44 BCE Kickstarter Preview

Caesar is dead. Who's going to take the throne?

In 44 BCE, players are attempting to gain the most influence following the Ides of March. The game plays through 6 rounds of 9 phases each. While that seems like a lot, it's a game that moves quickly. After some set up, you'll begin the build phase. This is where you place your architects and depending on where you place one, you may activate. Some spaces activate in later phases. Next is the production phase where you collect influence depending on your architects. Following that is enlist, now it's getting good. This is where players will be recruiting new cards to their council. Next, you'll discard down to 7. Here's the kicker, you can only have 7 total cards and resources COMBINED. You'll need to be crafty here. After that, the Imperium Maius commit phase. This is where the player who has the most influence at the time will put up their screen and determine how much authority to allocate across their three groups. Some cards will give you authority right away but others you'll need to pay additional resources to convert into one. Once the IM finishes this phase, the suitor negotiation phase starts. Here, players will try to regain power by taking control of at least 2 fields. Next, the suitors commit. This is similar to the IM but suitors cannot contribute to themselves. They must rely on other players to be loyal to their deals. Players will pay resources to each other secretly. The penultimate phase is the resolution phase. Here, all players will put down their screens and determine who wins the most fields. The final phase (I promise) is the recess phase. This is essentially the cleanup phase. Everyone gets ready for the next round. Whoever has the most points at the end of the game becomes the Emperor of Rome.

The Good: This game does some really cool stuff. I'm especially a fan of the commit phases. It's really interesting to see who actually follows through with their deals or who has their own agendas. I also love that the game features true historical figures of the time period. There isn't necessarily a ton of art to the game but where there is some its absolutely gorgeous.

The Okay: This isn't a game you'll want to play with a lower player count. With any negotiation game, the more players the better. There's also a lot of tiles that all do different things. Luckily, there is a really helpful player aid that tells what each tile or card does.

The Not So Good: Honestly, my biggest gripe with this game was the setup time as a whole. The board is huge and you've gotta fill it up with stuff. My first time through took me close to 30 minutes once I got everything sorted. I played a prototype so I'm sure there are plans in place to create an insert to help mitigate this somewhat.

As always, I don't score prototypes because it's not fair. I will say that 44 BCE surprised me. It has a ton of strategy behind it, especially with the negotiation and hidden information involved. It's probably not a game that everyone will enjoy but if you're a history buff or someone who likes hidden information and negotiation games you should absolutely give it a look. I'm looking forward to seeing what the campaign brings to the table!