Episode 161: The Taverns of Tiefenthal

The Taverns of Tiefenthal is a worker placement game with elements of dice drafting and deck building designed by Wolfgang Warsch with art by Dennis Lohausen and published in 2019 by North Star Games. Over the course of the game, players will run their tavern, inviting and serving guests, brewing and storing beer, upgrading features of their tavern, and, most important of all, drawing nobles to their establishment for big points.

On their turn, players will draw and play a hand of cards from their personal deck. At the start of the game, each player’s deck contains the same type and number of cards, but over the course of the game this will change. These cards represent either guests, which players will try to serve, or different kinds of workers in the tavern. Players will draw and play cards until all available seats in their tavern are filled.

Then, each player will roll a pool of dice. If certain cards were played earlier in the round, a player may have a personal pool of dice to roll. Otherwise, each player will roll a number of dice, select one, and pass the remaining three to the player on their left. After all dice have been drafted, each player then places the dice on various locations on their tavern. The guests and certain work spaces will all hold varying numbers and values of dice, so depending on the dice they rolled or were forced to draft, players may find themselves in situations where they cannot play their whole dice pool.

Once placed, in turn order each player then resolves the various locations on their board in any order they wish. In general, placing die on guests will earn the player money which they will use to buy new worker cards to place in their deck, while placing die on workers will brew beer which can be spent to attract new guests into the tavern. Guests and worker cards are purchased from a common market and are added to top of the player’s draw pile, not their discard pile like is most deck builders.

A major feature of Taverns is its upgradeable tavern components, which are managed through double-sided tiles that can be flipped to improve the efficiency of the base action. Further, Taverns is playable with a wide variety of modules that will cause additional tiles to be slotted into locations on your tavern board. The modules can be mixed and matched to add variety to the base game.

Players will earn points in a variety of ways. Upgraded locations will provide points, and most new cards purchased will also have a point value. Most valuable of all are the Nobles, rare guests that can only be obtained in a limited number of ways but provide 10 points at the end of the game.

The game plays over a set number of rounds, at which point points are tallied, scores compared, and the winner announced.

01:54:51 – Review

02:21:46 – Ratings

ReRoll

02:30:25 – Pulsar: 2849 [Buy] * – Czech Games Edition; Designer: Vladimír Suchý; Art: Sören Meding;

Check out our original review for Pulsar: 2849 during Episode 136.

Gameplay Photos

* Disclosure: These titles were received free of charge by the publishers or distributors. If you are interested in submitting a title for review, please read our Review Policy.

Show Notes

Banter

Plays

News

Review: The Taverns of Tiefenthal

ReRoll

Gameplay Photos

Episode 303: Tag Team

Episode 302: Shackleton Base

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