Players play cards against each other blindly, and the card shows the dice rolled against an enemy. SH: The game uses my proven system from MeG, which is based on a set of coloured dice called the skull dice. But each action is simple, so a turn moves rapidly through phases, and each phase goes round the board so you are rarely quiet for long. So anyone who loves R:TW will immediately see that it builds on all the main themes.
You end with a spending phase where you buy troops, upgrade towns, seek technological developments, or save money for future use. You then have two campaigning seasons, which keeps the focus nicely towards the military conquest, supported by the economics and development. Phase 2 is the tax collection phase where you get money from your regions. Phase 1 is the agent phase where you do things with your two agents. The turns are quite interactive between players, as they circulate through phases.
You then fight battles using card-based armies and we have two levels of how to do that, just as in R:TW – a fast resolution version and a ‘play battle’ version.Īnyone who loves R:TW will see it builds on all the main themesĭesigner, Total War: ROME: The Board Game All of these are in a simple form that allows a rich tapestry of options for the players. You can upgrade your villages, towns, and cities your agents can create alliances, trade or cause trouble for opponents you spend to get technological developments, and you spend to build armies and navies. SH: You do all the non-battle things in R:TW in a simplified way. How does the game play – what will players be doing turn-to-turn? In testing so far, we are finding it works really well and you get a pacey game in about 3 hours to a conclusion.
Then MeG cuts in to provide a slick combat mechanism when armies meet. My aim was to produce a fast-moving board game where you keep the feel of all the things you do in R:TW, but with simple high-speed mechanisms so the game moves at pace. Simon Hall: It’s a merger of two much-liked entities: a) the components and feel of Rome: Total War, which I love, and b) the mechanisms and historical realism from my Mortem et Gloriam tabletop wargames rules. How would you describe Total War: ROME: The board game?