Rome: Total War

 Had a first trial run through of the new Rome: Total War boardgame courtesy of my friend Mark who's huge order had just arrived.

If you've played the PC game then you'll know what to expect and it looks like great fun although it could be a bit of a beast in terms of time.  We managed to get through 3 or 4 turns over an evening although we were fumbling our way through the rules (luckily, Mark was well prepared and had been studying!)... I suspect for the next game we'd be a lot faster.

In each turn you can raise funds via taxation, spend it all on raising troops, research technology, build roads, markets, barracks, etc, send your agents out to negotiate treaties and trade (or more nefarious skullduggery!) and then get down to the serious business of sending those armies out to conquer, or in my case, bring civilised Pax Romana to the world.

In our test game we had Rome fitted against Carthage and Greece.  The battle system is quick and fairly simple with different troop types and terrain all featuring, and gives a good.flavour of the grand strategy level of the game.  Players also have a hand of cards which can add to the battles or other phases and add a lot of flavour.  As an example a trade deal I'd negotiated with my Greek allies was raided by pirates and somehow some of the profits found their way into my pocket... nothing to do with Rome of course!  Just as my army was about face of against Carthage an enemy agent introduced plague or poison into the camp wipingnout half the army and critically killing off Scipio Africanus!  

Great fun and looking forward to more games of this!