Stripped down for parts: Caesar! Seize Rome in 20 Minutes!

   

 

Note: I wouldn’t normally give this treatment to a game as small and unassuming as this one, but it’s such an artfully wrought thing, and one that manages to look great while sticking to a very simple design brief, that I had to show it off. I’d like to give a shout out to Mitch and the team at MilSims Games for putting a copy of this aside for me.

It could be argued that Paolo Mori’s Caesar! Seize Rome in 20 Minutes! (PSC Games, 2022) isn’t a wargame. The theme of the game is the contest between Julius Caesar and his once-friend then bitter rival, Pompey for control of the Roman Empire; a martial contest for the ages. I don’t feel qualified to make grand pronouncements on what constitutes a wargame and which games fall short of that (I don’t have a YouTube channel), but I will stand, hand on heart, and declare that Caesar! unquestionably has a place on this blog; it is both a fast game and a good game.

This is a neat little game in a neat little box, which is itself sturdy, colourful, and contains its components admirably. The cover illustration is cartoonish without looking cartoony. It conveys that this is a fun game about a serious subject.

The rules are printed on a glossy stock and are easy to read, simple to interpret, and helpfully-illustrated. The rules for the base game run to five digest-sized pages. Two more pages cover the “Expansions of Rome,” the addition of Poison and Centurion rewards to the mix of yellow counters, which may apparently be added separately or together into the game, and a further four pages of solo rules. This was unexpected, but I’m very grateful the game has a dedicated solitaire mode.

The board is a stylised map of the Mediterranean, divided into provinces with clear, straight lines. Over these lines are superimposed circles, each with a symbol representing a particular type of influence that can be applied there (Sword, Shield, Crossed Spears and Ship) Some are adorned with Laurel wreaths; these are Wild tokens that can be placed in any Influence space.

Nice mounted board. Small but perfect in every detail.

These symbols correspond with symbols that appear on the red and blue Influence tokens belonging to Caesar and Pompey respectively. The yellow tokens are Province Bonus tokens that are placed randomly in each province, and which can be claimed by the player who places the last Influence token to “close” a province, regardless of who wins the contest of influence. The tokens are printed on a good weight of brown-core card stock, and I’m happy to report they punch out easily and cleanly. My one criticism would be the choice of black print for the symbols and numerical values on the on the rich red and blue of the Influence tokens. I managed to read them without difficulty, but I can see how others might struggle with it.

A third sheet of rectangular counters are included. These are for use with the solo game. I haven’t explored their use as yet, but these also punch out nicely.

The mysterious solo counters.

Each player’s Influence tokens reside in a drawstring bag, printed with the portrait of Caesar or Pompey, as appropriate. 

Caesar (left, and Pompey (right)

The players each start the game with two tokens drawn, which they of course can look at, but which are shielded from the other player’s view by a screen. The screen also includes brief descriptions of the functions of the yellow Province Bonus tokens.

And that covers it. This is a simple and very fast-moving game. The components do what they are meant to and the whole package pops on the table with its use of primary colours and its adherence to a fairly no-thrills approach. In a world of monster, big-box games with dozens or hundreds of miniatures, it’s nice to find a game you can probably play through twice in the time it will take to set up the next chapter of Frosthaven.

Veni, vidi, lusi.

 

 

State of Play: Sons of Anarchy and some 1944: D-Day to the Rhine

 

Lately Wednesdays have been back to roleplaying, so nothing to report here, but this week we were down one of our number, so B pulled out The Godfather: Corleone’s Empire (CMON, 2017), and Sons of Anarchy: Men of Mayhem (Gale Force Nine, 2014). I’d played Eric Lang’s Godfather game before – a solid, thematically-compelling worker-placement game. The consensus at the table was leaning to Sons of Anarchy, though, and I wasn’t really that invested in either game, so I went along with it.

I never watched the series on which the game is thematically based, even though I heard recommendations from the most unlikely sources (economists, theatre-folk); try as I might I couldn’t get all that enthused for it. I never found Breaking Bad that compelling, either.

No game pics, I'm afraid. I was distracted playing the damn game.

I’m happy to say that the game was another matter altogether. Eschewing the trap of trying to incorporate characters into a media-tie-in game, the designers went with keeping the trappings of the series – the named gangs, locations that commonly appear or are integral to the action – and used these building blocks to create an interesting, diverting, and well-balanced game that doesn’t outstay its welcome. The mechanics are a combination of worker placement and resource management, with a novel bidding system that sees the value of a commodity dropping with a higher number of units being offered (flooding the market with product). The playing area is three mandatory location tiles and a selection of nine random locations (out of twenty options, making for a good level of replayability), all drawn from places depicted in the series, with each location offering something more or less useful.

Being a worker placement game with limited locations, there will inevitably be some altercations between gangs. This can result with valuable “dudes” ending up in the emergency room, or the morgue.

There are three currencies in the game; money, drugs and guns. These are, to a degree, interchangeable, and different game functions allow the exchange of one for another one a one-to-one basis or sometimes higher. But, as in life, the only currency worth a damn is cash; whoever has the most cash on hand at the end of the game wins the game (though the others might count in a tie). Needless to say, it was down to the two of us who had played before, with H and me tied for the lowest score (respectable walking-around money, but not enough to retire on). And, to its credit, Sons of Anarchy plays quickly (as promised on the box) – even with two newbies, we were done in about an hour-fifteen.

Sons of Anarchy was, as I said, interesting and diverting, a great way to kill an hour, a good filler game (every self-respecting gamer should own a couple). While I don’t feel the need to hunt this down for myself, I would not begrudge playing it again.

Stock photo; better than I could get on the day.

I also managed to carve a little time to of my week to finally get 1944: D-Day to the Rhine (Worthington Publishing, to the table, albeit in a rather truncated manner. I didn’t have a lot of time, but the game comes with a one-turn learning scenario to get you used to the nuances of the game. I’ve played Dan Fournie’s other WWII game, 1944: Battle of the Bulge (Worthington, 2020), which has a lot going for it, and this game, while very different in scope, plays in a familiar fashion. It essentially a classic IGO-UGO system, with the flexibility of fire and movement in whichever order you choose for each unit. Action points, called Resource Points here, are allocated each game turn, and can be used to strengthen depleted units or resurrect annihilated ones, and t activate units for combat and movement. In a nice touch, one RP will activate multiple units in a single attack if they hail form the same command (units are colour-coded for just this reason).

Dice hit on symbols, simultaneous Attack and Defence rolls. Combat can be brutal.

D-Day to the Rhine plays similarly to Battle of the Bulge, and promises to be a fast-playing game, once the nuances are assimilated. In the full game, the Allies have nine turns to make it into Germany and secure key locations, driving off the map to Berlin or Hamburg to seize victory, and it’s up to the Germans with their diminishing resources to stop that from happening.

End of the German turn; damage dealt, but at a heavy cost.

This short scenario has just whetted my appetite; I really want to get this to the table sometime soon. The sooner the better. Maybe next week I’ll be able to carve out an afternoon to play out the full game.