to draw two mine tiles and place one. St. Barbara allows you to spend a pelican token to flip a section of the cathedral and get its bonus. Income is pretty self explanatory but it's all dependent on the values of your goods. Whenever you take a build or mine action, it's very likely that you'll be advancing the population and ore decks or manipulating the demand causing their values to change. You can make a lot of money but your timing is key. The game lasts for 6 rounds and at the end of each you must pay taxes or lose reputation. You'll also score for patricians that are on the town council. Essentially, these give bonus ways to score points. You get patricians when you purchase a public building and pay to have them added to the council during income. After the 6th round, scores are tallied and the player with the highest is the winner. Points are scored by having an impression in the mines as well as where your buildings are placed.

The Good: The overall economy of Kutná Hora is impressive. Essentially, when you change a card to increase population it increases prices but when you adjust the supply by moving the slider to the right you'll lower the cost. It's unique and it is a cool way of handling an economy. The game can seem intimidating at first when you put all of the pieces on your board and fill the tracks but for the most part, everything works seamlessly. The rulebook does a fantastic job of explaining things in detail and giving reasons behind why things work the way that they do. The components as a whole are top notch. There's a lot silver and gold flourishes throughout the board and the use of Re-wood to create the player pieces is a first in the industry and a gorgeous set.

The Okay: At two players, the game makes some concessions and compensates with the event deck. Essentially, at the start of a round, a card is flipped and something happens (usually bad). The market won't move as much at the lower counts, especially if players aren't focused on building, especially since each player has a stranglehold on part of the economy be default. I haven't had this issue too much but it has happened. One major downside of the economy piece is that you'll be forced to do a lot of math any time you purchase things or take income. Thankfully, CGE released an app to track your income without much guesswork involved. It also helps to eliminate some setup time since you don't need the cards.

The Not So Good: I didn't love that the process to build a building will span over multiple turns. Having to buy land then reserve the rights to the building which you're the owner of the guild for and then finally getting to build it felt cumbersome. The organization of this game is a bit of a nightmare. CGE has never been known for inserts but I've always had to get one through a third party for their games. Because there are so many components and they're only in bags it's a bit of a pain to setup.

Final Thoughts: Not to bury the lead here but I thoroughly enjoyed Kutná Hora. The dynamic economy can seem to be a bit of an arduous task to manage and control at first but as the game flows it's very manageable. Some people will try to predict it but I like to just simply go with the flow. Eventually it'll come around to where I can pounce for a big income. It's not a perfect game with two players and that's what I primarily play at (I really need friends) but it works well enough to want me to bring it to the table and the game feels fresh and different each time I run through it. This will be a staple of the collection for quite some time.

Thanks to CGE for providing a review copy.