Kutna Hora: The City of Silver Review

One of the games that I and the rest of the Boar Gamer crew were really excited to bring back from the 2023 Essen Spiel was Kutna Hora: The City of Silver by Czech Games Edition. As history buffs and aspiring economists excited about building a medieval town booming around the production of silver, we nerded it out from the start and CGE didn’t disappoint with this one. Keep reading my Kutná Hora review to see what makes this game unique and why it stands out as one of our top games in 2023.

Rating:	9
Playing time:	60 – 120 minutes
Number of players:	2 to 4
Age:	8+
Complexity:	Medium
Genre:	City building eurogame with living economy
Release date:	2023
Publisher:	Czech Games Edition

Pros

• Lovely simulation of a medieval economy with realistic supply and demand mechanics
• Multiple ways to win
• Decisions matter

Cons

• The game’s setup can take a lot of time
• Possible to lose a game early on if you don’t follow the advice given by the game designers

Board Game Overview of Kutna Hora: The City of Silver

We were lucky enough to have the opportunity to talk with game designers Ondřej Bystroň and Petr Čáslava and hear directly from them how they approached developing this unique eurogame. The interesting aspect of the board game design process is that they wanted to build a game around the theme of the medieval Czech city of Kutná Hora. This kind of theme-first process is not as common in the board game industry where designers first think of a fun mechanic and then bolt on a theme to the game, making it feel a bit forced, while fun to play. Kutná Hora is far from that. 

Players in Kutná Hora take on the role of wealthy families that historically had a great influence on developing the city that was thriving on the riches gained from producing silver. Each player belongs to three out of the six guilds that operate in the city. The guilds are the metallurgists, miners, builders, scribers, innkeepers, and grocers. All are vitally important to the city’s development and will directly affect players’ economic strength in the game. As expected, Boar Gamer favorites are innkeepers and grocers, but you’ll not get to pick and choose these guilds, but rather a preset selection of three, determined by the game setup card.

Ondřej and Petr really managed to relay the feel of every move having a consequence with a dynamic economy and having every action matter throughout your turn. While playing Kutna Hora, you need to plan and strategize in advance, so you won’t have your next move foiled by your opponent (at least not completely). Your opponent’s actions may influence your next move by making you play something that’s more efficient rather than the perfect masterstroke you thought of a few turns ago. That’s where the beauty of Kutna Hora lies. Every aspect of town building, mining, developing your economy, partaking in, and influencing the city’s politics is important, so there are plenty of decisions to make.

On top of a great historical, medieval, and economic game you get a fantastic quality product. Like we’re used to with CGE board games, you get a lot of bang for your buck here. Similar to Lost Ruins of Arnak and Deal with the Devil, the Kutna Hora is jam-packed with components, cards, boards, and even something that you haven’t seen previously in other board games, but more on that later!

How To Play Kutna Hora: The City of Silver

We won’t go into all the nitty-gritty details of Kutna Hora’s rules, but we’ll cover some of the basics so you’ll understand why we were thrilled when we learned the game.

Your basic turn in Kutna hora will have you decide between which card to play. Six cards in your hand are the same ones other players have and each card depicts two actions you can take with it. Actions you can play are: 

• Mine Action – increases your production of the ore by adding your mine tile on the board and setting you up for endgame points.
• Rights Action – Buying rights for a building you’re planning to build. Also setting you up for endgame points, depending on where you build.
• Plot Action – Before you can start building you need to find an unoccupied plot of land (incredible, I know). Choose carefully where you build, it will impact your points.
• Building Action – Now that you finally have the rights and the plot, you can start construction. The building will raise the amount of income for one of the three guilds you are a member of and give you points at the end of the game.
• Income Action – In Kutna Hora, everything is paid for with coins. How much you’ll have (and have to pay for things) depends on the current value of resources that will constantly shift because of supply and demand. Playing this card simply gives you the coins you’ve earned by tallying up the value of all of your current resources. Plan your wealth wisely, as it will influence what you can do in the game and a portion of your points at the end of the game.  
• St. Barbara Action – What would a medieval town be without a grand cathedral that you’re going to build for hundreds of years? This action is a bit of a wild card, as you’ll get certain bonuses when you play it and of course, some victory points as well.  
• Joker – As the name suggests, the joker card can be used instead of any of the other cards. However, this comes at the cost of your reputation, which, if it goes down too much, will incur negative points. 

As you can see, you have plenty of thinking and planning to do, but let’s cover the most important aspect of the game, which is supply and demand! 

Kutna Hora: Economy 101

So if you think that as a prospective representative of the builders’ guild, you’ll earn a bunch of coins by putting down a ton of buildings that will produce the resources that everyone needs, you’ll be sorely mistaken. In addition to costing you coins to build, each production building will raise the supply of the resource it supplies, therefore reducing the need for it and driving its price down. While this might be useful for you, especially when you want to build something expensive, it will also reduce the amount you can earn with the income action. 

Some buildings will increase the population of the city, therefore automatically raising the demand and price of all resources. This is just one of the examples where designers wanted to incorporate realistic aspects of the economy and then think of a way to represent it in the game in an easy-to-handle fashion. 

Keeping track of the economy is neatly done with card stands, which you’ll need to assemble before your first game of Kutna Hora. The rest of the Boar Gamer crew and I were really impressed with this neat solution for fluctuating prices and the increasing population of Kutna Hora. 

It’s All About Politics

You can significantly influence your point scoring and play style if you get the right Patrician to take a seat on the city council. Different patricians will score you extra points for having your buildings next to public buildings, helping out in finishing the St. Barbara Cathedral, mining, and having a more diverse infrastructure built out.

Thankfully, this part of the game won’t require Machiavelian machinations on your part, just having enough coins to grease the right palms. However, it raises an important point about the game, that may impact your whole playthrough. 

Building Yourself Into a Corner

Building a public instead of a guild building early in the game will significantly reduce your options in future turns as it will drain your financial resources without improving your income. We should be fair and mention that game designers do warn players about spending their resources on these buildings too early in the rulebook itself, but we still we see it as a minor downside of the game. 

Kutna Hora and RE-Wood

It should be noted that Kutna Hora is the first board game that uses RE-Wood as a material for game components instead of plastics or regular wood. RE-Wood uses injection molding and recycled wood and glue to create lovely components such as miners, buildings, and other tokens in the game. We loved hearing that the whole game is biodegradable, even though it would be a shame to leave this gem of a game buried in your backyard in the first place – environmental impact or not. The game’s components are also highly detailed and we can’t wait to see how CGE plans to integrate RE-Wood in their future releases. 

Final Thoughts About Kutna Hora: The City of Silver

If it wasn’t clear enough by now,  I can heartily recommend Kutna Hora to anyone that enjoys playing economy-centric games, loves history, or just appreciates great game design, this is the game for you. However, I can see that the game isn’t for someone looking for a light and casual board game experience. It has a lot of moving parts and it certainly isn’t the best pick for beginners to board gaming. 

Where Kutna Hora shines is for players that are looking to elevate the difficulty level of their regular board gaming session with something that feels realistic, and has game mechanics based in real life, making it more logical and engaging to play. It certainly gets the stamp of approval from the Boar Gamer crew and has become a regular choice for our board gaming sessions.