I originally played that way, too. But the rules state that if you 'break the bank' of victory points, you finish the current turn and points past 36 are still claimed normally. So, in your example, if your opponent has 22, and you start the turn with 13 (35 total) and you can claim 10 during the turn, you win.

I like the variant that a losing player has the option of taking VP's from his opponent rather than taking them from the VP stock. In doing so, that player is only awarded 1/2 his normal allotted VP's rounded down.

The game is fun if you are expecting something akin to a CCG without having to spend the money or time to build customized decks. There are many wild events that can happen early on, some that will end the game early and others that won't.

That variability is part of the appeal. If the game ends quickly we usually play again or play something else. If it goes long we enjoy the options that develop and it often comes down to the more skilled play. It's tough to predict what will happen before you start however, and turning a losing position around when you are 10-15 VP behind is a big thrill.

How was this possible? With no extentuating circumstances, you cannot gain more than 6 VP from a Forum in a single turn.


Although I think trying to defend the game to you would be pointless given your opinion of it, I would like to mention that it seems that only once did either you or your opponent seem to attempt the other main strategy of the game, which is to remove or disable the cards of your opponent, leading to loss of VP. This is a grave strategic oversight, if true.

Hard to say why your experience was so poor, but this is a well regarded game (an average rating of over 7) and only a handful of the 600 some odd raters gave it a negative rating. It sounds as if your games may have been plagued by some very unusual dice rolls or maybe some groupthink analysis. At any rate, I consider both Roma and Aton to be two of the best two-player games to have come out recently and think Queen did a great job on both of them (and I'm usually not a big Queen fan). Maybe they're just not the games for you.

By the way, there is an official variant from the designer for the Mercator that would have saved you in Game 5. You can spend no more than 6 gold per activation of the card. This was a problem that got past playtesting (due to another card being cut from the game), but the variant seems to solve the problem.

I have to come out in favour of Roma. I agree that some games present an untenable position for one of the players from the get go, however, I can think of many games where this can happen and that doesn't mean the game is broken.

I CAN understand with several plays under your belt and not enjoying them you deservedly rated it a 1 but I honestly believe that experiences on average are much better than that for most players.

Perhaps it is because you always played your wife. Try other opponents and have her do the same and see if anything changes. I'm not sure much will, but different opponents means different strategies. Perhaps another player who is on the ropes will opt to change a card in play that neither you nor your wife would have and make a surprise comeback.

I would ubderstand if you just shelved it/traded it/sold it after your experience but it is a shame you haven't been able to appreciate what other gamers (myself included) have from this 2-player.

Good Luck either way.

I've rarely had any games play out like the ones you've described. I've had nothing but fun with Roma and, along with Battle Line, it's one of my favorite 2-player games. However, if I'd had the same experiences as you with the game, I'm sure I'd feel differently...

Just to make sure... you know that after you are dealt cards, you pass two of them to the other player, right?

While I am no Roma apologist and I have had a scant few games go as you have described, my overall experience with the game has been excellent with many hard-fought battles which lasted for many tense turns. It just seems like you must have been doing something wrong. You are right the the beginning of the game is delicate, and that can really magnify even the smallest of incorrectly played rules.

Well, I suppose it's possible that you've discovered the game's deep flaws that ALAN MOON (your caps) missed, but from what I'm reading here it's more likely that you need to reread the rules of this game extremely closely and figure out which of them you're not following.

This game is not broken when played by the rules. The scenarios you're describing don't happen under normal conditions, unless one or both of you are playing badly.



Not with just a Forum he doesn't. With a Forum, the maximum possible victory points you can get in one turn is 6.



Again, I suspect that you're not using one die to activate the Forum and another die to score the points. Two Forums is only better than one because it increases the likelihood that you'll get to score points; it doesn't increase the number of points you can score. That's why the Mercatus is an effective counter - in fact, if you get the Mercatus and the Praetorianus in play, you're probably earning more points from your opponent's Forums than she is.



How did she earn zero VPs in 5 turns? Even I couldn't manage that, and I suck at this game.



If your opponent plays a Velites and a Gladiator at the start, the universe is telling you that it is time to draw and play buildings, against which those cards are useless. It's very possible that you just got extremely unlucky and weren't able to draw any buildings during the first 4 turns, but I'm skeptical.



On average, if you spend all 3 of your actions taking gold in a turn you'll earn 9-10 gold. So at the end of 3 turns, you'll have (maybe) 30 gold. Playing the Mercator costs 7. You then have 22 gold left to buy 11 VPs from your opponent.

You can win this way, but only if your opponent does nothing. For instance, if your opponent manages to kill one of your cards on the first turn, and another card before your third turn, you'll lose the game before you can pull off your trick. I'm not going to say that you deserve to win if your opponent lets you do this, but she deserves to lose.

I think that you discovered, just as I did, that Alan's and your opinion on what constitutes a good game do not coincide.


Of course you are completely correct about Roma, so I'm not going to argue there. It's the italicised part which I found to be the most interesting sentence of your review, because I rather like that game. Of course it's not perfect, and is most certainly tough on the player getting the lowest cards, but the wild VP swings and being able to defeat a player before the poor sod gets going are very much absent. Will you write up your experiences some time in the future? I'm looking very much forward to them.

Yeah, I have mixed feelings about this game. But I do know I like Battleline, LOTR The Confrontation and Jambo and would prefer to play any of those instead.

Our tastes are very close. I rate all three of these highly as well.

Pierce, it's been a while since I've played Roma, so it would be tough for me to go through your examples to see what went wrong. But you're bucking some serious numbers here. If you just said you hated the game, it would be pointless for me to mention its average rating; after all, there are some very popular games that I despise. But you said it was BROKEN and that's a much stronger claim. What the hell are all those 600 people who like the game (and some of them love it) doing? Why don't they get the astoundingly awful results you and Fubette got? I'm not saying you're playing the game wrong--it sounds like you've been very careful to study the rules. But maybe the two of you have got some weird groupthink going on--I've seen it happen in larger groups than just the two of you. I'm sure you're very frustrated with this game, but it's just hard to believe that you two are approaching it correctly, while the 90% of the folks who gave the game a positive rating (including Alan Moon and I) are playing it wrong. That's why the numbers are significant; it's much easier for me to believe that you two are doing something wrong (or else are the unluckiest gamers alive) than it is for me to accept that the rest of the world is. No insult intended, but you have to admit, it's a tough argument to accept.

I have played this game over 50 times with five different opponents and I see nothing broken in the game. Granted perhaps 20% of the games may last only around 5 turns, most of them can go on much longer.

Even when being dealt very poor cards I have managed to fall behind by a margin of 10 to 15 VPs and still come back and win.

When playing this game you must be agressive and do everything you can to eliminate your opponent's cards. If you do this you will have them loosing victory points at an alarming rate. You must attack constantly not giving your opponent a chance to stabalize and build a good foundation. Offense is everything.

Actually, you can draw (on average) 10 or 11 cards per turn. You can keep only 3 of them, but if you're looking for one specific card, that's not much of a limitation. There are only 44 cards left in the deck at the start of the game; if you take 2 turns to draw cards you'll be able to choose from almost half of them.

For instance, in the game in which you described your opponent getting the Velites and Gladiator in play on turn 1, a good player would have immediately started drawing for buildings. It's extraordinarily unlikely that you won't find one in a turn, and finding two isn't unusual. Play one and the bleeding slows; play two and it stops. And if one of them's a Forum (there are 6 of them in the deck, so you're more than likely to find one if you pull a lot of cards), as soon as you play it you're in a position where all your opponent can do with her Velites and Gladiator is chase your Architectus. Now your opponent's on the defensive, as you can start outscoring her with cards she can't do anything about.

In the example you gave with the 2 Forums, there are any number of card combinations that will thwart your opponent: Onager (especially with the Essedum, which is cheap and not very vulnerable if your opponent's focusing on buildings), Mercatus, Mercator, Tribunus Plebis, and Centurio are all effective counters.

Also, critically, if your opponent's using 2 dice per turn to score points from the Forum, she's not drawing or playing cards anywhere near as fast as you are. So while she's playing one card every 3 turns or so, you've gotten out the Praetorianus and the Consul and are able to reliably shut down her low-numbered Forum, or you've gotten the Haruspex and used it to grab a Centurio, or hell, even Nero.

I'm not spouting theory: those are all things that I've encountered while struggling and failing to win with the "unbeatable" double Forum combination.

The balance in the design of this game is in the tension between the cards that build you up and the cards that tear your opponent down. It's vital to know what cards your opponent's play is telling you to find. This is why the Haruspex is the best card in the game.



No, my post amounts to saying (in fact, it actually says this) that if you're having the problems you describe with Roma, you're playing it incorrectly. You either have the rules wrong (not an unreasonable suspicion, given your overstatement of the Forum's might) or you're not grasping something about how the game is meant to be played.

I don't think it's stupid to find Roma a challenging game to play well. I do think it's stupid to go into a biker bar and say "What's with all the fat boys wearing leather? Is it some new way to lose weight?" (Line stolen from Madison Smartt Bell.)

The non-stupid thing to do would be to approach the problem with humility and ask "what am I overlooking?" That's what I do when I have a mind-bogglingly horrible problem with a game that everyone else seems to think is the bee's knees (cf. Imperial). Being abrasive, pugnacious, and condescending just earns the same in response, and it also makes it a lot harder to save face when it turns out you're not right. Which is regrettably the case here.

The game you're describing is one of huge random swings, where a lucky opening draw can permanently torpedo a player's hope to win. The game I'm familiar with is one where my won/loss percentage against my girlfriend is about 25%, and my won/loss percentage against everyone else is around 75%. In the games I've played, it is not at all unusual to go through the entire deck more than once. This is simply not the game you're describing.

I recognize the game you're describing: it's the game I thought Roma was the first few times I played it. It isn't.

I'm with Robert on this one. We've played Roma at least 100 times and I doubt we've had even eight games as bad/quick as those you've described. There is a learning curve to this game because alternate victory conditions/strategies require different sorts of responses. There's no always winning combination or always right response to a situtation. "There's a million ways to get things done" (cue Talking Heads) which is what gives the game such replay value. It's a particularly fun couples game because if you play frequently with the same partner, you both watch a kind of complex history unfold and often draw different lessons from it.

I'm not saying you and Fubette should give the game another chance. I certainly wouldn't play a game I've disliked eight times a ninth time. And it's not as if a true appreciation of Roma will your immeasurably enrich your life. So many games, so little time -- go with what you enjoy.

But I wouldn't want to see others deterred from even trying the game based on your experience. It's a game that gets even better over time but that doesn't require a huge investment of time to enjoy. For what it's worth, I think it does help to get a sense of the whole deck rather than just learn/look up the cards as they appear in your hand. (Robert's right that the Haruspex is very important, but to use it well you have to know what you're looking for!). I'd also recommend adding the thief and the spy (using two of the blank cards provided).

Aha, herein lies the problem, I think. What the rulebook indicates is that if you want to get money and/or draw cards, you must devote a die to each of these activities that you choose. It's not saying that you may only use one die to do either thing. You may choose more than once in a turn to spend a die on cards or money. (There's discussion of this in the rules forum.)

In context, the reason the rules says "one die" is because they just told you that you don't have to spend a die to lay a card and they subsequently tell you that you may not divide up the dots on a single die to perform multiple actions -- i.e. you can't use a six you rolled to draw one card and to collect 5 units of money. So the contrast is between actions that take 0 die vs. 1 die and the possibility of 1/2 a die is being ruled out.

Hope that makes sense.

After many plays, I think I am a pretty good Roma player. I even wrote a PC version with rudimentary AI. I would say about half of the matches are wholly unsatisfying, usually because early luck gave one player an unsurmountable advantage, less commonly because there is a protracted ending after a decent match. In the other half of games where a decent fight emerges, the matches can be quite satisfying, and my win-loss ratio goes way up.

The variable play length and hit-miss ratio keep me from giving this a Top Shelf rating, but it is one of the more "pure fun" 2-player games in my collection. Even in the early advantage scenarios, it can be fun trying to hold off an opponent. In the last match I played, my opponent was running up VPs with a Forum and Templum and some lucky rolls (including an early 12 and 10!). I did all the right things to come back; use Haruspex and Senator to bring out an early Nero; fetch for an Onager; use Velites and Gladiator to slow him down and allow me to turn the corner once the Forum was gone. Each time - after the Nero and some lucky Onager rolls - he was able to replace the Forum on his next turn! He just kept drawing them! It was funny - and frustrating - as hell.

Here's what the rules say:



I don't think that's "very unclear."

The specific exception for card activation is there to clarify that not only can you take the "Activate a card" action more than once in a turn (which the rules have already stated), but if you've rolled the same number on multiple dice you can activate the same card more than once.

As I said: if this game's played properly, it's not broken. Let alone BROKEN BROKEN BROKEN.

Now, let's get to the Velites/Gladiator issue:



It's bad if you start the game with 4 personality cards and your opponent starts with a Velites and a Gladiator and goes first and kills two of your cards on her first turn. That's a very unlucky start, and if that happens, the odds are against you.

(How unlucky a start is it? Well, the odds of getting both a Velites and a Gladiator in your opening hand are less than 1/7. The odds of activating both of them on your first turn are about 30%. We'll be generous and give the Velites a 50% chance of killing his target. So this will happen in something like one game out of 40.)

What's far more likely is that your opponent's not able to reliably kill 2 personalities on your first 2 turns. It's vastly more likely that if your opponent starts off with a Velites and Gladiator you'll lose 1 card per turn while you're trying to get buildings.

This gets you 3 turns to draw and play buildings.

Now, let's assume you have an average roll on your turn - say 3 3's. In a Roma deck that 8 non-Forum cards have been removed from, you'll draw a Forum 37% of the time in your first 3 cards, 70% of the time in your first 6, and 81% of the time in your first 9. So the odds are very good that you'll draw a Forum (let alone any other kind of building) in your first turn and be able to play it by the end of your second turn.

Where do things stand at the end of turn 2? You've got 3 cards in play and 4VPs. (If you got lucky, you'll have gotten to activate your Forum already.) A Forum earns (on average) a little over 1.5VPs per turn. So you have two or three turns before you hit the ground.

Meanwhile, your opponent, who's been spending her actions attacking you instead of drawing gold and cards, starts her 3rd turn with 4VPs and is also two turns away from hitting the ground. And since she went first, she'll get there before you do. She now has to stop attacking you and start playing cards instead. If it took you 3 draws to get your Forum, you have 2 cards in your hand that you can get into play while she's doing this.

It can definitely happen that things won't play out this way. Your game may be the one in 40 games where you lose two personalities on turn 1. You may dive into the deck for a Forum and get nothing. Your opponent may roll 6's on her unused die the first 2 turns and start turn 3 with a good card and the money to play it.

But the odds are much greater that even if your opponent has a strong anti-personality start you have enough time to salvage your position.

I've got to say I'm with Foob on this one. We tried very hard to like this game. It's got a lot of neat elements, but they didn't come together well for us. We found repeatedly that one player got a little momentum and then it's over before anything truely interesting can develop. A lot of people really seem to like this game, so maybe we were playing it "wrong". However, we were playing by the rules, so if it was our style of play that was making the game unfun, it's the game's fault for allowing us to do so.

(Procrastination + too much coffee = crazy repeated posting on BGG!)



If your style of play is optimal, that might be so. But if it's not, you can't really blame the game.

Nothing in the rules for Euphrat & Tigris requires players to build monuments. If I'm playing E&T with someone and neither of us builds monuments, the game will be pretty boring. But I don't think anyone would agree that if we were bored it's the game's fault because it let us play without building monuments. It's our fault because we didn't recognize how important monuments are to winning.

In the case of Roma, if the game's over before anything truly interesting can develop, you probably didn't play well. If this happens every time you play, you're almost certainly not playing well.

I think two things are to blame: First, you can't play the game effectively unless you're very familiar with what the cards do. (The only time a player who's using the Haruspex should be searching through the deck is when the card he's looking for is in his opponent's hand.) Second, the opening of the game is unforgiving of ineffective play.

I suppose it's a weakness of the game that there are cards that require a lot more thought and knowledge to counter than they do to play in the first place. If two inexperienced people are playing, and one starts off with a Forum, it's may seem to both of them that the game's sort of playing itself. But it's not: what's happening is that the person who didn't get the Forum is playing badly, and the game's going to be over before he figures out what he needed to have done on his first turn.

Clearly a game like this isn't going to be to everyone's taste. But there are a lot of people who like this game enough to have played it dozens and dozens of times and who are still interested in playing it, and there are good reasons for that.

I'll stand by my point. Tonight I played three games and all took at least 20 minutes each and lasted several rounds. In one game my oponent started with THREE, YES THREE forums (I had to give him one to keep Nero and a forum of my own). I was able to come back and win by using the correct combos. Countered one forum with Nero, got a centurion and an onager to destroy the others after a few turns. He was busy collecting VPs the first two turns, and that made it easy for me to get the cards out as he wasn't collecting too many cards of his own or too much money. It took two shuffles through the deck to decide this one but I slowly ran him out of VPs. You can't tell if the game is broken by simply looking at the cards you are dealt. Right there you would have thought this was the case of a broken starting hand.

I can see how this game is not to everyone's taste. But I have honestly had a great experience with it. I like how its theme ties in so well to the gameplay. Ancient Roman political conflicts were dirty affairs where politicians had to elimnate their opponents and their supporters to gain influence or wealth etc.

I used to play magic the gathering, and in actuality you could say the same about that game that certain times the game ends too quickly because of the various combos your opponent can get out.

One downside of this game is that it would be hard for a very experienced player to play against a newer player. It takes a few games to learn the cards properly, and see which cards can be truly devestaing against an opponents cards.

In my last statement I mean a newer player is at a huge disadvantage against a more experienced player.

I do think that the rules could stand to be tweaked (I prefer the Fitzgerald/Delano variant, personally, although I suspect you'd dislike them). But I also think that the criticism you quoted above ("About half the games are unsatisfying") is true.

But Roma's great strength (IMO) is the following:
When the game is horribly unbalanced due to luck, it typically takes less than five minutes. There are many, many games that are decided by luck (like a critical card draw or die roll) a significant fraction of the time that take an hour or more. [To name some, Age of Rennaisance, Twilight Struggle, War of the Ring, Struggle of Empires, Air Baron, Blood Bowl, Star Fleet Battles, etc etc]. I'm not saying all these games are luck-fests; the better player wins more often, but sometimes a (competent) novice will just crush a great player because of the dice/cards. Sometimes a trained monkey could win.

How much I like those games often comes down to a luck/time ratio. The longer the game, the less often luck should dominate. In that respect, Roma is a great game, because when you get screwed (and I'll admit it happens, although 8 times in 8 games seems high) the game ends.

I think the chance of it being severely unbalanced is less than 50%. I would never say I've won or lost before the first two turns. The initial cards are useless if their numbers don't get rolled (except of course the Tower). I'll admit that a lot rides on what happens on those early dice rolls, that's where most of the unbalancing luck comes into play.

If you can survive the early turns then skillful play has a greater and greater influence over the match. This is an ideal situation as far as I'm concerned. There's enough luck to give unpredictable situations and make repeated play fun and entertaining. Sometimes that luck will end the game quickly for one player or another. As Brian mentions this is better than to drag the affair out and make you suffer in a losing position for 30, 40, 60, 90 minutes. You can call that unsatisfying, I call that not a problem since I'm usually constrained by time not by number of games.

I understand you played 6 games using the normal rules. How much time did you actually spend playing? I'm willing to bet you'd be hard-pressed to think of another game where you could fit 6 plays in the same amount of time. Once you learn the cards plays can fly by, and the deeper more interesting matches will take longer. Those will be the ones you remember.