Glory to Rome

11th February 2020

Tuesday night with the gaming club at 'The Sovereigns'  in Woking continues.

The final game of the night was 'Glory to Rome'.

Glory to Rome is a game about the glory of Rome, well sort of. It's a game about rebuilding Rome after the 'great fire of 64 A.D.'.
Become a leader of Rome by building fountains, villas and statues, even the Basilica! Of course, players also get to build a latrine... glory to Rome indeed. Well... I guess someone has to!

Glory to Rome is an engine building card game which has an interesting central premise; which is that the function of cards change in the context of how they're used. This isn't something new or unique to Glory to Rome, however I've not seen it used as extensively as in this game.

What's in a game
Glory to Rome has a lot of cards and some of these cards serve multiple functions.

Order cards
By far the biggest stack of cards in the game, order cards have multiple uses:

• Building: Each card can be used to represent a building that can be constructed. There are a lot of different buildings and each has a cost (In materials.) and a different function.
• ​Client role: Each card can be used to fulfil the role of a client. There are 6 types of client; patron, labourer, craftsman, architect, merchant & legionary. Client roles are explained below.
• Material: Buildings require materials to be built. Cards are used to represent the materials that must be used. There are 6 types of material; marble, rubble, wood, concrete, stone & brick.

Site cards
When constructing a building, it needs a site to lay the 'foundation' on. There are site cards for each of the 6 different types of material. Site cards are covered in stripes
Jacks
These cards are 'jack-of-all-trades'. They are wildcards.
Rome demands card
This oversized card goes in the centre of the playing area and is a discard pile/pool for order cards. 
Bonus cards
There are 6 bonus cards, one for each type of material. When scoring at the end, the player who has the highest amount of a material in their Vault acquires it's bonus card. Each bonus card is worth 3 victory points.
Leader card
Used to represent the first player in a round.

That's it for cards.

Player board
Player boards (Or camp board.) serve 2 functions. They are a player aid and they also track certain cards and actions the players have played. The boards track influence, clientele, stockpile & vault.

The quality of the components is pretty standard, nothing standout, but by no means nothing bad either.
The art on the cards is minimal, almost simplistic and feels a little bit amateurish. It does however, give the cards a distinct look, is uncluttered and clean looking. I guess it's down to taste.

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A player's 'camp' board with 4 'spots' along the 4 edges.

2 buildings under construction & some cards added to the camp.

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How's it play?
Setup is pretty simple.

• Place the Rome demands card in the centre of the playing area, deal a number of face-up order cards into the 'pool' equal to the number of players.
• Place the jack cards next to the Rome demands card.
• Create 6 stacks for each of the 6 types of site card, the number of cards in each stack should be equal to the number of players. Excess sites should be placed in 'upside-down stacks', these excess cards become 'out-of-town' site cards. Out-of-town cards require extra foundation cards to be used.
• Deal 5 order cards to each player.
• Determine the starting player and give them the leader card.

​Now we're ready to go.

Whoever is the first player decides to either 'lead'... or think!

• Leading: If the starting player elects to lead, then they play a card from their hand. The role on that card is role that all players can perform in this round. If the starting player plays more than one card of the that roll at a time, then they can perform the action multiple actions. If the starting player doesn't have a card that matches a role they want to play, they can play a Jack as any role or 2 identical role cards as any role.
• Thinking: If a player chooses to think, they are essentially passing and can perform 1 of 3 actions. Take a Jack from the supply, refill their hand back up to 5 order cards, or if their hand is at 5+ cards they take a single order card.

Once the starting player has chosen their action, in turn order the other players decide whether they want to 'follow' or 'think'.

• Follow: To follow the leaders action, a player has to play a card with the same role as that played by the starting player, all the same rules for using Jacks and 'two-of-a-kind' apply.
• Thinking: As above.

Once all the players have chosen their actions, they are then carried out in turn order, starting with the first player.
When all players have completed their actions, all cards that were played as role cards are placed in the pool. Any Jacks played are returned to their stack.
Play proceeds to the next turn and the Leader card moves to the player to the left.

That's the basics out of the way, now on to what the role cards actually do.

• Patron: This allows the active player recruit patrons, this is done by taking an order card from the 'pool' on the Rome demands card and place it on the 'Clientele' side of their player board. What does this do? It'll be explained below.
• Labourer: This action allows the active player to acquire building materials. This is also done my taking an order card from the pool and placing it on the 'Stockpile' side of their player board.
• Craftsman: This role has a choice of actions. It allows the player to 'create a foundation'. The active player takes an order card of a building they want to construct from their hand and plays it in their playing area as the foundation. Out-of-town site cards require 2 foundation cards. Then the active player takes a site card from the matching site deck and places it beneath the foundation with the 'stripes' showing. OR, it allows the active player to build on an existing foundation by playing a card from their hand on to the site as a material (Provided it is the correct material of course.). If this completes a building, the site card is removed from the building and placed on the influence side of the active player's player board. Once a building is completed, it's ability becomes available to the player
• Architect: The Architect roll is identical to the Craftsmen role EXCEPT in one way, when choosing to add a material to a building, it is taken from the active player's Stockpile instead of their hand.
• Merchant: This allows the active player to move a card from their Stockpile to their Vault.
• Legionary: This allows the active player to send out soldiers to get stuff that they need. The active player decides what material they need (For example - marble.) and says, "Rome demands marble". The active player can take a marble card from the pool and place it in their Stockpile, the neighbouring players directly to the left and right of the active player must give them 1 marble card each (Which also goes into the active player's stockpile.), if the neighbouring player(s) do not have the material demanded, they reply with. "Glory to Rome!". Which I guess is board game speak for 'screw you'!

​Next is the player board.
The player board has 4 sides and each side has a function.

• Influence: All players start with 2 influence. Finishing buildings gives a player more influence. The more influence a player has, the more cards they can store in their Vault and Clientele sides of their game boards. Influence also counts as victory points at the end of the game
• Clientele: Patrons are stored in the Clientele side of their game board. Patrons stored here give the player extra or free actions. If a role is chosen by any player and a player has a client with that role in their Clientele, then when it's their turn they can perform that action without playing a card, they can also perform that action even if their chosen action is to think. Or if they play that role card, they get an extra action of that type.
• Stockpile: Cards are stored here as material, from here they can be moved to buildings, or to the Vault.
• Vault: Cards stored (Actually hidden.) here count towards victory points at the game end. The number of cards (Not the value.) that can be stored in the Vault is limited by a player's Influence score.

There are 44 different types of building, all of them have some sort of special ability that can influence the game.
I think that is more or less it for most rules.

Endgame
There are several criteria that trigger the end of the game.
Play continues until all site cards for all materials have been used, out-of-town site cards do not count towards this.
The deck of order cards is depleted.
The catacomb building is completed.
The Forum Romanum is built and the player who built it has at least one of each type client in Clientele and one of each material type in their Stockpile. If this occurs, then that player wins an outright victory! Victory points are not tallied!

When any of these conditions are met the game immediately ends and points are tallied (Except in the case of a Forum Romanum victory.).

Players score 1 point for each Influence point.
​Players score the cards hidden in their Vault.
Players score bonus cards for the materials in their Vault.

All victory points are tallied, highest score wins.

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The 'Rome demands' board.

Ahh, latrine!

Near game end.

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Overall
Glory to Rome is pretty straightforward to learn once you get your head around the central premise that your hand represents, people, buildings, materials and more.
Like other games that use similar mechanics, it forces players to make difficult decisions on what cards to use for what.

Glory to Rome is an engine building game on 2 tiers.
How cards are placed on the player board on the Clientele side is essentially building an engine. Giving players extra or bonus actions.
Placing buildings is the other way of building an engine.
Together they give players quite a few options to explore.

The game's owner stated that certain cards can break the game, but that wasn't my experience when we played it. Upon looking at some cards after the game ended, I could see what he meant though.

Glory to Rome also asks players to watch each other and see what they do and in particular, what they put in to the pool. The pool is the best source of cards - provided it has what you need and you have the cards to get them.
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Glory to Rome  is perhaps a little too long to play for what it is, but otherwise it's a fun game.