Kutná Hora: The City of Silver Board Game Review

Written by Adam Richards

What is Kutná Hora?

The premise of Kutná Hora might not strike you as particularly innovative or dazzling. It’s the 14th Century, you’re mining silver and developing a town in a Czech valley, and you’re trying to score the most points while you do it. So far, so by-the-books Euro game. This game spices things up a little with some pretty neat things. Firstly there’s a surprising amount of indirect interaction between players, but the thing which really sets it apart from its peers, is the dynamic economy used in the game.

How to Play Kutná Hora

Each player has an identical deck of six cards, and each card has an action at either end. During each round, you’ll play two cards on your first turn, two more on your second turn, and finally, one card to close things out. The actions let you do things like purchase the rights to build certain buildings, claim plots of land in the town to build those buildings, and then to actually do that building work. As well as building you can dig the mines, looking for the precious silver buried beneath the hill, as well as constructing a grand cathedral.

Building stuff costs money though. Who knew? If you’re putting buildings up or constructing mine tunnels, you need wood. Luckily there’s a builders’ guild putting up sawmills and the like, and this is where things get interesting. Let’s say wood costs two Groschen (the game’s currency) per unit. If you build something that costs four wood, you need to pay eight Groschen. Easy maths. If a player representing the builders' guild builds one of their buildings in the town, the supply of wood increases, so the price per unit goes down, meaning potential bargains for the next player to build.

This same supply and demand concept works across the other five guilds in the game too. As more buildings get built though, the town's population increases, and this is represented by taking the top card from each of the really neat cardholders and moving it to the back of the deck. As the population increases, the prices slowly rise again.

It’s a really smart system which delivers the dynamic economy it promises, but gently. You won’t suddenly find yourself screwed because somebody else built a building just before you. We’re not talking Food Chain Magnate levels of price-fixing shenanigans here, which is a good thing in a game like this.

Kutná Hora Review

Kutná Hora can feel a little janky on a first play. Learning how to do all the different things is easy enough, but understanding how the scoring system works is something which only really ticks afterwards. It’s worth that perseverance because it’s a really smooth game once all of the players know the game, and a game which becomes a real optimisation puzzle. Income isn’t an automatic thing you get at the start of every round, it’s an action you need to play, so the more times you have to get income, the fewer actions you have to build stuff.

I’ve yet to find anyone I’ve taught the game to who didn’t enjoy it, and I’ve really enjoyed every play I’ve had. While I enjoy it the most with three and four players, the two-player mode works decently well too. There are smaller town and mine sides of the main boards and an event deck which ensures the economy changes as it would with more people, which requires almost no time or brain power to run, which is always good. Four players is where it’s at its best.

Plenty of Euro games get released every year, but few try to model an economy, however basic. Kutná Hora does it and wraps it up in a medium-weight game that’s full of interesting decisions, delivers a ton of fun, and does it in less than two hours. Fantastic stuff.

Is Kutná Hora Good?

We consider it a must play game. Interaction, economy, spatial puzzles, quick play time, and beautifully presented throughout. Kutná Hora is wonderful.

Buy Kutna Hora on Amazon

You'll like it if you enjoyed Brass Birmingham.  Although different games, both fuse card-driven gameplay with a player-driven economy and competition for mutually beneficial building spaces.

About Kutná Hora

Designers: Ondřej Bystroň, Petr Čáslava, Pavel Jarosch

Publisher: Czech Games Edition

Time: 60-120 mins

Players: 2-4

Age: 13+

Price: £57

Inside the box

• Rulebook
• Rounds track
• Kutná Hora board
• Town hall board
• Prospecting board
• 4 player boards
• 2 card stands
• 11 St Barbara Tiles
• 4 Player aid cards
• 36 Building tiles
• 12 Guild tiles
• 18 Pelican tokens
• 12 Patrician tokens
• 53 coins
• 4 Rock tiles
• 31 Mining tiles
• 95 cards
• 1 Start player marker
• 130 RE-Wood player pieces

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