Hidden Gems: A Board Game Podcast

52. Ave Caesar!

• Cameron Lockey

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In this special episode of Hidden Gems, your hosts Chris Alley, Bill Arney, and Cameron Lockey review three Roman-themed games including one requested by one of our Patreon Gem Miners.

FEATURED GAMES:
00:00:00  Intro & Banter
00:22:35 Sylla
00:51:31 Ave Caesar
01:21:39 Constantinopolis

MUSIC (courtesy of https://epidemicsound.com):
Sylla: "Conspiracy, Inc", Alec Slayne
Ave Caesar: “Bring on the Adventure”, Raymond Grouse
Constantinopolis: "Dance of the Wildcats", Deskant

FOLLOW US:
Email: hiddengemsboardgamepodcast@gmail.com
Web: https://hiddengems.games
Patreon: https://patreon.com/hiddengemspodcast
Instagram: @hiddengems.games
Facebook: @hiddengemsboardgamepodcast
Twitter: @hiddengemsboard
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCR8wU2vjV2RJ7C6iRuq2WcA
BGG Guild #: 3874
Discord: https://discord.gg/aXThh3N5Kj

Hidden Gems: A Board Game Podcast was produced and edited by Chris Alley, Cameron Lockey, and Jason Yanchuleff in Raleigh, NC.

Chris:

Hidden Gems, episode 52. Ave Caesar!

Bill:

Bye!

Chris:

Welcome to Hidden Gems, a board game podcast where we review unusual, forgotten, and underappreciated board games. We're your hosts. My name is Chris.

Bill:

I'm Bill.

Cameron:

And I'm Cameron. Thanks for listening to our show.

Chris:

Did you Like that intro?

Cameron:

That was awesome,

Chris:

Tried to make it epic.

Cameron:

Pretty

Bill:

It's gotta be. It's got Caesar in it. There's gonna be a lot of crowd noise.

Cameron:

Yeah, and you know, when you Aave, you have to do it with some gusto, you

Chris:

do, you have to

Bill:

Aave.

Chris:

it, for sure.

Cameron:

I

Chris:

right before, we started rolling, I said, I want you to put some really epic voice effects on my voice for this intro. So hopefully that

Cameron:

I did. I

Chris:

did.

Bill:

Okay, so I hate to show my ignorance, but I think you guys looked it up last time we were talking. What does Aave mean?

Chris:

Oh, shoot.

Bill:

Oh, well, I thought this was a softball.

Cameron:

You would

Bill:

You would think

Chris:

that I would know so I used to be in choir in high school and college Uhhuh and the number of Latin songs that I sang with the word Avi in it. You would think I would know what it means, but I honestly cannot remember.

Bill:

means, but I honestly cannot remember. Alright, we'll see if the...

Chris:

But You're looking it up!

Bill:

Right, if the Indian burial ground in here will let us do it.

Cameron:

us up so that we could

Bill:

No, I don't know. I have no idea.

Chris:

Good luck on my wifi out here,

Bill:

exactly. I don't even know how to phrase it right. Let's see. Drum roll. Hail. Simply hail. No, we did look it up. Jason looked it

Chris:

that,

Cameron:

thought, I thought that's what

Chris:

Yeah, me too. I was totally thinking

Bill:

right,

Cameron:

just one

Chris:

right?

Bill:

exactly. That's good.

Chris:

can we

Cameron:

got one Viva?

Chris:

I'm sure anyone

Cameron:

out there who's watched Parks and Rec would get that joke.

Bill:

Well

Chris:

Bill, now that you've embarrassed us, why don't you go ahead and get the ball rolling. What have you been up to? My friends.

Bill:

let's see. well, the most exciting thing for me has been, last weekend, I'd been looking forward to getting together with a really good friend of mine for a long time that we grew up together and we haven't probably seen each other for 10 or 15 years, he was in my high school class. And so we ended up getting together at Clemson university. at Lake Hartwell, right next to him, his wife rented a cabin there. And as there was a group of us, another, another high school buddy of mine went, and we hung out at the lake and drank and just had a blast. One thing I want to say though, is youth is wasted on the young for sure. And I'm going to come at it from a different angle. We ended up stopping at a fruit stand down there and picking up a bunch of peaches. Oh yeah. and all my and I've just finished this. Oh, yeah, the last piece today. And I mean, those fresh peaches right off the bottom. Yeah, right off the road, right off the vine. we had a farm growing up. And we had fresh vegetables all the time. And I totally did not appreciate it at

Chris:

I was to say, you, you don't grow peaches and colory.

Bill:

No, no, no. but I had beans and tomatoes and lettuce or whatever, or corn on the cob, right? Dad would go, Hey, go out in the field and we'll do it. And, uh, and we'd eat it. It would be good. But I just didn't realize, didn't have a perspective on it, like how good it was compared to leave anything else. So

Chris:

I, had no intention of. Talking anything about this. I haven't thought about this in years, actually, but since you brought it up, it just brought it to mind. my grandparents had a small family farm and some of my fondest memories One weekend, every year we would shut corn and string beans

Bill:

on

Chris:

the porch. All my aunts, my mom had four sisters, so they'd all come over. My grandmother would be pressure cooking. That's how she did it. Pressure cooker. Put everything in the quarts, you know, the plastic quarts and

Bill:

Oh yeah. Mason jars is getting

Chris:

is getting lost. You know what I mean? And it's kind of sad, you know? I don't know how to do it, so it's kind of my fault, I guess. But I remember enjoying that as a kid. But that Getting with the family and putting up the corn and the beans for the year is just kind of going away,

Cameron:

The whole like, turning it a chore into a,

Chris:

Family

Cameron:

for Family like bonding. But you also have to do it because. If you don't, it's going to go to waste, right?

Chris:

Yep

Bill:

And you won't eat over the winter

Chris:

exactly

Bill:

because I mean, we, we did that too. And yeah, we canned all our beans and stuff like that. Had a big closet for all of it. We, in our basement, we had our bins for the Irish potatoes and the sweet potatoes and ate all that stuff, all winter long. It was, it was still really, really good. It was, So, anyway, the last thing I want to talk about is, I started playing Last of Us again on the PS4 because we talked about it and what I'm finding out is I really suck with a controller. I mean, if I'm trying to shoot anything, I mean, give me a mouse and a keyboard.

Chris:

trying to cheat

Bill:

Oh, yeah. Oh, gosh.

Chris:

anything,

Bill:

gonna get your face ripped

Cameron:

Right.

Bill:

a couple of times. Oh, yeah. Well, I'm kind of in the tutorial because I'm still fighting the soldiers, right? I am not in with,

Chris:

tutorial. You're not on the clickers

Bill:

you know, I'm not in the clickers yet, which is I'm sure they're way worse. Uh, uh, I can, yes, I'm not looking forward to it, but it's, I just had to after watching the series. I mean, I love the series so much. And so I'm going to give it a chance. We'll see if we can go and see if I get any better with the controller.

Chris:

with it.

Bill:

That's it. So how about you, Chris? Nice. about a pretty good clip here. So the thing about when you go to

Cameron:

yeah, to

Chris:

Is I'm starting to backlog on my, really

Cameron:

your fun stuff to share. Interesting

Chris:

things to talk about. I don't know if anybody else cares. And I'm like, man, I really want to talk about this and this. I'm starting to get behind. So I'm going to try to squeeze in two things. So last week I hinted at a game that I just recently finished called Rabby Ribby. Were you here, Bill? When I was talking about Rabby Ribby. Okay. Alright, so check this out. Rabby Ribby is a pixel art metroidvania style game. Okay. Where you play as a bunny. you're not a bunny. You, you're a bunny that's been transformed into a girl. Okay. Okay.

Bill:

A human

Chris:

girl. A human

Cameron:

I was like, is this another Baba thing? Like, is it a mouse or a bunny? No,

Bill:

it's,

Chris:

it's, it's actually really good graphics. We'll talk about that in a

Bill:

This, uh, this sound like it's for a it's really in your wheelhouse right now, so keep on going. Yeah.

Chris:

This is perfect. Yeah. So you're searching for your master, your, you lost master. You're trying to girl, but you're a girl,

Bill:

and a bunny girl. So yes. A bunny girl. Mm-hmm..Yeah.

Chris:

Just stick with me here. So the story is complete nonsense. Terrible makes no sense the graphics the Level graphics are average at best So you might be thinking why are you even talking about this game? It sounds terrible. The boss fights in this game are incredible They are Incredibly good. I was so sucked in so i've talked about shmups on the show before So shmups are shoot em ups, they're bullet hell games, but they're usually with ships, you know, where you're

Cameron:

Oh,

Chris:

Gradius or R

Bill:

or Galaga or

Chris:

just like bullets

Bill:

everywhere,

Chris:

What this game does is it takes that and it applies it to a Metroidvania. So the bosses that you're fighting, you're fighting in a Metroidvania style, but it's just laser beams and bullets and stars and... You're trying to find these thin, narrow windows to

Cameron:

and

Chris:

to not get hit. And it is incredibly challenging and incredibly fun.

Cameron:

Okay,

Chris:

I recommend

Cameron:

it. Is it random or like there's still

Chris:

There's absolutely patterns to it. And I will tell you. you. will fight bosses and you will think this is impossible. There's there's no way. But there actually is one. You just have to die a few times

Bill:

Figure it

Chris:

You kind of figure out like how you navigate through it. But if you were to see it on the screen, like a screenshot, you'd be like, who can survive

Cameron:

Right.

Chris:

But you do. You figure it out. Super cool.

Bill:

So

Cameron:

people speedrun like the final levels of like Mario 3. Where you're just like, there's like bullets and cannonballs everywhere. You're just like, what?

Chris:

You should just look at some Ribi and you'll be like, wow, this is incredible, but it, it's great.

Bill:

So for our VR weekend, there's a game that is absolutely that, but you're doing it in real life and you have to physically move your body to dodge all the bullets and stuff like that. And it's super, super cool. But anyway.

Chris:

No, yeah, dude. I love that kind of stuff. So yeah, check it out. The only thing i'll say this is the one caveat I was kind of hitting at this earlier It's in the anime style the kind of cut scene. So it's a little um

Bill:

Kiddish?

Chris:

No, how do you say this? The the female characters

Bill:

are

Chris:

A little

Bill:

risque. Okay, so just be aware

Chris:

of that. You know, it might not be your style. Maybe, Bill, you'd probably love it. But,

Bill:

uh, just, check it out. I'm sure I would.

Cameron:

family appropriate.

Bill:

Yeah,

Chris:

make sure, make sure you're cool with it. But, the

Bill:

gameplay,

Chris:

it's super solid. Love it. Ravi Ravi.

Cameron:

Alright.

Bill:

what's number two?

Chris:

one more thing haven't talked about TV shows in a while So telling I've been trying to get back into watching some shows together because there just hasn't been Seemingly a lot that's really seemed

Cameron:

into

Chris:

We found one. We really liked that. I found really interesting and it's called the dropout Have you guys heard of this

Bill:

one? I haven't.

Chris:

So you probably heard about the story. This is based on a true story. This is about Elizabeth Holmes. She is the woman that started that medical startup company called Theranos.

Bill:

right.

Cameron:

is it like ripped a bunch of people off or whatever?

Chris:

Yeah, basically. So she developed early. She claimed that she had developed a piece of technology. To where she could take a single drop of blood and basically run ready to order any lab test that you could possibly need that would somehow interface with your medical record. Which isn't too far from reality, actually. She wasn't there, but she was selling it as if she was there. And long story short, there's no spoiler here because everybody, I mean, she got arrested, she's in prison now. So it's one of those stories where, you know, where it's going, but it's just so fascinating. It really is a good watch to see how people can kind of start with good intentions and you just see how they just go wrong through like power and money and fear of loss and just kind of seeing her and her partners and things going down this really. Tragic path.

Bill:

Mm hmm. It

Chris:

a really, really good watch. It's like seven episodes.

Bill:

Cool.

Chris:

Highly recommend it. Amanda Seyfried is the actress. She plays her perfectly. She's like a mimicker, just exactly her mannerisms and everything are just like Elizabeth Holmes. So.

Bill:

Louis Vuitton. That's crazy.

Chris:

Oh, shoot. Um, I don't remember. You'd have to Google it. I cannot recall, honestly, but, yeah, it's worth watching.

Cameron:

Okay.

Bill:

Yeah, like a drug based Enron.

Chris:

Exactly. It's a crazy story. It really is.

Bill:

cool.

Chris:

What about you, Cam?

Cameron:

Cool, Well, in general... I'm having a great summer with all sorts of woodworking and all sorts of stuff like that. We're anticipating our second baby coming in September. So, getting, the nesting back up and going. But,

Chris:

We're gonna lose you again for a few months, I think.

Bill:

Right. Congrats again.

Cameron:

sure I'll be around a little bit. But yeah, two kids. We're going to two kids. We're both terrified. Uh, it'll be fine.

Chris:

it's gonna be fine.

Cameron:

Speaking of watching, TV movies with, your spouse, he's not having gotten to do a lot of that recently, but we did watch a movie together recently. and it's one that I'm really surprised. I didn't hear more about, I guess, in more mainstream circles. And that's the dungeons and dragons

Chris:

Oh dude this is on my to watch list, I

Bill:

I

Cameron:

Highly recommend it. I had an absolute blast watching this movie. Somehow it came up with like. Um, there was like promotional bonuses. So I actually own it. I don't buy a ton of stuff on Amazon, but we were like six bucks. I'm

Chris:

it. Yeah

Bill:

for sure.

Cameron:

cause we just had a great time watching it and maybe that's because I have so many warm feelings of, and wonderful memories of, playing dungeons and dragons, particularly with you as my dungeon master, but

Chris:

I heard the movie has tons of

Cameron:

Oh my gosh, so much fan service. I from a film, criticism perspective, like there's nothing really that original about the story itself. If you've played any D and D, but that's almost like part of the

Bill:

started

Chris:

they start in a tavern or

Cameron:

You, you,

Bill:

Oh, absolutely.

Cameron:

are just so many things where you're just like, yeah, this sounds like a pretty typical, you know, thing that

Bill:

head nods to everything, yeah.

Cameron:

in a typical D and D story, you're like, Oh yeah, not surprised that that guy turns out he's a bad guy. you know, like, that kind of thing. But, It's just so well done. The cast is amazing. I mean, it's got Chris Pine. It's got, um, I know I should have written down the actual list of all the names because I'm so bad at recalling

Chris:

doesn't have the girl from Fast and The Furious in it. What is her name?

Cameron:

Uh, and she's, and she's also on Lost. Um, fantastic job as the, Barbarian character and pulls it off super, super well. Um,

Chris:

Chris Pine like a bard or

Cameron:

he's a bard, so he characterizes the whole leader role. And, and it's interesting because they handle magic pretty well. in like the, obviously Dungeons and Dragons, like everybody has some type of magic that they use, including the bards. He doesn't have magic, but. He just embodies that whole charismatic, leader, always optimistic, always ready to think on his feet, type of thing and try to solve

Bill:

was challenged to write a D& D movie, he would almost Think you'd have to have somebody narrate it like they're the dungeon master, right? You would just think you did this if it's gonna be a D& D movie You gotta have somebody who's operating in that role and they do such a good job of morphing that into the bard role So that he did it did you get that feel that he's that kind of planner and all of

Cameron:

his story.

Bill:

Kind of telling a story, but he's also acting as the players and trying to figure out, okay, how do we handle this situation that's been placed in front of us? And it kind of gives you that feel of the party coming together and say, okay, how are we going to just handle this crazy situation that the dungeon master is throwing at us? And so,

Chris:

how are we going to cross this river or

Bill:

right, exactly.

Cameron:

and they also do another thing really well, which I've actually played the character of, the young wild magic, mage

Chris:

dude. That was one of my favorite.

Cameron:

dark blade,

Chris:

Isn't that the one that gives you the D 100 table and you roll the D 100 and then you just get a random spill

Cameron:

that's right. And he makes a reference to that

Chris:

In the

Cameron:

And yeah, at one point the, the guy's like, you know, didn't you make this happen? He's like, yeah, that was wild magic. I had no control over, over

Bill:

it. Oh, that's

Cameron:

was like, yes, I've done that before in a game. So, oh man, it was just. It was just incredibly fun. And here's the other thing. D& and D can go a lot of different directions depending on your group in terms of how we'll say family friendly the content can

Chris:

Sure, right.

Cameron:

They did the best job making a family friendly movie out of D and D because I wouldn't, I wouldn't have any qualms if I was sitting with my, nieces and nephews and it was like, we're going to watch a movie. I would show this to them and they're, you know,

Chris:

know,

Cameron:

seven to 10 years old, right? Like. I would let them watch that movie because there's very little, if any foul language, there's no overt, sexual

Chris:

right, right, right.

Cameron:

It didn't have to be that way. you could call it a perfectly legit take on a D and D game if there were, because there's plenty of things like that in the stories, but they made a clean movie and it works so well. And I was just delighted, honestly, I got done with it. I was like, I'm so glad that I watched that movie and I can't wait to watch

Bill:

So here's a tiny little spoiler. So close your ears if you, if you want it, but there's, there's a section in there where you see another parties that are in there and I don't know if any of you watch the dungeons and dragons, Saturday morning cartoon. Do you remember that? You remember

Chris:

that? with the little short, bald guy.

Bill:

I can't remember all of the characters, but, but

Chris:

remember his name. But

Bill:

I can't remember the, They have a head nod to that party that's like, they're, they're, yes, there's like another group that's running away from them. And if you could freeze frame it and look at them, it's those characters, isn't that awesome. Isn't that cool. So I would say just keep

Chris:

here's another minor spoiler, but I'm just so curious. The true litmus test, was there an albe in this movie? Okay. Well, I mean,

Cameron:

I won't tell you in what fashion,

Chris:

Okay. Yeah. Don't tell me. Yeah.

Cameron:

but yes,

Chris:

So

Bill:

great.

Chris:

Why have I not

Cameron:

there's also a dragon, but in the best possible way that you can just that you just watch it. Okay. And, and tell me what you think of, the dragon that appears.

Chris:

Okay. I'll check it out. That's

Cameron:

That's my thing. so speaking of. talking about movies, I want to

Chris:

excited,

Cameron:

want to

Bill:

am excited. I

Cameron:

I know Bill's excited on this one. I want to give a brief plug for our Patreon backstage discussion this time. if you aren't on Patreon, we have a. Patreon exclusive podcast that we offer called Hidden Gems Backstage. And we talk about all sorts of stuff on this podcast, completely off the cuff, very little preparation. Um,

Chris:

games, video games, how we're feeling.

Cameron:

talk about all sorts of stuff and this time. We are going to to do another, sort of a top five list.

Chris:

my better judgment.

Cameron:

It's either going

Chris:

knew

Bill:

Bill. I was gonna say

Cameron:

an hour and a half. Who knows?

Bill:

I've worked all afternoon to work. Reduce my top five to my top 32. So, we'll, we'll go fast.

Cameron:

this one's going to be significant movies that we think would be hidden movies.

Chris:

Yeah, kind of. So the thought was, briefly, whenever people talk about, what movies do you like, you know, they're always the ones that come up and rightfully so star Wars, Lord of the Rings Shawshank redemption, whatever, you know, movies that just people talk about a lot. that.

Bill:

thought was,

Chris:

We really enjoy for one particular reason and never really caught on or for whatever reason we like them a lot. But maybe not a lot of people know about them or like them and kind of talk about

Cameron:

Basically hidden gems, but just movies

Chris:

Basically,

Bill:

yeah.

Cameron:

and, 15 recommended movies all in one backstage episode. So,

Chris:

i'm curious to see how many i've watched of y'all's

Bill:

was going to say. At the beginning we should predict how many we think the other two people

Cameron:

If you aren't on Patreon, you're welcome to join us, especially on this episode. We think it's gonna be a lot of fun. You can join for as little as 2. We've got a 5 tier, a 10 tier, and last but not least, certainly in this episode, we have a 15 tier, and that's our Gemminer tier. And that's important because this episode we are featuring a guaranteed game review from one of our Gemminers, Sean

Chris:

Flory. Yep

Cameron:

So Sean, thank you so much for being a patron. Thanks for being a gem miner. And we're delighted that we get to review your game and share your thoughts. From that game on this episode. And that's what you get when you are a gym minor. So we invite you. If that's something that sounds interesting to you, you can sign up to be a gym minor. It's 15 bucks a month and we guarantee a game review. We talk with you over email about your thoughts on that game. We get you to send us your pros, your cons. And we interact with you on an episode when we review your game, kind of as if you're

Chris:

right here

Cameron:

right here at the table, which is pretty fun for us.

Chris:

We'll read your final thoughts in narrative form, just as if you were speaking into the microphone yourself. That's kind of what we're going for.

Cameron:

That's right. So stay tuned for Sean's game later this episode. And finally, I just want to throw out a sincere thank you to each and every one of our patrons over at Patreon. Guys, you pay all of the bills for this episode. Anyone who's made a podcast knows there's all sorts of subscriptions that you have to have and licensing for music and all sorts of stuff. And we paid for that out of our pocket, basically, for the first two years that we've been doing this show. And you, we actually Just have to make the episode

Chris:

Yep. They're covered. Our expenses are covered.

Cameron:

So thank you for supporting the show financially. Thanks for signing up and enjoying backstage with us and giving us an audience over there. We really do enjoy interacting with you and we're grateful for your financial support.

Chris:

Yep. Totally.

Bill:

Okay. I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm tired and can use a drink. What have you got something for us,

Chris:

Bill's fired up and ready. I do so for tonight's guaranteed review for sean flory. He had requested that we review the Racing game of a Caesar. And so I thought, well, how can we work that into an episode? So I thought, why don't we do games that have a Roman theme, common, common, common, and board games are so many. I had a ton to choose from. I kind of picked that on purpose to intentionally get to play a game. It's been on my shelf for shame for a while, but there's just so many to choose from there. And for the cocktail tonight, I went with the Aperol Spritz. And the reason for that, apparently, is that the Aperol Spritz is a very popular drink in Rome, as it turns out. It's an aperitif, actually. and it's frequently drunk over there for that reason, apparently. I've never been to Rome. Maybe one day.

Bill:

Is that because the Appian way is look, isn't it there? Okay. No.

Chris:

Have any, Have any of you all been?

Cameron:

I've been to Rome, yes. Have you? Yeah, I spent, what, maybe three or four days in Rome?

Chris:

that when you were on your Europe Grand Tour trip? When you, yeah,

Cameron:

That's right, yep. We saw, all the major sites. The fountain and the Colosseum.

Chris:

like on a farm in Denmark or Norway or something.

Cameron:

a

Chris:

It all sorts of stuff.

Cameron:

three month long trip.

Chris:

Yeah, you were in Italy, I think. Amalfi Coast for a bit, or?

Cameron:

No, we went to, I flew into Rome. And a friend of mine who is a teacher happened to be on fall break. And so I was like, you want to come to Rome? She was like, actually, yeah, maybe I'll do that. So, so I met up with a friend of mine. We just walked around and toured Rome for a couple of days and then, went to Florence, for a little bit. then we parted ways and I went to the, Cinque

Chris:

Right. Isn't the chique part of the Amalfi coast in Italy? Or am I just totally wrong

Cameron:

I have no idea. I would have to brush up my geography.

Bill:

know, but we were supposed to go there like two years ago and we're actually planning one for next year, the starting in Pisa, and then going to Chitra, and then going across the northern part of Italy.

Cameron:

There are so many beautiful parts of Italy

Bill:

Yeah.

Chris:

Side note, the board game, Chiqui

Cameron:

Uh huh. Oh yeah. awesome We've played it, right?

Bill:

Yes. Yeah.

Chris:

Yes. It is a fun game. Yeah. On the podcast one day, hopefully. Yeah. It's very worthy for sure.

Bill:

Alright, well let's get into some games, guys. Yeah,

Chris:

I'd say let's do

Bill:

it.

Cameron:

The year is 79 BC. Scylla, the uncontested master of Rome, preparing to abdicate. During his reign, the Roman Senate has rediscovered its glory, the pretenders to his supreme power. But Rome is a fickle mistress. The people are hungry and want for bread and circuses. Only the most cunning politicians will make the most of the situation. Recruit followers to your side to help you make progress down the road to glory. Rule your soldiers with a fist of iron to try to prevent threats that menace the Republic while also satisfying the desires of the people.

Chris:

Nice

Bill:

Awesome.

Chris:

Silla published in 2008 by STARI Games. We have done an entire episode on Yostari Games, by the way, if you're new to the podcast. That was early. Mm hmm. That was like in the first five episodes, somewhere. It was. and this is another one. at the time of this recording, its BGG ranking is 2, 180. Designer of Scylla is Dominic Erhard, who's actually a pretty well known designer. He has designed a little fun area control game called Condotieri. Have y'all played

Bill:

Have not.

Chris:

That game is a hoot. Oh yeah?

Bill:

Depending on the

Chris:

you have, you gotta have the right version. The Eurogames version is the best, I think, but... It's hilarious. Lasco exploring early ancestral art. I don't know if y'all played that

Cameron:

feel like I have, but I couldn't tell you

Chris:

It's the one that's kind of got like the no thanks style auction with the shells or rocks.

Cameron:

Oh.

Chris:

and you were collecting cave painting, um, cards.

Cameron:

Yes. This is me.

Chris:

Yeah, it's

Bill:

really cool. Yeah, it's super cool. Marrakech

Chris:

Marrakech and Saranissima, which is getting reprinted. I heard. so he's got several pretty well known designs. this game. I've had on my shelf for a while and have been wanting to get it played. And this was the one I was talking about alluding to earlier because, for many years, this was on Z Garcia's top 100 games of all time. So he really likes

Bill:

it.

Chris:

This game was also recommended to us by one of our, followers on the guild, Helder Pando, also known as Pandemonio on BGG. So thanks for the recommendation. Helder.

Bill:

Alright,

Chris:

Brief rule summary. I'm going to try for Scylla.

Bill:

gonna get comfortable here. Good

Chris:

Yeah, I get, get comfortable.

Bill:

So,

Chris:

in all honesty, I am not going to go through every detail of the rules here because it would take too long. It's not a complicated game, but here's the thing about Scylla, Not to show...

Bill:

are only

Cameron:

Scylla. It's

Chris:

Yeah, there are only seven phases. It's really not a complicated game in my opinion, but it is a weird one. There really aren't any games quite like this, and so I think if I don't at least cover things with some degree of you're going to have no clue what we're talking about. Okay, but I'm going to try to not go too crazy here. Scylla is an auction game. of sorts, where the players take on the role of Roman senators who are trying to recruit different characters to help them accomplish their personal goals, all while trying to keep the Roman people they represent happy. The game of Scylla takes place over five rounds, and as Cameron mentioned, each round consists of seven phases. In phase one,

Bill:

the players will vote

Chris:

for the office of console. The role of console is helpful. And then it gives that player the high breaking abilities that occur during the round when applicable, and that will often happen and it gives them a res publica token of their choice. The reason why I mentioned that as I need to explain the res publica tokens, because they're important. So on the game board, there is a track that rests at the top of the board. It's like a ladder. And in the middle of that ladder set three tokens that represent three different things that the people. Are either going to be happy or upset about civic spirit, health, and leisure. As those tokens move to the right and the left on that ladder, those tokens, depending on how many you have will increase the value of those tokens. So if the leisure token is worth three, every leisure token you have, the game is worth three points, whereas if it moves to the left. And the people are pissed about that. Those tokens are worth fewer points. Okay, so that's one thing you really need to understand about this game.

Bill:

The

Chris:

vote for console is handled by way of a standard once around English style auction, and the number of votes a player puts forward is based on the number of senators they have face up in front of them, plus the number of coins they're willing to commit towards the bid. With the high bid winning the console and paying the coins. So that's a lot of granularity, but I did that on purpose because I need to talk about the cards. Okay. So I mentioned senators. All right. So how do you get a senator? Well, everybody starts the game with four characters of their choice, but they will add one additional card to their tableau every round during phase two. basically every player is going to select a character in turn order from a display of six available characters. There are five different types of characters available. Senators, Merchants, Legionnaires, Vestal Virgins, and Servants. Each character grants a specific ability during some phase of the game, but they also will have pictured above them, anywhere from one to three different colored hexagons. What the heck does that mean? Well, I'm glad you asked. In phase three, The players will have the opportunity to purchase buildings and they're all awesome. And That's all I'll say about them. But basically you want these things. Okay. They're, they're all good and they give you coins and points and just different good things you want. Okay. But what's really interesting here, and if you don't get anything else I say from the rules, just lock into this, because we're going to come back to this, I'm sure. What's really interesting here is the way the buildings are purchased, okay? So, every round, five of six buildings will go up for auction, and every two buildings are assigned a colored hexagon, red, yellow, or gray. As I mentioned, every character card has a different combination of hexagons associated with it. So you will bid for a building based on the number of hexagons you have of that color. So for example, if you put up a building that's under the red hexagons, and I only have three cards in front of me that have red hexagons on them, I can at most bid three. I could bid less than that if I want, but at most I could bid three. Now what's significant is if you win the bid and this is the last thing I'll mention about how this phase works again This is very important You tap the character cards that you used to buy that building if you win the bid and now Those character cards are no longer active for the rest of the round. This is incredibly important So you got the building you wanted but now that character won't do anything else for you for the rest of the round Okay,

Bill:

in

Chris:

four, players generate income. You'll generate a certain amount of money. The more merchants you have, the more money you will generate. But again, if you tap them to buy buildings, you'll get less money. In phase five, the players will attempt to influence events. I kind of have to talk about this a little bit too, because it's a little bit weird. All right. This is where the Legionnaires and the Vestal Virgins come into play. So there are four events on the side of the board. At the start of this phase, everybody will put a cube on all their Legionnaires and Vestal Virgins and they can take those cubes and place them on those events to influence them. In turn order on the card is a res publica token that you will win if you hold the majority of cubes on that card. And then there's also a negative event associated with that card. The two cards that get the most votes between all the players, the negative event doesn't happen, but the two cards that get the least votes. The negative event does happen and this can be really punishing. We'll talk about that more in the review. Then finally in phase six, the players will decide if they want to contribute towards the construction of the great work that is being worked on for that round. And this is done by way of a blind bid auction. I'm not going to talk too much about this cause I don't want to go on too long. We'll probably talk about in the review, but like I said, it's a blind bid basically where you committing a certain number of senators and coins. To try to get points and or get your res publica markers to move to the left or the right, okay? and then phase 7 is just basically a cleanup phase. At the end of the fifth round in game scoring will

Bill:

occur. important

Chris:

note that some of your characters can be Christians And they'll have a little fish symbol on them And if they're face up at the end of the game every Christian is worth two points And then every servant at the end of the game can be freed for three points apiece at a cost of two coins per servant. That's basically how you play Scylla. I left out a lot of things. It may have been confusing. Like I said, I didn't want the rules to go on too long, but there, this is just such a weird one. Okay, but that should hopefully give you a general idea of of how it works and maybe we'll flesh out the rest when we go through thoughts on the game.

Bill:

All right,

Chris:

so typically when we do these themed type episodes, often, our introductory question is, how well do you feel like the game captured the feeling that it was going for, the theme that it was going for? In this particular game, as I mentioned, the idea is you're taking on the role of a Roman senator,and you're trying to make the people happy. Again, that's represented by these res publica tokens that kind of move back and forth on this track.

Bill:

all those mechanisms

Chris:

I'll

Bill:

I mean, I think your caveat there kind of captures what I'm thinking about it is that it's kind of complicated, right? There's a lot of inner working parts. the cards kind of look like it. the artwork on it, it's very, Roman, but as far as the mechanics of the game, I got a little lost in that a little bit. I thought it was more task oriented, I guess, but what do you think, Cameron?

Cameron:

So. I feel a little bit differently about it. I think it actually did a great job with the Roman theme, because at least for me, the way that I settled into the game thematically is you're taking on the role of a Roman senator. Right. So. Your job isn't necessarily merely to make the people happy. It's to advance your own goals up against your fellow Competing senators right while not completely making all of the people very upset with you So that's kind of how I viewed the whole three tracks of, public, happiness, right? If I make the people happy, it makes me look really good. If I make the people sad, it makes me look poor, right? and then there's, this interesting dynamic of the events. And working together

Chris:

think this is the strongest thematic part of the game. Yeah.

Cameron:

sometimes you and I are competing for our own interests, but sometimes we have to work together in order to be people from, thinking generally poorly about the Senate. Right? Uh, so to me, like if you're thinking of it from this kind of purely political, Republic, contest, I, I really felt like the theme came across. And then the whole, voting with your thumb out to the side and up or down, and I'm in this blind, auction thing for the, public work, I thought was pretty interesting.

Chris:

Yeah, I skipped through that part pretty quickly in the rules. So I just wanted to get to our thoughts, but yeah, in that blind bid phase, you do put a certain number of coins in your hand for voting and you hold your hand out with the thumb to the side. And then on one, two, three,

Cameron:

Commodus and

Bill:

exactly thumb up or you thumb

Chris:

which I thought was a night touch. But I do want to go back to these events cause I did feel like there was a lot of theme in these events.

Bill:

So

Cameron:

there,

Chris:

is like a Christian persecution card where you're Christian characters. If you don't work with the other people at the table and maybe they don't want to work with you cause they're not incentivized to, if you have a Christian character, It will get flipped face down and then if that event is not eliminated, another one will get flipped face down, right? Until y'all work together to prevent it. And so that's like you're Christians getting persecuted, right?

Cameron:

there's a similar one for the economies, you have the, like, uh,

Bill:

Senators. Raiders. Merchants.

Chris:

senators get merchant or senators get murdered. So yeah, every Senator

Bill:

gets murdered now. Right.

Chris:

And then there's also, we won't go to in detail, but I mean, I think it is very thematic. There's a card called decadence. Right. Which, if you're not trying to get rid of that, basically that's representing the Senators.

Cameron:

well, it's always there. It never goes

Chris:

away. Well, it's always there, but if you don't prevent it, basically that means you're spending more time with booze and

Cameron:

the temptation to indulge into decadent activities is always

Bill:

If you don't prevent

Chris:

that every sink, well, not every single, but every res publica token, that's farthest to the right moves to the left. So basically you're pissing the people off, right? Because you're not doing anything. You're just pleasuring yourself. Right. So I thought that was really kind of neat.

Bill:

True.

Chris:

All right, so we got to get into mechanisms here and I just can't help myself. I'm going to get you guys started here Okay, so I really want to talk about these auctions specifically this idea at least this is how I thought of it of Auctions with multi purpose cards, right? So, and what I mean by that is, is that your character cards are your bidding power for buildings, but they also have an ability, right? So you can use them for two different things. How do you feel like that played out in this game?

Bill:

Well, to kind of, paraphrase exactly what you're saying. Yeah. Your, your people have the circles at the bottom. There are two powers are. Helping you act as currency to buy buildings and then also act as currency to influence events. So every time you, you tap one, you are limiting yourself on both those events and both those events are very important, right? I thought it was, a great decision point cuz you're just always angsty at every time you're bidding on a building as like, if I do this, then I am not gonna be able to do that. Mm-hmm. And it was, kind of cool and kind of interesting and a great feature of the game, I think.

Cameron:

Yeah. I definitely felt that the tension in that part of the game. Because you almost have to think of like, okay, this round is sort of an infrastructure building round, right? Because I need the benefit that this building is going to give me for subsequent rounds. And therefore I'm not going to be able to get the, currency benefits of the work vote or the event influence this round. But I, need this so that the next rounds aren't as tight or painful.

Chris:

Right. Yeah, totally. Yeah. I found this part of the game to be just really, really interesting. Just trying to figure out what everything was worth. You know, the valuations in this game were so hard. And that's the key, I think, to a really good auction style game, is it should be hard to figure out the valuations right. And I've constantly found myself struggling with Okay. Do I tap these cards and get this building? Cause like I said, you want these buildings. These buildings are good. They help you a ton, but then you tap all your cards and you look at the events and you're like, I tapped all of my vestal virgins and my legionnaires. And now I can't influence any events and you can get nailed in these events. So then you're like, okay, well I'm going to recruit more legionnaires and I'm going to hold them, but then you're not buying buildings. And you see people getting these really awesome buildings. You're like, dang it. I need those

Cameron:

Dang it, I need those buildings. you know,

Chris:

know, you're just like constantly trying to figure out What is the right move? And it's so hard.

Cameron:

Which is also thematic.

Bill:

also Zimadge.

Cameron:

Right, right. you're struggling with

Chris:

with the decisions, right? to me, that's just so critical. If I play a game and I just feel like I know what to do all the time, I'm not engaged. And I always felt like I didn't, not that I didn't know what I was doing. I always felt unsure about what I was doing and that is good. And it wasn't because I didn't understand the rules. It was because I was just struggling to understand what. Everything was really worth to me in the moment and oh, I was just eating that up, to be honest. What

Bill:

So I have a question for you, Cameron, how did you feel about when you're buying the buildings that only five out of six of the buildings were sold per round?

Cameron:

I feel like you crafted that question like specifically for me because I was so vocal about how frustrating that was.

Bill:

vocal about how

Cameron:

So as Bill mentioned, not all the buildings get purchased each round. So If you hold out, you could be in a situation where you're thinking I'm just going to get, that one. Cause everyone else will have tapped all their cards. Right? So then I'll get the late one, but you have to remember the last one is not going to get picked up. So there's, tension on that ground too, right? If the first building that you're bidding on, you might be tempted to say, I'll just let someone else have that one and they'll use all their cards on it. And then I'll be able to get this for cheap.

Chris:

But it may not come up for auction.

Cameron:

not come up for all of us. right. right. It might not come up And it's also important to note that that very last building, it's not like you just refill for the next round leaving that one in place, it gets thrown out. So for example, there's a wheat one this race against the clock

Chris:

yeah, I didn't talk about the famine stuff, but

Cameron:

this famine state that happens every once in a while. And when the famine hits you, everybody, loses a certain number of points, unless you have these wheat tokens. And so if you're think one person, may have strong feelings about this. Cause I was that one person frequently who doesn't have any wheat tokens and someone just lets that one get thrown out. You're like, no, I need

Bill:

And

Chris:

in future rounds, when they come back up, you feel this crazy temptation to overbid for

Bill:

right?

Chris:

Which again, is a good thing, right? you start to get desperate, right? But then you have to gather yourself, try to get control of yourself, and be like, okay. I know I really need this. I really shouldn't spend five characters on this, but I really need this tile. Right. And so you're constantly doing that calculus and that mental struggle in your head in this game.

Cameron:

And it's, always true of auction games. You have to calibrate the actual value of. The thing that you're bidding on is you could get it, but if you do, you might be putting yourself behind or

Bill:

be putting yourself...

Chris:

you might be putting yourself behind.

Cameron:

right.

Chris:

Again, you're going back and forth in that constantly in this game. I think one thing we should touch on, I'll throw this out to you guys for your thoughts. Let's talk a little bit more about these rose publica tokens. Cause they, this must be discussed because a lot of points come from this. Bill knows this. He won last time because he raked in on these. How much control did you feel like you had over that part of the game, either acquiring them or even more importantly, I guess. in how much they're worth. So just to quickly review, as I mentioned, every token is represented on a ladder that slides back and forth. And the farther to the right, it is at the end of the game. every one of those tokens is worth more. The farther to the left, it's worth less. How do you feel like that played out in the game and execution?

Bill:

so it's kind of funny whenever I play a game like this, whenever you have any kind of situation where you have X number of things, is scored by multiplying it by some other numbers, Chris's eyes bold a little bit. I mean, he generally has a really good poker face, but you just got to realize that this is really important. And so, yeah, that last game, I really did, targeted those event cards, to get a lot of those, chips. if I get, my Bestal Virgins and your Sentries, which are the two that you can put out there to get influence. So I was, pretty intentional about trying to pull those in specifically. There is also a building that will allow you to move, the multiplier left and right. And so I focused really hard on getting that so that I could, keep that score high.

Chris:

that chip Your focusing on more valuable. Exactly. Yeah.

Bill:

Just so my multiplier was one, higher. I think it's a viable strategy. my counter question to you guys is, did you feel like you had many mechanisms to keep somebody from achieving that if that was their strategy?

Cameron:

Yeah, apart from one building, which I think those buildings come out in phases as the game progresses, the two main mechanisms that allow for player control of where those. Markers live on that ladder are the wonder votes, right? Is that what they're called? The wonder vote? the public work,

Chris:

yeah, we, we didn't talk about this too much in the world, but just what Cameron's getting at is the number of affirmative votes between all the players at the table, you basically divide that by five and that's how many spaces that marker will move to the right if that one is up. So like the health marker.

Cameron:

Is that true of every one of them? Or is it particular to the card? I thought it

Chris:

It's

Bill:

1 of them, or is it was a card,

Chris:

they come up in certain order. So, let's say the health... Work comes up if a lot of people vote for that particular work that marker can really run to the right Whereas if nobody votes for it It's not going to move at all Which you may not want it to move because you may not have a lot of those so that might influence your decision in

Cameron:

or if you've been watching or you suspect that someone has a color of token and is going to profit by green being super high and maybe you want to intentionally try to vote it down. And similarly, I think,

Chris:

a lot of them right

Cameron:

compete with it and wash it out a little bit. the other way that you can sort of have any amount of control is if the events come up that are associated with that token, if. You just avoid assisting with those. Yes. you can drive it down.

Chris:

Yeah. Yeah. So the events, and I hope we're not getting too in the weeds here, but I'll just, I'll mention it really quickly. There are some events that will cause those tokens to move to the left, and so you may not want it to move to the left that everybody else at the table may want it to move to the left. Right. And one thing about these events, and we should mention this before we move on, is. There's a lot of shared incentives in these events, right? Like, I may not want Christians to get flipped over because I might have one Christian and Cameron might have one Christian But if Bill has five Christians

Cameron:

Which is public, but we should

Chris:

It's public

Bill:

information

Cameron:

Count them.

Chris:

I'm very content for Christians to get persecuted and Bill may try everything in his power to keep that event from happening But if everybody else at the table is not interested He may find himself having a hard time not preventing that from happen. And so you get in this really interesting shared incentives part of the events.

Cameron:

that's in the game. We don't want any Christians to actually get

Chris:

In

Bill:

the game.

Chris:

Oh, we've been talking for a while, haven't we?

Cameron:

Alright, well, shall we do final thoughts?

Chris:

Let's do it. Bill, kick us off.

Bill:

All right, well, I will say that to me, that was so good in so many ways, it's a pretty easy teach, even though it may have come across as being kind of complicated, I do think it's the kind of game you need a group of people that I think are willing to play it with you multiple times, because like you're talking about in the valuation part of it, that just manifests slowly, so if you're in a group, there's going to be kind of one and done with this. Yeah. This may not be, the game for you. It's funny. I have in my final thoughts, it was great on theme. So,

Cameron:

Um, Let's

Bill:

so, so yeah, I mean, I appreciate the fact that it is good on themes. I'll just say there's just, a lot going on in this game. I was waffling actually between a five and a six, but I'm, I'm going to give it a five, I think, cause I think it's, a good solid game and I would absolutely play it again.

Chris:

Nice.

Cameron:

Oh.

Chris:

All right, Cam. You

Cameron:

So I think what I want to say about this game is that I really appreciated a lot of, of elements of this game. I really did, especially theme. I like I said, I think it, did a lot to, put you in the perspective of the, thematic character that you were meant to embody as you play the game. And I think it carries through, it's not merely pasted on, uh, which we, often say when. it's not embedded in the mechanisms. Right. on those things, I think I should give it really good marks where I struggled with this one. And, I didn't speak up about this, during cons, because it's very nonspecific. because my reaction is just based on how I felt playing the game. And that is that like, As engaged as I felt in the game, I'd never felt excited. I never felt like there was any momentum building for me. I'm not just, am I doing well or am I doing poorly? But like, do I feel like the game had an arc that I cared about? and

Chris:

a little bit for another game. We're going to be reviewing later, but just

Cameron:

maybe, but just like, did I feel invested? Do I feel like there were things that, I like wanted to try next time? And I just didn't. And usually when I have that feeling, when I play a game, usually I'm looking at a three. And so that's kind of where I'm going to land. I, I don't think that there's anything mechanically bad about this game. I think in a lot of ways it embodies a lot of the qualities that we would say would be a good game. It's not a great game. but there's just that it missed that special sauce. That's kind of our, our catch phrase for when we give something a three, it's just like. It didn't leave me feeling anything special. and I can't give a

Chris:

likes to say, it doesn't have the warm

Cameron:

Yeah,

Chris:

This is not a warm, fuzzy

Cameron:

yeah. I, and so I can't give a four to a game that, in the night and I'm like, cool, that was a game and, and it's, it's a high quality game, right? Meh, whatever. I don't need to play it more times, right? that's where I land. I know that's not exciting, but

Chris:

I know, dude, dude,

Cameron:

it's what we, it's what we got to do. It's a three.

Chris:

Hey, I feel like we, cover the spectrum. I feel like we, balance each other. Well, I love hearing your thoughts, honestly. So we talked about warm fuzzies. Not important at all to me in the game. As a

Bill:

matter of fact,

Chris:

I usually don't want to feel warm and fuzzy. If

Bill:

I feel too warm and

Chris:

fuzzy, I don't feel like I'm being challenged and this game is not warm and fuzzy at all. You need to know that going in. But holy cow, what a game. In my opinion, this game knocked my freaking socks off. And I will say this, saying I never won this game. And I still feel this strongly about the game. The puzzle of the game, it just fascinated me. So, we love auctions on Hidden Gems, we talk about that a lot. And this game has... Three

Bill:

Really

Chris:

ones, right? You've got this English style auction. You got this auction with cards and then you've got this blind bid auction, right? And then intermixed within that, as I mentioned in the review, you have these incredibly. Agonizing valuations that you're trying to figure out of, Oh, I really need to save these cars is I really need to influence these events, but I really, really need that building. Maybe I spent it for that building. Then you do. And then you're like, dang it. Why did I spend that character Cause I need that character to influence this event. Now I'm going to get hit with this really negative thing you get mad at

Bill:

yourself, but. in a good way.

Chris:

You know, you're like, I need to just play better. You know, every time something didn't go my way, I was like, well, it's cause I did that thing last round. And that was stupid. You know, like, why did I do that? And I found myself constantly going through those middle gymnastics of what is the right thing to do right now and just trying to find it right. And I was always. A struggle, but in the best way possible To me, this is top tier. I'm giving this one a

Cameron:

Oh man!

Bill:

Wow. yeah, dude, this

Chris:

game is so freaking good. I'm telling you, if you like auctions with a touch of shared incentives, which is definitely does have with the events. I hope that came across in the review. You owe it to yourself. To try this game and there's nothing like it in my, it's very unique.

Cameron:

It's

Chris:

It's just so cool. So yeah, highly recommend Scylla. Yeah.

Bill:

Great. So tell us that we can't find it anywhere now. No, you actually can. Oh, all right. Yes. So. Noble Knight?

Chris:

you

Bill:

can, so

Chris:

there are, copies available at noble night. If you do decide to go through noble night. We would appreciate it if you used our discount code and it's

Cameron:

It's new.

Bill:

new, new quarter.

Chris:

So it's Jim's 10 off and that's one zero. So Jim's one zero off. Do you use that discount code? You'll get 10% off your order and your support our friends at noble night games. We would really appreciate that.

Cameron:

Thanks, Noble Knight!

Chris:

Thank you. Noble

Bill:

Thanks, Noble Knight. I used it today.

Chris:

Yeah. You asked what it was earlier today. Yeah. There

Bill:

are also

Chris:

63 copies on the BGG marketplace. So there are a lot

Cameron:

satisfied customers of Scylla.

Chris:

guess I, I think they just put a lot of these out. I can't figure out why somebody wouldn't want to keep this game, but At

Bill:

At any rate,

Chris:

there are 63 copies on BGG. If you want to try it out.

Cameron:

Alright. Well, those are our thoughts. On Scylla. Play

Bill:

Play it. I

Chris:

Awesome. I gotta go! You can see Bill having to

Bill:

see

Cameron:

This was the chant shouted by thousands of Romans as they poured into the great arenas of Ovid now. I was trying to go for like, like Maximus. If you find

Bill:

you

Cameron:

If you find yourself in

Chris:

a field, You should do something like that.

Cameron:

Do not fear, for you are in

Chris:

an island.

Bill:

And you're already dead.

Cameron:

dead! I'm gonna do like, more like, Roman like the announcer at the Roman

Chris:

Yeah.

Cameron:

This was the chant, shouted by thousands of Romans as they poured into the great arenas of over 200 holidays per year to enjoy the epic competitions of ancient Rome. The largest of these arenas was the famous Circus Maximus. Erected between the Palatine and Aventine

Chris:

Hills. Here, circa

Cameron:

Hills. Here, circa 500 BC, spectators were treated to the horse drawn chariot races, in which competitors struggled through seven laps around a perilous 1, 200 meter course. AVE CESAR! YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?

Chris:

Oh, so

Bill:

good. Awesome there, camera.

Cameron:

Thanks.

Bill:

AVE

Chris:

Caesar published in 1989.

Cameron:

Oh,

Chris:

You believe that,

Cameron:

oldie.

Chris:

many publishers over the years, most recently as Moday Ravensburger and many, many others at the time of this recording, it's BDG ranking is 1, 652.

Bill:

Wow.

Chris:

The Designer of this game, Wolfgang Riedeser. So this, guy has lots of older designs. I think he was in his wheelhouse in like the early 80s, late 80s, early 90s. Unfortunately, none of them are very good, apparently, except for this one. Pretty much all of them are 10, 000 plus. That doesn't mean they're bad, but they're all 10, 000

Cameron:

Sounds like we need to look into a few of them.

Bill:

Ritteser

Chris:

Ritteser episode.

Bill:

Alright,

Chris:

as mentioned, at the top of the show, this game was requested to be reviewed by Sean Flory, our gem miner, so this one is for you, Sean. Alright, brief rule summary, and this will be brief. for Ave Caesar, because it's not too complicated.

Bill:

not complicated. In Ave Caesar,

Chris:

the players are charioteers participating in the famous Circus Maximus for fame and glory. So if that wasn't clear, Ave Caesar is a racing game where the players are trying to cross the finish line first Before the other players, after completing three laps around a racetrack. The track in Ave Caesar is broken up into several rectangular segments, where the players will be placing their chariots during movement. Before we get into the structure of a turn, we should discuss some basics of movement. First, only one chariot can be present in each space, And player's chariots cannot move through other chariots en route to their destination square. So that's very important to understand is that chariots block the movement of other chariots, which you will use in this game.

Bill:

will

Chris:

a chariot advances forward, it can move directly forward or it can move diagonally, as long as there isn't a wall blocking that path. However, a chariot cannot move from side to side. Each player starts the game with an identical deck of movement cards consisting of 24 cards numbered 1 to 6. So 4 1's, 4 2's, 4 3's, all the way up to 4 6's. To start the game, each player will shuffle their deck and then draw the top three cards from their deck. On the active player's turn, they will choose one of their cards to play and move their chariot a number of spaces forward equal to the number printed on the card. However, it's important to note that if the player cannot move the full movement, again because they're blocked, they cannot play that card. If the player doesn't have a card that plays, their turn is skipped. So basically what this means... Is if I only have two available spaces in front of me before I run into people and I don't have a one or a two in my hand, I can't move. So I have to skip my turn until space opens up in front of me and then I can go again. Once the player plays their card, if able, they draw a card, bringing their hand back up to a total of three cards. Interestingly, if a player is in the lead, That player cannot play a six value card, so the highest card, and if they only hold six value cards in their hand, that being the leader, their turn is skipped. So basically, you can't play a six if you're in the lead. Sometime during the first two laps of the race, each player must... Direct their chariot into the emperor's lane. So you can think of this as like a pit stop. It's kind of like a lane that juts off from the main track. And when they do this, they must stand up very importantly and present their plastic coin that comes in the game as tribute to Caesar and yell, if

Bill:

Caesar! If you

Cameron:

One

Chris:

you don't do that, you can't win the game. So you must do that. One last word about the race track. It's important to understand that the outer lanes of the track consist of more spaces than the inner lanes. This makes the outer lanes suboptimal because they are slower, but it should also be noted that because of how the decks are structured, if a player takes the outside line too many times during the race, they will not have enough movement points to actually make it to the finish line on the third lap. So getting forced to the outside is kind of bad for two reasons. It's basically how you play Ave Caesar.

Bill:

Good job.

Cameron:

they

Chris:

kind of it. All right. So as we mentioned, how we're going to do this one is we're not going to have a central question here. What I'm going to do is I'm going to start by reading Sean's prose. So I'll just kind of get them all out there and then I'll get them to give us a jumping off point to where we can address. Each individual point how we kind of felt about that part of the game make

Cameron:

Make sense? Yeah,

Chris:

All right. So according to Sean Flory pros turns are very quick You know what cards you have available to you so it's easy to plan out your turn having said that There's nothing more satisfying than moving into a position Another player had planned on being in and blocking them.

Bill:

yes, when you get your cards, it's easy to make a call and it feels so good when you can move into a blocking position. So, yeah.

Cameron:

Yeah, I would also note that This game can have many people playing it, and so it is valuable when a game allows for really quick turns, right? You're not sitting there forever. There's a lot of times where I was like, I'll just win. It's already my turn

Chris:

by turn it. Right, yeah, no, without a doubt, this game is a filler style game, which there's nothing wrong with that, we like fillers here for sure. And a big part of that is because it does go really quick. You have three cards. They have a number on them.,That's it. There's no text, anything like that. You really just have to consider those numbers. And so yeah, your turns do go pretty quick. I do think that there's another reason for that. But I will save that.

Cameron:

What if they did have a text? What if it was like, I play a three, I move three spaces, then I flamethrower the guy next to me.

Bill:

Where you get your Ben Hurst spikes on the side and you dig it in.

Chris:

time I might actually enjoy that, but yeah.

Cameron:

Mario Kart version of a Caesar.

Chris:

Along this line, I do kind of have a con, but I'm not going to jump there yet. Let's read the next pro.

Bill:

the

Chris:

where the leader cannot play a six movement card is a nice catch up mechanic without really being a catch up mechanic. You can still play other high movement cards, so it doesn't really slow down the leader that much, but it gives the rest of the pack a chance to catch up.

Bill:

I'll agree with that. I think it's a good rule. especially in the very last part of the end game, when you're approaching the finish line, I think that that plays into it quite a bit.

Chris:

in the game. Yeah, yeah. I think this is actually one of the best designed parts of the game, because it is possible, depending on how the decks shuffle and cards fall, that if somebody jumps out to an early lead, And they have a lot of high cards towards the top of the deck. They could just blow everybody

Cameron:

Right.

Chris:

It can be hard to overtake people in this game. And so the fact that the leader can't play a six and the fact that at some point in the game. Players have to pit stop that slows you down too. Cause that's kind of like a long route that allows the people that are behind to get in front of that person to kind of jam them up a little bit and block them. So it feels like you have a chance to get back in the game and balance things out. I thought that was handled pretty well,

Cameron:

back

Bill:

Well it was kind of funny in the last game, because of my trying to avoid the pack, I did end up with three sixes in my hand and I ended up in the first place and I had to skip my turn. Mm-hmm. Um, and so it was a great Mechanism. Yeah. yeah, I think it's a good rule.

Chris:

next point.

Bill:

Having different

Chris:

tracks on each side of the main board adds a nice mix up to sequential races. And while it may not seem so at first glance, changing the direction of the races is actually something we didn't do.

Cameron:

I, did see that in the

Chris:

You can run the race clockwise or counterclockwise can make a big difference in how the race resolves.

Bill:

Hmm, okay. I'd have to think about that. Yeah, I

Chris:

too. So we didn't play in the counterclockwise direction. I did see that in the rules, but. I struggle to see how that really changes anything. I mean, it,

Cameron:

I think the only difference is that, if you're going counterclockwise, the first big turn, all the paths are equal and equal number of spaces. So that

Chris:

the

Cameron:

I could see that maybe at least making the first part of the lap being a bit different.

Chris:

yeah.

Bill:

around. Yeah. And, and there's, I think there's a blocker closer to the finish line in counter clockwise, but I may be wrong.

Chris:

Yeah, I mean, but at some point you're still gonna run through the same bottlenecks and run past the same walls and run past the same Number of spaces. I mean the number of spaces doesn't change depending on which direction you go. I question I think it might give you a slightly different experience, but I don't think it necessarily makes the game Any

Cameron:

better that much different.

Chris:

or that much different. Right. It's just my opinion. And then lastly, the components, at least in the asthma day version, which is the one that we also have are very nice. Both the player chariots and Caesars corn corn Caesars coin are a hard, high durable plastic, and I've never had any of them bend or break. The cardstock has a nice thickness to it without being overly stiff. Helps prevent the cards from bending.

Bill:

Yeah, that's all look good.

Chris:

Yeah, it is kind of chunky plastic bits, for sure. that's all as pros, you guys have any other thoughts about things you really liked about this game that you wanna bring out as a positive?

Bill:

that you want to bring out as a positive? Um, I don't know. I feel like I'm, I want to save them for counters to your negatives that are coming later. So I'm going to, I'm going to put in my back pocket to say, but what about this? So yeah, I'll wait. I mean, I will say I had fun playing it. I'll at least, put that out there.

Chris:

First one, like any game where card draw is the main mechanic, there's a large amount of luck involved. If you draw a handful of low movement cards, you can easily fall behind and it may be hard to catch up. You might have experienced this last game, Cameron.

Cameron:

Yes.

Chris:

I

Cameron:

Yeah.

Chris:

mean, You were in the back the whole game and it wasn't because you weren't trying to not be,

Cameron:

right?

Chris:

You just had bad

Cameron:

I was, I was actually stuck behind you, but then about the middle of the game, getting only low cards and basically just drifted to the very, very back as everyone else got to their, stack of high cards, Not that I can do about that. Yeah. I felt like it was the luck of the shuffle

Chris:

yeah. And, and I, Bill's shaking his head, but I'm going to interject here. So this game threatens that you will not finish the race if you take the outer lane too many times. So I've played this game way more than we played it for this episode. Cause I had this game years ago before. Bill was even in this group,

Bill:

And we've played it

Chris:

it many, many

Cameron:

I remember playing this game before your kids were

Chris:

cheating. Yes, I never have ever seen anybody not make it across the line ever almost everybody that does make it has a few cards left. And their deck, right? So it's very conceivable and quite possible that if you have a lot of high numbers towards the bottom of your deck, you're just not going to win

Bill:

because

Chris:

not coming in your hand, right? You they're at the bottom of your deck. By the time you draw them, the winners have already crossed the finish line. And there's nothing you can do about that. I think that that is certainly. Uh, risk that you run in this game of random card draw. Now that's random card draw. That really isn't my biggest issue with this game, but I think it is something that's possible here. All right, Bill, go ahead and rebuttal.

Bill:

Well,

Cameron:

something

Chris:

so,

Bill:

yeah, I think in the times that I ended, there were two cards left. when I finished, there may be possible that there's three.

Chris:

Oh, I've definitely finished with three before. And then what's in your hand too, right? I mean,

Bill:

So that's what, four, four

Chris:

four Or five cards, you never even had to play.

Bill:

play. Right. And I guess if they're all sixes and fives. That that would certainly be valid, but I guess if you go with the average and say they're all threes, for the most part, it's kind of pretty much average out all the way across. And, to me, I, felt like having the low numbers when we first started our race was kind of a good thing for me. One, getting him out of the deck, but two, letting the pack get ahead of me, and then picking and choosing when I made my way

Chris:

and choosing sure. Yeah, totally agree with that. Yeah, I was

Cameron:

going to say, I think that's where the decision making is, right? it may be some of the games that we were playing, there was this temptation to say, well, playing optimally means always picking the highest number of steps forward that you can

Chris:

No, I don't think

Cameron:

Every time. And think that that would be misguided because sometimes there's a lot of value in saying, well, I'm just going to play. This lower card in order to create some space in front of me so that I don't have to go on the outside, for example,

Chris:

Mhm. Or jumping into a bottleneck, you know? Blocking people, that's always a no brainer, right? I guess that was my biggest issue with this game. And I'll go ahead and just jump right to it. Because We need to talk about it. Bill can, Bill can

Bill:

argue about it.

Chris:

me about it.

Bill:

You're drawing three cards. Right.

Chris:

Okay? You have three cards in your hand. Right? Three choices. I would strongly argue 90% of the time you almost immediately know what you're gonna play because it's either forced or it's just obvious. Like, it would be stupid not to make X move. I'm not saying that there are circumstances where you don't need to think for a moment about what card might be better to play versus the other, but I say this as unarrogantly as I can, okay? I just felt like... That I didn't have to think very hard about what I thought was the most common sense, play that made the most sense to me. And I was just like, I was always playing that I never felt like in this game. I was looking at my hand and I was like, Oh, do I play this one? Or do I play this one? I'm like, Oh, I play this one. That's. That's just what makes sense, you know? And

Cameron:

And then did, your decision impact your win or your

Chris:

well, that's what I'm saying is, I think, brace yourself, Bill. I think the winner of this game is determined after everybody has shuffled their decks.

Cameron:

of this game I

Chris:

this game, if everybody's playing pretty much optimally, which after you've played it once, I don't think is that hard to do. You're playing the cards and you're just kind of seeing what happens. The shuffle is determined who's going to win and you're just kind of seeing it play out. And there's some funny aha moments like, Oh, I cut you off and you got blocked and you can't move, but you didn't set that up. You didn't plan for that. You just jumped into that spot opportunistically because of the way the cards fell and that's fine. And I guess it's kind of funny to see that happen, but you didn't plan to do that. Right? And so everybody's just kind of seeing this thing play out.

Bill:

Alright, so here's my counter to that. So let's pretend I had a one and a three and a six. and you were way ahead of me and I could choose any one of those, right? I could. hope to get ahead and be the one that did the block, right. Or, I could lay back or I could decide just to be in the middle of the pack. Well, to me, choosing the one and just getting that off of my deck, letting everybody get ahead and playing all my low cards for almost the first full round, all the way around. It kind of ensured for me that I'm going to play every card because I, to me, the issue with this game is every time you get blocked, that is a round that you're not playing a card and you're not moving forward and you're not actually getting rid of a low card out of your hand. And so that's to me the strategy and all of this. So

Chris:

this.

Bill:

yeah, well, but I watch people I don't, I don't know.

Chris:

don't. They may play a three because they're holding three threes. You can't say, well, that's a dumb play. You don't know what their other choices were. You can't say, well, people weren't playing it right. You don't know what they're holding.

Bill:

Oh,

Cameron:

So, So it sounds like, it sounds like what, what we're at is not a question of, is there or is there not strategy is that the problem is that the strategy is, rather easy to come

Chris:

That's my argument.

Cameron:

and therefore maybe not as interesting as it could be otherwise,

Chris:

that that would be my argument. And I'm sure a lot of people disagree and that's fine. But like I said, I feel like most of the time I knew exactly what I should do and it is either just gonna work out for me or it's not going to based on palm falling or principles that you're outlining. I don't disagree with what you're saying. I would play the same way. Right.

Bill:

Mm hmm.

Chris:

And it might work. It might not, you know, I've won one game of this when we played it most recently review it and I didn't feel like anything that I did was the reason that I won. I just made moves that made sense to me. It didn't feel satisfying when I won. You know, I just felt

Cameron:

you just happened to pick up the right cards at the right

Chris:

felt like I was just playing the things that made sense at the time. maybe,

Cameron:

maybe.

Chris:

maybe.

Bill:

I mean, I still had fun. I, and I don't, I don't, I don't disagree with any with English, what you're saying. I felt confident on everything that I got through. I felt lucky when I got a card that I wanted that allowed me to land on something that blocked. the last game that I won, you were in the lead for most of, of the time, but you did the, on a Caesar pit stop on the first round.

Chris:

I mean, why wouldn't I, it was unblocked. I could just enter there very easily.

Bill:

true. But you got blocked on the way out because

Chris:

but you got, but you got to enter sometime. What, who's, what guarantees that if I go on the second lap, I won't get blocked exiting on the third. I mean, how do you

Bill:

mean, how do you know? you don't, you don't, right?

Chris:

you don't. Right. That's what I mean. To

Bill:

me,

Chris:

it would be the best possible time to enter. If you're leading after the first lap, cause you know, you can enter, you're not going to get blocked up by somebody in front of you.

Bill:

honest question. I

Chris:

respect your pain. I'm not being critical of you at all, but just honestly. How many times, when you looked at your three cards, did you really feel like you were struggling to figure out

Bill:

you

Chris:

you were going to do?

Bill:

were doing?

Chris:

Zero? Really? You don't think you were, cause you sound like you were like, really thinking it

Bill:

Oh, no, no. I mean, you can tell at a glance, like, am I going to get and a cluster of people, which I wanted to avoid?

Chris:

Sure, right,

Bill:

do I think I can get past them and, feel like I'm safe once I get beyond them? So I could tell at a glance, what I was going to do. and, I kind of can see with the right group of people, which means don't include Chris.

Cameron:

me,

Bill:

You can have, fun playing this. but again, with the wrong group, they might not. But, but you're right, I think we talked about this there's a group of people I go to the beach with that love sequence. And to me, I feel like sequence is one of those games where you know exactly what you're going to do when you get your card out. And it's

Chris:

and you hope it works out

Bill:

and you hope it works out. And really the only wrinkle is, is do you see the obvious thing you should be doing kind of thing. and this one is probably even less so than sequence as far as seeing the obvious thing to do.

Cameron:

you gotta hold that triple mushroom. Just keep

Chris:

ha

Bill:

Right, exactly. Exactly.

Cameron:

zoom across the finish line. Right at the last

Chris:

a blue spiky shell at Bill. ha ha ha ha.

Bill:

So, anyway. I'm Team Sean.

Chris:

Okay.

Bill:

Alright,

Cameron:

Well,

Chris:

Shall we wrap it

Cameron:

yeah, I feel like we could go to final thoughts. I could start, should I

Chris:

yeah go

Cameron:

I can start. All right. I've probably played this one. At least five times now between the time that we were playing with your kids years ago and the times that we played preparing for this episode. and I can't say that I found any of them to be particularly memorable

Chris:

good.

Cameron:

and I choose that word on purpose. Memorable. because that's kind of usually what I'm looking for, right? for it to be enjoyable enough. that I can think about the previous time that I played it and go, what would I do differently or whatever? So, there are some games that boil down to basically just considering which is the best move for your current circumstances each turn after your adjacent opponents turn. And do that. You can't predict or plan anything. There's only one real decision to make the whole game, which is whether to go and say Ave Caesar after the first lap or the second, whether to hang back or always play your fastest card, right? And even those are usually pretty

Chris:

right, or you don't have a choice between those two,

Cameron:

right? And you, Or

Chris:

you Only have one car that plays and you have to

Cameron:

Or you just can't play

Chris:

Or you get skipped, right? Yeah.

Cameron:

Everything else kind of seems pretty faded from the beginning, so I don't feel like I can even recommend this one as like a light there are just to me so many other games that kind of fit that category that I would just rather play instead. And as racing games go, I mean, in my opinion, if you want to have a kind of a crazy raucous time with your game group, filled with shenanigans.

Chris:

Camelot Right

Cameron:

Uh, so,

Chris:

I've got

Cameron:

So I gotta give, So I gotta give this one a two.

Chris:

Okay.

Cameron:

I just don't like it. It's not for me. I didn't feel like, it was anything that special. I don't think it's broken, certainly. but it's just not for

Chris:

Yeah, I think this would be, since I'm next, be a good time Speaking for Cameron and myself, Sean, we're sorry. I swear we're not trying to be trollish or being snooty or whatnot. I think we're really not, we're really not. I, this was so hard for me to do. Cause we do appreciate. The recommendations, but I think one thing Hidden Gems has to do is we have to be true to ourself. Right? Like,

Cameron:

to

Chris:

right. Yeah, I would feel bad if I sugarcoated a review because I didn't want to hurt Sean's feelings because he contributes to our Patreon. But I wasn't really honest with our listeners about how I felt about a game. So all I have to say is, Sean, I'm sorry. We're not trying to pick on you. We appreciate you very

Cameron:

and really valid thoughts. Honestly, on the

Chris:

you have valid thoughts. And that's one point I want to make in my final thoughts is, is I can definitely see why people like this game again, according to Bill, I'm a fun sucker. And I get that like, I just total and similarly, how we just talked about Scylla,

Bill:

right?

Chris:

I enjoy games. Where I'm struggling to find the right way forward and I'm mad at myself when I feel like I've made mistakes. I'm like, oh, I should have done that. I should have done that. I seek out experiences like that. That's because I have

Cameron:

play those because I have to do a podcast

Bill:

this play

Chris:

me, right? But to me, like I said in the review, obviously Caesar is just no different than playing Solitaire or Klondike. I shuffle the cards and then the fate is determined. I just play it out and see what happens. Do I win or do I not win now along the

Bill:

way?

Chris:

I do think that this game allows for funny moments. Like, Oh, I had just the right card to sneak into there. And now everybody behind me

Bill:

can't move

Chris:

and you're blocked and you're stuck on the wall. And now. You have to skip your turn and I'm going to move forward. I'm going to jump into this next spot. Now you have to go on the outside and those things are funny to talk about, but I didn't really plan for it. And at the end of the day, with the exception of Bill, which I value Bill's opinion, every other person I've ever played this game with ever. We always laughed during the game. And then when the game was over, we were like, do you want to play it again? And everybody was like, no,

Cameron:

you know, everybody

Bill:

I mean, let's be

Cameron:

no. I mean,

Bill:

ever

Chris:

to play this game again, except for bill. nobody liked it, you know? I'm with them. I'm just one of those people. So I'm sorry, Sean, appreciate you. But I'm going to have to give this game a 2 as well. It just doesn't do anything for me, sadly.

Bill:

as

Chris:

Bill, tell us how we're all wrong.

Cameron:

I

Bill:

I'm not going to tell me any of you are wrong. No, no. I mean, this. So, I do think Not every movie is for every person, right? I do think there's a context for this game where you can actually have fun when Chris is not in the room. But it, I mean, I, I can't not deny it's, totally determined by the cards. and it is a very tactical game and there's maybe 1% strategy that you could say. that you're bringing to it, but can you make yourself have fun with the ebb and flow? What's happening on the track? And I just feel like there are groups out there that can have fun with that ebbs and flows of what's out there And I don't think it's necessarily Decided at the very beginning because people are gonna choose the metal card or the fast card and say you know what I'm gonna try To get ahead and I'm gonna try to be the one who's all the way ahead Versus I'm the one who's going to hold out and stay at the back. So anyway, I do feel like it's, you know, it feels like a curious rate because there's a lot, a lot of things that can happen,

Chris:

Yeah, it does feel like that, for sure.

Bill:

but,

Cameron:

I wish there was one where you could crack a wheel or something like that. It was some real crazy shenanigans.

Chris:

shenanigans. card that could Yeah, you found some like, variant

Bill:

Yes. Some variant rule. Cause I can imagine there should be an, a variant rule in here that might add some spice to this to give it a little bit more strategy. Anyway, I'm, gonna give it a three or really a 3.5 is what I gave it, because that's not

Chris:

on. Give it a four.

Bill:

Well,

Chris:

this game.

Bill:

I did not, I did

Cameron:

Don't, don't talk him into a different... You always talk Bill into a different number. I'm not trying

Chris:

but

Bill:

I feel like you're gonna force it.

Cameron:

I, I respect your 3.

Chris:

Okay.

Bill:

Yeah, no, I, I, I just, you guys were cracking on it so hard that I was like, look, you need, you need some, kind of ray of sunshine in here a little bit that is, that is, better than the darkness that you're throwing onto the world. But, uh, You

Cameron:

You think

Chris:

was being dark if you'd had Jason in here. I'll

Bill:

time.

Chris:

got strong feelings about

Bill:

this

Chris:

game.

Bill:

Yeah. I don't think it is as bad as you guys think, and I do think there are places and groups of people that could have a blast with this. I agree

Chris:

that. No,

Cameron:

I actually appreciate that Bill. Cause you have a diversity of game groups. I think more so than we do. we tend to play with, with kind of like this group of people and the folks that, that come to Chris's house and whatever. And you have got a lot of

Bill:

family members,

Cameron:

you've got a lot of other different groups. And so I think you have a better perspective, a lot of times on the other types of, gamers out there and what the ethos of those tables could be. And I think that's really important to remember when we consider, especially an audience like ours, who they listen to us and we don't talk about any one specific type of game, right? And so there's all sorts of different age ranges and backgrounds and different groups of people out there that play games. And so. We're actually really grateful that a lot of those people often take our thoughts with a grain of salt because, you know, who are we? Right. We're just here to tell you about games that Maybe you haven't heard about before. So

Chris:

And in this room, we just like to pulverize each other into

Bill:

power room.

Chris:

You don't want to play with us.

Bill:

We're

Cameron:

terrible

Bill:

humans. Chris is sadistic and masochistic all at the same time.

Chris:

Love it

Cameron:

So If indeed there are people out there that hear about Ave Caesar and they're like that sounds kind of like fun to me forget what Chris and Cameron are saying,

Bill:

you should always forget about what Chris and You don't. Don't for

Cameron:

out there that's curious, where could you get Ave Caesar?

Chris:

Alright, so, You can get this game at Noble Knight. There are a few copies available at Noble Knight, but they are a little bit on the high side. Because this particular edition of the game, the Azmoday edition, is kind of rare. I guess it's

Cameron:

one with the nice components.

Chris:

Yeah, the one we played with. Yeah, it's a little grail ish, I guess. you can get it there. It's a little high. There are 12 copies on the BGG marketplace as well, but it is worth noting that this game did just recently get reprinted by dice tree, which is a Korean publisher. And it's supposed to be available. First quarter of this year, although I have not seen it out in the wild or I didn't see it in the searches that I did, but it may be available here in the States. And if not, probably pretty soon. because from what I was reading on BGG, the ice tree was saying that they were going to make it more available. It looks like here from Amazon us. Sometime in first quarter, so it should have happened by now, but all that to say i'm not exactly sure But it's gotten reprinted and you should be able to find it

Cameron:

it's a straight reprint.

Chris:

I believe so. Yeah

Bill:

Cool. I don't know what I'm getting you guys for Christmas. You'll do it.

Chris:

You're not gonna get on that episode

Cameron:

Well, Dice Tree, if you're listening, maybe make some expansions with some wacky flamethrower rules or something like that.

Chris:

All right. Those are our thoughts on, are you, you, you should close it out bill since you're, you've had such strong feelings about this game,

Bill:

out, Bill. You have such strong though. Just more anti Chris feelings on this. And those are our thoughts on Ave Caesar. Perfect.

Cameron:

The year is 653 A. D. The place is Constantinopolis, the greatest city and capital of the Byzantine Empire. You are a great merchant of the city, and this is your time. You have rivals, other merchants, who think this is their time, but they are wrong. Your canny business maneuvers will leave their ships, their cargoes, and them stuck in the shoals while you rise to vast wealth. And preeminence in Constantinopolis, you'll acquire goods, ship them and sell them faster and cheaper than your competitors and at greater profits or heads will roll in Constantinopolis two to five players vie to become the most influential merchant in the city of Constantinopolis. Players deliver goods and passengers overseas, sell goods at home, donate to the city, and finance public buildings to become the wealthiest and most popular merchant in Constantinopolis.

Bill:

I think that was longer than the rules are gonna be.

Chris:

Take a trip, stop on

Bill:

fly. Awesome.

Chris:

and fly. Alright, Constantinopolis,

Cameron:

published in

Chris:

2010 by Fantasy Flight Games and Stratolibri. At the time of this recording, it's BGG Rankings 2329. designer of this game is Giancarlo Fioretti.

Bill:

Fioretti.

Chris:

This is his only design.

Bill:

There's obviously, it's a raining tire than that.

Chris:

It is in the one thousands of people are talking

Cameron:

Wow. Okay.

Chris:

crazy. yeah, this is his only design. All right. Brief rule summary for Constantinopolis Here's another one. That's a bit rulesy. I did cut out a lot here. Okay. I'm going to try to just stick to the high

Bill:

I'm still going to get my pillow.

Chris:

Yeah. All right. Constantinopolis is an engine building game where the players are attempting to generate income and points via the purchasing of special buildings, which allow the player to produce goods for shipping and for sale. Within the city of Constantinopolis. That's generally how you play constant.

Bill:

Constantinopolis. That's

Cameron:

did cut on a lot.

Chris:

That

Bill:

is generally the idea.

Cameron:

Yep.

Chris:

All right, here we go. the game takes place over a series of rounds and each round consists of eight phases. All right. In phase one, the players will bid for a certain public office, which will give them a specific ability or bonus during the round, and it will also set them in the turn order. And that's all I'm going to say about it. We may mention it more in the rules, but just understand there's an auction. You get a position that gives you a certain ability and it also sets your position in the turn order. That's phase one.

Bill:

Phase two

Chris:

players, ships that have been loaded with goods will move one step towards the Harbor. small ships will arrive in the Harbor in just one round while medium and large ships. So there's three different sizes here. Usually take two rounds to land in the harbor and then ships arriving in the harbor will award some amount of points and money Doing good so

Bill:

far, right? All right, boy, that's so simple. All right.

Chris:

I'm leaving out a lot. In phase three every red production building in a player's tableau will produce one or two colored good Cubes depending on what is pictured on the tile So if

Bill:

you have a red

Chris:

building that has a blue cube and a black cube on it It will make those cubes. You put them on the tile. That's what you do in that phase.

Bill:

So,

Chris:

how does one obtain these production buildings? Well, in phase four, in turn order, each player will have the chance to buy buildings and interact with the market to buy and or sell goods cubes. We should spend a moment here because this is important. It's probably the most important part of the game. There are four types of building in the game. Again, red production buildings that make good cubes. Yellow commerce buildings that let you convert goods cubes that you've just made into points and money. Green buildings, which give you some kind of end game benefits. So for example, there's a warehouse that will let you store more cubes so they don't spoil. And then purple buildings which let you basically exchange money for large amounts of victory points. So a couple of quick rules about buildings. You can only buy one building of each color, each round. So I can only buy one red and around one yellow. And you can't buy the same building twice. So it should be noted that the buildings are limited. So for example, in a three or four player game, there is only two of each building available on the board. So if the two red production buildings that make blue and black are taken, you can't get that building. anymore. It's just gone.

Bill:

It

Chris:

be noted that there is also a fifth kind of building, which is the city walls, which also give you an in game benefit like the green buildings, but they also give you increasing number of victory points depending on how many wall tiles you have at the end of the game. It should be noted that the player who won the Prefectus Irby office, so remember back in Phase 1 when you're bidding for offices, the person who won that office is the only person that can purchase a gray city wall in that particular round. In Phase 5, the players will draw shipping contract cards. So basically what this looks like is there are a lot of things that go into how many cards you draw, which I'm sure we'll talk about in the review, but it'll have a certain type of good or goods pictured on it. And if you make that kind of good, you can load it onto a boat. It will travel on the boat in the boat movement phase to the Harbor, where it will score you points and money. That's generally the idea. And that happens in phase number six. So you draw the cards in phase five and then in phase six, you'll allocate all your goods cubes onto your boats or into your commerce buildings. If you prefer to do it that way. Also during this phase, you can buy additional boats and we should mention this. You can buy something called a trading house. a trading house, you can buy up to four of these, one per round, will let you draw additional contract card or will let you store a contract card for future turn. In phase seven, the players can donate three cubes of a matching color to the citizenry for a small number of victory points. And then in phase eight, you have a cleanup basically everything on the board gets cleaned off. The game will end after nine rounds of play, or once all of the purple buildings are purchased at this point, the players will total their points and player with the most points wins the game.

Cameron:

play the game. That's specifically how you play. Ah, that's a good way

Chris:

with that. I left out quite a bit there actually. but I, think that at least gives you the general idea of how the game works and I think we'll do a good job here hopefully of filling in the holes

Cameron:

I will say it sounds intimidating to say that there's eight phases, but to be honest, a lot of them are just sort of rudimentary, order of operations, configuration of things on the board. It feels a lot less phasey when you're actually playing the game.

Chris:

and actually I can mention this right now because that just piggybacks directly off what you were just saying a lot of these phases Happen simultaneously, so you may be thinking oh gosh eight phases I got a sit through eight phases of everybody waiting and taking their turns Actually, in only a couple of phases do you actually go in turn

Cameron:

Correct.

Bill:

so it doesn't feel

Chris:

quite so bad because you're kind of always doing something,

Cameron:

that helps. Ok. So

Chris:

that helps. Okay,

Bill:

so

Chris:

to theme again, Roman theme, but this time we're not senators. We're not warriors or gladiators or anything. We're merchants. We're shyster, shifty

Cameron:

way

Bill:

Trying to

Chris:

our way in Constantinopolis and we start out small Trying to get our feet under us and build an empire, basically. A merchant empire. Do you feel like this game captured that theme?

Cameron:

So, I'm going to say that really rather than being a, specifically Roman theme, which obviously, I mean, Roman empire, Byzantine empire were neighbors, historically speaking, that's honestly kind of irrelevant because I think the theme of this game is merchant theme. I think that geographically and historically, this could be themed. Anytime and anywhere because

Chris:

I actually had to check to make sure Constantinopolis was Roman themed. I was like,

Cameron:

right, right.

Bill:

it? it is

Cameron:

it is

Chris:

cause it doesn't come across in the gameplay at all that it's Roman. It doesn't feel that way at all. What do you think, Bill?

Bill:

Well, after such a good presentation from Cameron, I'll have to go along with that because, yeah, I mean, that, I mean, it's true. yes, I had the Latin names on it and stuff like that. But, I was really, really engaged in the, let me make my stuff, get it on my ships and get it out. not necessarily strong Roman, but it I didn't feel like, I was a merchant. Yes.

Chris:

And that's where I agree too. Roman now merchant. Yes. And specifically merchant just starting out. And trying to build something.

Cameron:

yeah,

Chris:

feel

Cameron:

You feel that way.

Chris:

Because I am telling you, The first few rounds of this game, You feel like you're not making any money at

Cameron:

You feel you feel like I do as a small business

Bill:

Exactly. It's because you buy walls.

Cameron:

I going to make money? I don't

Chris:

You're scraping. You start the game with like 30 and you like feel rich. I guess that's like your bank loan. And then after the first round you're like. I have

Cameron:

That's

Chris:

it. And then

Cameron:

I got was the screen building. Yeah, exactly.

Chris:

you're like, How am I going to make any money in this game? And you feel that way, but this game ramps really impressively with the engine building, which I'm sure we'll talk about here to where towards the end of the game, you feel powerful, you start off feeling like. Piddly poo market stand loser to like powerful merchant by round nine because your engine will just go full. It takes

Bill:

off. What is, yeah, but what's amazing to me is that hockey stick happens like at round eight.

Chris:

it does.

Bill:

I mean, it's,

Chris:

running out of time.

Bill:

right. So, I

Cameron:

can make it happen at round seven and not eight, you're really doing

Bill:

right. So if something messes up so that you're not peaking around eight, then you're just not even in the, running. So it's, crazy how it

Chris:

which if you make some bad business decisions, you may not peak or you are just at the very end, which at that point, somebody's pulled ahead of you and you're not going to catch up. Right. So there's definitely things you have to balance

Cameron:

Mm

Chris:

speaking of balance. So at this, we should just jump right into it. So I alluded to this a little bit in the rules, but talked a lot about buildings. That's really what this game is, right? You've got a central board and it's loaded with buildings. And you can see all of these different paths. That you think are there. right? Did you feel like that was there? Like you had different, ways you could go and different paths to pursue? Did they feel viable? Was it fulfilling? What did you think about all that?

Bill:

Oh, absolutely. the yellow commerce buildings that you were talking about, there were some I'll say great synergies, but I guess they're kind of backup synergies in that, right? Seemingly obvious synergies. Cause you could

Chris:

they the best.

Bill:

Right, exactly, because, something I actually figured out or started thinking through last night as I was reliving our games, like you could, for instance, buy a red building that produces, two blue cubes. Do they ever describe what these things are?

Chris:

Yeah. They stand for something. You're

Bill:

All right, well, the blue cubes, and then, you can buy yellow building. If you turn in those two blue cubes, you'll get like a five bucks and a victory point kind of thing. And so that is kind of a nice guaranteed income, for. each turn because getting five bucks is huge, right? Cause money, like Chris is saying at the very beginning is, super tight. however, that commerce building is going to give you a little less return than you'll get if you have a ship

Chris:

And in some cases, a good bit less return, right? I mean, you could draw a ship contract card, like that commerce building takes two blue cubes for five coins and a victory point, but you might draw two single blue cube cards that each give you 7 and a point. So it's like the difference between 14 and two points versus 5 and one point. And I noticed what you're getting to. I'm not trying to jump in front of you. I'm leading you here. The trick

Bill:

is.

Chris:

You don't know you're gonna draw those cards, right? And so then you're trying to decide... Do I play it safe with commerce or how risky do I get with the ships?

Bill:

to your point of asking about, the buildings, there's a lot of little subtle interactions about how you have to think through what's going to optimize your engine. And that's just one of

Chris:

if I had this one and this one and this one, then I could getting this kind of

Bill:

Right. Right.

Cameron:

And there's a competition I think that happens to buy those buildings at the right time. If you miss the opportunity, you can get into a situation where you need another red building, but you have to pay a lot for it.

Chris:

Right. They're limited. Yeah. Yeah. And, and that's one of the areas where the tension existed in this game. I said, there's a lot of things you're doing at the same time in this game, but there are some things that you do in turn. And one of them is selecting your buildings and there is that tension there of, if I pass on this building this round, will it be there next round? And I kind of need it to make my plan work, but I can't really afford it right now, unless. I don't buy the ship this round, like I'm planning on doing, but I really want the ship. Maybe I'll buy the ship and maybe it'll be there and somebody then will take your bill and you're like, dang it, you know, and so you're kind

Bill:

of

Chris:

having to do a little bit of risk assessment and how, loose and fast you're wanting to be, you know, and trying to. Be maybe a little greedy. Yeah. See what you can get away with. That's good stuff, I think in a

Bill:

Oh, absolutely. And I feel like that happened to me last game. Cause you guys picked up a building that gives you 5 off when you purchase it. And it's like, Holy crap. Cause I, I've, I had the other two buildings that I thought was going to work and synergize with that really well. And then I looked over there and it's like gone. It's like, I'm going to rip your guy's head off right now.

Cameron:

The other thing I'll say about the yellow commerce buildings, they do offer. Quite a lot of flexibility in your money. So if it's not clear yet, money is really tight in this game, especially early on in the game. And if you weren't able to ship anything in the previous round, and if you don't have an income when your ships come home, having at least one, of those yellow buildings, To be able to get a little bit of money and maybe a victory point.

Chris:

Yeah. It can't be overstated that the yellow buildings, I remember when we first started planning, we almost felt like they were overpowered because. They're guaranteed, they're reliable, you know you can count on them, you have the cubes that'll accept them, you'll get money, you'll get points, but what's so fascinating about this game is it's infinitely better to load your goods onto

Cameron:

Totally. Yeah. Right.

Chris:

It's just so much more valuable from a money standpoint and often from a point standpoint, but again, You're not guaranteed to draw the contract cards that will accept the cues that you make to get those points or money. And so then you enter into the next phase of game, which we need to talk about is the card management, which was really interesting as well as the game offers you again, through offices and buildings, and trading houses, ways to increase your card draw of increasing your options. Of drawing a card that will actually be able to play onto a ship and figuring out that puzzle of how do I increase my hand size while I'm trying to accomplish all my other goals also was pretty interesting. I

Cameron:

gains by a long time versus how and I think that's important to point out is that it takes a while to ramp up to a large quantity of card draw, right? and maybe this isn't one of my sort of cons, I'm not sure if I feel that it's definitely a con, but one of my gripes was frequently in the first couple of rounds in this game, I would draw those cards. And if I was only drawing two or three, let's say, frequently, I would get maybe one and More often than not zero that I actually could because it's round two and they required like red and black and the only goods that I was able to produce at that point in the game are blue and green. Because like I said, there's this ramp. My point here is it's possible to draw your cards for the round. You've been building up this whole time and then you're like, well, I can't ship anything.

Chris:

Yeah.

Cameron:

You have a ship for free at the beginning of the game. And you're like, well, I can't ship anything. And I didn't buy a yellow building. So I guess I just can't do anything and I don't have any money for next round. So that can happen. And my, thought was, well, maybe the, higher ranked goods should come out halfway through the game or something like that. And the contracts, I don't know. What do you guys think of that? I'm probably being petty,

Chris:

No, I get what you're saying. I mean, I think I don't have necessarily anything to add, but I think you make valid points.

Bill:

So, this is a game that I do think in some ways is more of the multiplayer solitaire, other than the fact that we're competing for buildings. do you guys have any issues with that? Do you think it's, it works? how do you guys feel about that part of it? Yeah,

Chris:

Yeah, I think it works. I enjoy the engine building aspect of the game, but I do agree with you. Were it not for the fact that we were fighting a little bit over rolls, but even more importantly, fighting over buildings, the game would be very much lacking something and the interaction is there

Bill:

Barely,

Chris:

I wish it was there a little bit more than it was,

Bill:

To be

Chris:

I agree. I do think that

Bill:

Yeah. No, I agree. And I do think that the roles at the very beginning do play really heavily in it, especially when you're getting the wall cards and stuff like that. And it was, I think significant in the outcome. so I can't, understate the fact that even though, timing that you spent thinking about the decision is pretty short compared to. the rest of the seven phases, But that first round of what role am I going to take and how is that going to have an impact on me winning this game is huge. But you're right. The rest of

Chris:

it,

Bill:

is pretty much multiplayer solitaire. Other than, getting the right building to build what your vision is for your engine. Is absolutely huge. And for me, like that red building, I maybe should have bought that 1st and backed into the other ones that build it. That may have been lower demand, right? Or something like that. So.

Cameron:

Here's an interesting question. Maybe this is more appropriate for a backstage, but you mentioned this phrase a couple of times, multiplayer solitaire, and the implication I feel like there is that multiplayer solitaire is a bad thing. And maybe are some of our viewers are thinking the same thing, but I think my question is is it always a bad

Chris:

It depends. I think it depends on the person What they like I don't dislike multiplayer solitaire in certain situations So for example, take it easy is multiplayer solitaire, and I'd love take it easy, but it's a 10 minute game

Cameron:

OK,

Chris:

This is a two and a half hour game with Not a whole lot of interaction Then I start to become a little less forgiving because when I play a long involved game I want to be in more direct conflict with my

Bill:

Like wingspan. I mean,

Chris:

Wings fan.

Bill:

Um, I mean,

Chris:

Is there a lot of interaction

Bill:

Oh, no, there

Chris:

there isn't I was gonna say,

Bill:

no, I mean, I mean, to me, that's, that's kind of the epitome of multiplayer solitaire and that you're only fighting for the food kind of thing. And so you're, you're figuring things out, but yeah, I mean, but it's the epitome of the popular game that is a multiplayer solitaire that a lot of people like.

Chris:

take it easy, Caruba, what's the other game, avenue, I don't know if y'all have played it, but they're all multiplayer solitaire, and I love them, but they're all like 15 minutes. But yeah, for a long game, my tolerance for that kind of thing drops off a cliff, for sure.

Cameron:

and by that, do you mean it's pure, multiplayer solitaire. There's no

Chris:

the shorter

Cameron:

conflict interaction

Chris:

There's no interaction and take it easy.

Bill:

Right. But it's, yeah, but it's very abstract, I guess. And you're in the, in your strategy through doing something. So it's kind

Chris:

be like, Oh, it's cool. You figured out how to do that with your tiles. And I didn't, but in a longer game, I want to be able to mess with your

Bill:

Right. Exactly.

Chris:

mean? I don't want you to be unopposed and just do whatever you want to do.

Cameron:

So would, would an example of

Bill:

to sadistic,

Chris:

Chris. yeah. yeah. No way. the

Cameron:

an example of adding more interaction be things like there are public contracts that we can compete for

Chris:

Something like

Cameron:

or, something where it's

Chris:

and I both want that black cube contract and is there a way that I can navigate in front of him for it before he gets it so I can get it?

Bill:

Things like that. Right. Get the one that you can steal the building that the other person wants. Kind of.

Chris:

Yeah.

Bill:

So, do we want to move into a formal, negative section of this

Chris:

Yeah.

Cameron:

Yeah.

Chris:

think that's where we are right

Cameron:

do it.

Bill:

so, we talked about the fact that, we do have simultaneous, simultaneous. Plays on, this game, which has a, certain pro to it. Did you feel like there's any cons to the simultaneous play part of all this?

Chris:

Are you talking about worried about people's accounting?

Bill:

Yes, actually, because I mean, I

Chris:

I mean, I just trust people to do right. And if they make a mistake and I don't notice it, I mean, it just is what it is. I mean, I guess the thought runs through my head in games like this. Should we all just do it in turn so everybody can see what everybody's doing and make sure everybody's doing their accounting correctly. But I just don't care enough. I

Cameron:

I, I didn't feel like there were that many things that you could really, like miss.

Chris:

You could mess things up in this game.

Bill:

Oh yeah, absolutely. Well, so, cause I mean, there's a game that Jason was harassing the crap out of me about all that. And I, and I, it was, I mean, I

Chris:

how do you have 23 over

Bill:

over there Bill?

Chris:

That's right. And

Bill:

Exactly. And I just, I operate on a low hum of a guilty conscious anyway. So, I mean, if you're... That kind of person in this game. I will say that this could be a negative thing that people could look at at you. And it's like, okay, where'd that come? Where'd that come from? I mean, you have to like account for

Chris:

were several times people were like, how did you score that many points? Cause we're all kind of doing our thing at the same time. And then everybody gets suspicious. Cause they're like, how in the heck did you

Bill:

yeah,

Cameron:

time. I mean when it's like, ships comes in, and then everyone just starts chucking cubes and...

Chris:

I've got 45 and I just scored five

Bill:

and I scored five points. You And round two.

Cameron:

But it happens.

Bill:

Yeah. All right. Are we at final

Chris:

wrap it up here, right? I've got one con that I'm going to mention in my final thoughts, cause I don't want it to run too long. It's my start, right?

Cameron:

Um, yeah.

Chris:

Alright, so I'll begin by saying, I think we made this clear in, Our, run through of our thoughts, but this game does, at least to me, really capture the feel of an engine building game. maybe we didn't use that term a lot, but this is, this is, an engine builder. You start off small and piddly and pathetic. You find a pathway through the purchasing of buildings and acquisition of contracts to slowly become more and more efficient until by the end of the game, you're just pumping it out. And that feels pretty. I

Bill:

enjoyed

Chris:

solving that puzzle and finding different ways to do it in the buildings that were available to me. One concern that I do have about this game, however, is that there is no variable set up to this game

Cameron:

variable set

Chris:

Every game, the board will basically look exactly the same with the only difference being that the markets will be slightly different, but honestly that has little to no effect on gameplay at all. there's no cards you start with that are different from other people. There's no, differences. So. I always get very worried and leery in games like that, that I will begin to fall into a pattern of play that I see as being probably better, and then if it doesn't fall that way, figuring out how to pivot here and there, and just kind of finding like a path that works, and then it begins to become stale. I worry about that immensely in this game, and I do think that probably might happen. However... For now I'm enjoying the ride.

Bill:

So,

Chris:

all that to say, I can't give this game any more than a four because of that, because I do have a suspicion after like four or five plays, like it kind of tired of it, maybe, probably even, but let's be honest, how many games do people have in their collection? They play more than five times, not

Bill:

many. Yeah.

Cameron:

Certainly not if you have a thousand games. Right, right.

Bill:

right. I mean, I would say people just don't. right? Right. So

Chris:

say if you like engine builders, this game, is worth picking up just to experience it and be like, Oh, this is cool. And then once you kind of figure it out, just move on to something else. But I've enjoyed playing around with it so far. So I'm going to give it a four.

Bill:

Awesome. It's funny. I'm thinking about the number, the games in here that you've rated at level six that you've only played like how many times?

Chris:

because I can see the endless possibilities in them.

Bill:

Right.

Cameron:

Alright.

Bill:

No, you're next. Bill. Am I okay? Oh, okay. you know, I'll say I, like this game. every time I've, played it, I felt like I was learning something new. I did feel the, angst in the story of the beginning game, middle and end game in this, I liked. How tight it was in the, hockey stick style in game where, if you were able to get your engine working right, right at that, turn seven and turn eight, you're just. Exactly. Everything just came together and you could buy like, you know, seven ships and fill them all up and you're just like making all kinds of money. There, there, there was a little, sadness part about that because that's like when the game ends, it's like, dang, I'm just now getting it right. I mean, it's like whole catch 22 to all that. but I'm totally with Chris. I mean, I'm going to give it a four. I hadn't really thought about the fact that it may not have legs because it's not that variable. And I totally agree with you that That's a thing with this game. But otherwise, I think it's a very tight design and I think it's pretty amazing. And really, you should absolutely try it if you can find it cheap.

Chris:

it's a fun sandbox to play in.

Bill:

Right, it is.

Cameron:

Yeah. so very similarly, I had a lot of fun playing this game. It's been a while. I feel like since I played an engine builder and I was telling Chris, before we were recording, I find myself really, attracted toward games that kind of start out with this, nothing experience. And then you. Are responsible to figure out how to sort of spin things up and then to feel this build up of finally you can push forth and really start making your plan happen. I get the same feeling when I play games like real time strategy games. Where you start out with like, you know, one little peasant guy and one soldier. And then eventually you've

Bill:

know, StarCraft

Cameron:

army. you know, I was playing Starcraft, recently and really enjoying that same exact feeling. I got that when I played Constantinopolis. I don't personally have any issues with the whole like potential multiplayer solitaire thing. I really enjoyed the tightness of

Chris:

economy

Cameron:

the economy and the competition over what buildings to buy. and the prioritization questions that, that poses for you. and then just the tension of like there are, there are these other. Outlets throughout the game that caused you to leak money, which is so precious even right on through the sixth and seventh rounds. Right. and that just worked for me. Um, and so it's been a while since I've thrown out one of these, but I'm actually going to go five

Bill:

on this. I mean,

Cameron:

had a lot of fun playing it. I did

Chris:

win. I could tell you looked like you were,

Cameron:

but even on the games where I, didn't perform as well, I found myself really enjoying the ride. And to me, like, that's the special sauce that I'm looking for, right? I don't like the grueling, like, I'm just gonna get my booty kicked the entire game. Like when Chris is over here having, having a great time, agonizing over decisions and crushing all of us. To me, if it gives me that fun ride and it makes me think like, man, oh, what would I try? I'm, what would I try next time? Like, oh, I could try doing that. I could try doing that move later. Or maybe do this thing earlier and whatever. I just thought it was cool and really had a good time with it. So I'm giving it a five.

Chris:

Yeah, I agree with you. Brace yourself here, Bill. So I know that Cameron and I, we both really enjoyed terraforming

Cameron:

Yeah.

Chris:

I know our listener base doesn't necessarily love that game either, but terraforming Mars is very similar in that even when you don't win terraforming Mars. You can look down at your tableau and be like, but look what

Bill:

I

Cameron:

did. Yeah. I did a bunch of

Chris:

like, look at all this cool crap that I did. You know what I mean? So you like, feel like you did something, even if it doesn't work out for a win. And I do like games like that. I agree.

Cameron:

And I want to mention, you pointed this out in your thoughts of the worries over replayability. And I think I agree with that a little bit and really feel like it could have been mitigated by doing things like, some games like when you do the setup, the roles are sort of randomized or. Something like that where, like, I'm,

Chris:

buildings, like

Cameron:

more

Bill:

into

Chris:

the play and some that

Cameron:

or even some where the buildings the prices are fixed, but the buildings shift around so that the, resources have different values or something like that from one play to the next,

Chris:

cause you to play differently from game to game. That's the biggest thing is every time you look at this board, when you sit down to play it, it's going to look the same. Yeah. And so that always worries me a little bit.

Cameron:

Yeah. The one game that came to mind, or those types of mechanisms for replayability, um, which by the way, shameless plug for patron, we've talked about our thoughts on what makes for good replayability on a previous backstage episode. And I think it's a fascinating topic because it speaks into a lot of the depths of game design. Right. Did they think about that? When they built the game, and the game that I was thinking about is actually Kingdom Builder. so

Chris:

that that is the yeah.

Cameron:

Kingdom Builder has this awesome thing and it's in the core of the game. Like at the very beginning of the game, you just randomly pick. What, it's like four cards out of this deck,

Chris:

cards, and then four different boards that have different buildings on them that have different abilities.

Cameron:

that game is so replayable.

Chris:

I mean it's in my

Cameron:

It's different, it's different every single time and it plays super, I mean that, well, now we're reviewing Kingdom Builder,

Chris:

Yeah. but, I

Cameron:

But the point is that, it created, that, core mechanism that shakes every game up.

Chris:

Well, if you play a game of Kingdom Builder, and then you play the next one the same way, you'll lose. If you play a game of Constantinopolis, and then you play the next one the same way, you could very likely win both times. Right? Because you see what I'm saying? Essentially, yeah. The way that Kingdom Builder is designed, it forces you to play

Cameron:

differently. right?

Bill:

The

Chris:

that Constantinopolis is designed, if you find a winning strategy, it doesn't necessarily force you to deviate from that. Yeah. Because there's no variability in setup.

Cameron:

Right. So this is one of those games that we talk about how much we, fear games getting reprinted and the, new publisher, Tinkering around with it. I think this is one that if they were to reprint it, I wouldn't be so worried if that's what they were going to do with the tinkering around with it. Right. Because I do think that that would be a dramatic improvement. and that's a game that I think is a five.

Chris:

Yeah, like it.

Bill:

Cool.

Chris:

All right. well, good news This is kind of crazy if we peaked your interest, and I hope we did. Cause like I said, there's some good things going on here. There are actually several copies available on Noble Night for as low as$9. Can you believe that? Nine bucks! That's

Bill:

what I ordered today. So there's my

Cameron:

You bought it. Okay.

Chris:

Okay. For nine dollars? Yeah. With tax it takes over ten, you can use our

Bill:

Right? Exactly. Well, I got a dollar, a dollar 20 off with your code.

Chris:

Perfect.

Cameron:

discount

Chris:

Yeah, so if you want to do that, again, our discount code is GEMS10OFF That's GEMS10OFF on Noble Knight. And then, also there are 46 copies on BGG. So, you're not going to have any trouble getting this one if you want to try it.

Cameron:

cool.

Bill:

cool.

Chris:

All right. Well, those are our thoughts on Constantinopolis.

Bill:

I'm so excited because now we're going to get to talk about movies. Don't go anywhere. or come

Chris:

backer and we hope you are, and if you're not, we hope you consider becoming one. We get to talk about really cool, obscure movies.

Cameron:

Well, go somewhere, go to patrion. com slash in Jim's podcast and sign up. All right. Well, thanks for joining us, of course, on this episode of Hidden Gems. If you like what we're doing here, please remember it's a huge help to us if you would leave a rating or review on your podcast platform of choice and follow us on our various social media platforms. we got some, some ratings and reviews recently, which we really appreciate. those simple things can make a difference for the show's exposure. So more folks can enjoy exploring games with us. Check out the BGG guild if you want to interact with us or share a game that you think is a hidden gem. We recommend those folks all the time. We point out that folks who have recommended games and appreciate you guys contributing over there on the guild. And if you're so inclined, please consider supporting the show over at patrion. com slash hidden gems podcast, or we do have t shirts and merch. We have t shirts and hats over a hidden gems, board game podcast. com slash store. Until next time. I'm your host, Cameron.

Chris:

is Chris.

Bill:

Until next time, And I'm Bill.

Cameron:

Thanks for listening. This episode of Hidden Gems, number 52, was recorded in Raleigh, North Carolina on July 17, 2023. Be sure to join us next time as we pay homage to one of the greatest, if not the greatest board game designer of all time, the late Klaus Be sure to tune in as we talk about his incredible life in board game design, and then review three of his lesser talks about games. Hidden Gems is produced and edited by Chris Alley, Cameron Lockie, and Jason Yanchileff. our board game geek guild is monitored and managed by honorary Hidden Gems team member, Ghidorah. Our Discord channel is monitored and managed by honorary Hidden Gems team member, Snoozefest. Our show's logo was illustrated by designer and artist Caitlyn Nito. Check out her work on Instagram at it's Caitlyn Nito. We would love to hear from you. Feel free to join the discussion on our many social media accounts. You can find us on Facebook at Hidden Gyms Boardgame podcast. Instagram at hidden gyms dot podcast, and Twitter at Hidden gyms Board. Disagree with one of our reviews. Have something you want to say about one of the games we discussed today. You can also make your voice heard on our board game. Geek guild at board game geek. com guild number three, eight, seven, four. Once again, thank you for joining us on hidden gems and until next time, fellow gym seekers. Enjoy your games and enjoy your search.

People on this episode

Contributor

Cameron Lockey

Co-host
Contributor

Chris Alley

Co-host
Contributor

Jason Yanchuleff

Co-host