Power play in the roman times

Launched in 2005, Roma pits two players against each other, lets them choose cards to get powers, roll the dice and end their opponent’s game
Power play in the roman times

CHENNAI: Stefan Feld has been mentioned in this column a few times before, and for good reason — he’s one of the most celebrated board game designers alive. When you have games like Trajan, Notre Dame and The Castles of Burgundy to your name, your legacy is just about assured. Today, we’ll look at one of Feld’s lesser-known games — Roma.

Released in 2005, Roma is a two-player-only game where players represent rival Roman families jockeying for power and influence. There are two ways to win — have the most points when the supply of point tokens is depleted, or force your opponent to run out of points. This is an interesting twist on the usual point-based formula, and really plays up the player-versus-player duelling aspect of Roma.

Eight discs are laid out in a row between players, six numbered from 1-6 and two with icons for money and cards respectively. Each player starts with four cards played into four of the six numbered spaces, three dice in their colour and 10 victory points. On your turn, you must first lose points equal to the number of empty spaces on your side of the ‘board’ (so each player will lose 2 points on their first turn) and then you roll your dice. Once rolled, you can assign as many of them as you like to any of the discs to carry out that particular action; and, when you’re done, you pass and your opponent begins their turn.

At its heart, Roma is a dice-worker-placement game — the dice you roll let you trigger certain actions based on where you play them. If you put a 4-value dice on the money location, you’ll get 4 gold; which you’ll need, because you need to pay their cost in order to play new cards down. If you put that same dice on the cards location, you get to draw four cards and keep one of them. Each numbered locations activates the card you’ve played in that spot, and those effects can vary greatly.

This is where Roma really starts to sing. Each card has a unique power that can cause some very interesting combo effects. You have the more straightforward ones, such as the Forum which lets you earn victory points, or the Consul, which lets you modify one of the dice you rolled by +/-1.

You also have cards that let you attack your opponent’s cards — roll high enough, and they lose the targeted card as well as an extra point at the beginning of their next turn. However, you’ll also have turns where you activate the Haruspex to let you search through the entire deck for a card you need, activate the Senator to let you play that card for free into the #5 spot and then use your 5-value die to trigger your shiny new card. It’s a cascade of chaining powers, and it’s a blast whenever you make it happen.

It’s easy to dismiss Roma as an entirely luck-based game as soon as you see the dice, but that’s doing it a disservice. There’s enough depth here that I think the better player would win often. There are enough choices in the game — such as where you play your cards, and the draft that happens at the very beginning of the game — that you can trace your victory or defeat back to. If you do a lot of two-player gaming and you’re in the market for a duel-type game, you should hunt down a copy of Roma

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