Glory to Rome (Black Box Edition) Review

One Kickstarter game that has brought forth some very strong opinions is Glory to Rome: Black Box Edition.

In Glory to Rome, each player is attempting to help rebuild Rome after the great fire of 64 AD.  To do this, you will need the assistance of clientele.   Each turn, you will select a role from your hand to play (the roles are Patron, Merchant, Craftsman, Architect, Laborer, and Legionary).  After you select your role, each other player has the option to follow you or to "think" (draw cards).  When performing the action associated with the role, you may boost the action if you have any more "clients" in your clientele.  In order to initially gain these clients, you must perform a Patron action.  However, you are limited to your number of clients based on your influence.  You gain influence by building buildings - with the Craftsman and Architect roles.  Briefly, the Legionary helps steal from your neighbors, the Laborer prepares you for other actions (by putting cards in your stockpile), and the Merchant helps you earn victory points.  The game is played until one of the end game conditions is met - either the deck of cards is exhausted, all of the "in town" building sites have been used, or one of the end of game buildings is built (Forum or Catacombs).  At that point, whoever has the most victory points wins - unless the game ended because of a Forum, in which case, the person who has the Forum wins!

Glory to Rome is designed by Carly Chudyk.  He is also the designer of Innovation.  I like to classify his games as "balanced by being broken."  Essentially, what I mean by this is that there are cards in Glory to Rome (similarly to Innovation) that are ridiculously powerful.  For example, there is a building that doubles the number of clients that you may have, and also lets you add an extra client from your hand during every Patron action.  This card is amazing, as it quickly lets you get exorbitant numbers of clients, which then lets you have large bonuses every time any player performs an action.  However, there are other ridiculous cards that can come back and stop it.  Such as the Colosseum, which allows you to use the Legionary to steal clients from your opponents (instead of cards in their hand) and put them in your vault (this is where you get victory points, and normally putting cards here is a much longer process that requires the Merchant action).  So, you are now hurting your opponents and gaining victory points!  There are other cards that suddenly allow all of your clients to count twice.  Others allow you to take all Jacks (wild cards that you normally get in the "think" action) that your opponents play into your hand.  So, there are amazing combinations in the game.  But, building one certain building generally doesn't guarantee anyone the victory.  Especially (and this is the final one I'll mention) because there is a card that allows you to steal any of your opponent's constructed buildings!

Typical player board with clients, stockpile and vault

One of the other things that I think is really interesting about Glory to Rome is that you can both think and follow in the same turn.  I initially did not believe the people that taught the game to me.  In fact, when teaching other player later, I verified this rule.  If the active player decides to perform an action - Craftsman, for example - you may think and draw cards.  Yet, if you have the corresponding client(s) in your clientele, when the action comes to you, you may still use your clients to follow the chosen role.  This is a really interesting and powerful dynamic.  And it also makes clients significantly more useful.  Instead of having to have the correct card in your hand in order to follow (thus causing your clients to only be helpful if you have drawn well), they are always available.  And, what's more, you can wind up doing quite a bit more on an opponent's turn than on your own.  Thinking to draw cards and then also getting the benefit of the actions is, simply, amazing.

The next thing that I like about Glory to Rome is that there are meaningful (and tough) choices to make.  Every card that you play can be used as an action, as a building, or as material for a building.  But, it is very important to decide which way you are going to use any given card.  Is it more important to start building a building that gives you an amazing bonus, but that you know you won't complete this turn, or is it more valuable to follow the action being performed by the active player?  Would you be better off using that incredibly powerful building to complete the "under construction" structure that you have, or should you keep it so that you can build it next?  What makes some of these choices even harder is that keeping a card for later clutters up your hand.  When performing a "think" action, you are allowed to draw cards back up to your hand size (generally five), draw a jack, or draw a single card.  If you are keeping a card in your hand, then that is one less card that you will be drawing whenever drawing back up to your hand size.

Very bland artwork

The final pro that I will mention for Glory to Rome is that I enjoy how the different elements of the game work together and keep each other in balance.  For example, you are limited in your clientele and your vault by the amount of influence you have.  You gain influence by completing buildings.  Yet, it would be really helpful to have a lot of Craftsman and Architects in your clientele to help build these buildings.  Also, in order to utilize your Architects and Merchants, you have to have cards in your "stockpile."  To get cards in your stockpile, you have to use Laborers and Legionaries.  But, you often don't see the immediate benefit by playing these two roles.  However, ignoring them winds up making your other roles useless.  The different elements of the game really flow together well to make a beautiful experience.

My only real con for Glory to Rome is that I dislike the artwork.  Really, I've played (and owned) both this version of Glory to Rome and the previous IV version, and my complaint has been related to production both times.  In the old version, I disliked the box - it was a plastic clamshell container.  The art was very cartoonish, and many people disliked it.  I really had no problems with it.  However, in the Black Box, I felt like the art was all very cheap Clip Art styled images.  This con obviously doesn't affect gameplay, but it makes the overall experience of Glory to Rome a bit worse.

Overall, I give Glory to Rome a 9.0/10 (in either edition).  I think that the gameplay is wonderful, and I look forward to playing it more and more!

If you want another opinion, check out this Glory to Rome Review on I Slay the Dragon. Some other games somewhat like Glory to Rome, also include Eminent Domain, Puerto Rico, and Race for the Galaxy.

I would like to thank Cambridge Games Factory for providing me with a review copy of Glory to Rome: Black Box Edition.

Zombie in my Pocket Review

A quick game where you can get your zombie-fix is Zombie in my Pocket.

In Zombie in my Pocket, the object of the game is to find the Cursed Totem (and let your buddy carry it - after all, it is cursed), find the Sacred Etchings, and then bury the Cursed Totem to stop the Zombie Apocalypse that is infesting your backyard. To do this, each turn one of the players gets to serve as leader. He then decides on one of three courses of action for the "team": explore, perform an event in the current location (if available), or cower (to regain one health for each player still in the game). If you explore or attempt an event, then you must resolve the top card from the Event Deck (normally get jumped by large numbers of Zombies). If you choose to cower, then you simply discard the top card from the Event Deck. If you are able to successfully bury the Totem before going through the Event Deck three times, then whoever is still alive wins; if not, then you all lose. Oh, and if you all die you all lose.

The first thing that I like about Zombie in my Pocket is the Event Deck serving as a timer. This forces the players to continue exploring instead of constantly cowering. Another neat aspect of this is that whenever an Item card would be found, an Event card is flipped to determine which Item is received - which means that you have to waste time in order to find the Item. This is often worth the time lost, but sometimes a greedy leader can cost the entire group the game!

Another aspect of the Event Cards is that they get progressively more difficult as the game continues. This means, if you are able to explore everything incredibly quickly and find and bury the Totem, then you can win with minimal cowering. However, if things start going wrong and you start cowering and wasting cards in the deck, well, you should hope you gained items at some point. Otherwise, the Zombie Horde will probably cause problems for you.

The last thing pro that I will mention about Zombie in my Pocket is the Fight or Flee mechanic. Whenever your group encounters a group of Zombies, each player must independently determine if it is in his best interests to fight or to flee. Then, everyone reveals their decision at the same time. If everyone flees, everyone loses a life and you return to the previous room. If everyone fights, then you compare your total strength (one per player plus any weapons) to the total strength of the Zombies (normally more than what you have) and damage is dealt out as evenly as possible. However, if some people decide to fight while other players decide to abandon their "teammates", then the ones who fled get to gain health by abandoning their friends. Yeah, that's fairly awesome. I enjoyed constantly pondering whether I should abandon my friends or not (and acting like I was going to abandon them each time). Of course, in the end, I was left to hold off an entire Zombie Army with only my wits, my looks, and my Chainsaw... needless to say, I was not a winner in that game.

A neutral point of note about Zombie in my Pocket is that there is not a large amount of replayability in the game. Whereas this is almost always a con in my reviews, I do not see it as a con here. Zombie in my Pocket, I believe, was designed as a light game in which you could play a quick scenario and enjoy running away from Zombies. It is priced accordingly. It isn't Betrayal At House On The Hill or Arkham Horror - don't expect it to be.  I don't think that you should go buy this game thinking that it will provide you unending hours of entertainment. Go into it expecting that you should be able to get what you pay for - that it should be able to entertain you to play through it several times, and then you can move on from the game.

The first (and biggest) con that I have to Zombie in my Pocket is that the board is designed in a way that it is possible to run into a deadend in every direction. In one of our games, I noticed that we only had one valid open door left, and so I cheated to see if we had any deadend rooms left. Sure enough, we had one. I shuffled all of the remaining tiles and pulled a random one - it was the deadend! At this point, there was no way to win the game because the architect of the mansion did not see fit to include hallways to each of the inner rooms (so where these Zombies were coming from was beyond me). We re-shuffled the draw pile and took a different room instead, thus continuing our game, but it seems to be a flaw in the game if you can run into this kind of situation.

Overall, I give Zombie in my Pocket a 7.5/10. It is what it is - a simple, single scenario, Zombie game. It is fun, I in no way am disappointed in it, but I will probably move on and play other games now.

If you like Zombie or Horror-themed games, you might also check out Nightfall, Zombie Dice, and (of course) Betrayal at House on the Hill.