Plot: Do you like gladiator movies? Fight as a gladiator team in an arena, defeating both animals and other gladiators.
Goal: it’s a game about victory points. Defeating an animal gets you 2 VPs and defeating a gladiator gets you 1 VP. Additionally, last man standing gets 1 VP per surviving gladiator.
Mechanics: Draft based game with special gladiator units. Each unit is placed on a stand of 4. Every move a player must either attack another gladiator stand or an animal. Hits are determined by 6 sided dice. 3 spots are blank, 2 spots are ‘single star’ normal hits, and 1 spot is a ‘double star’ critical, which counts as 2 hits and can’t be blocked. Number of dice thrown is determined by how many ‘swords’ you have and + 1 for the base, thus a minimum of 1 die and a maximum of 5 for a stand. The ‘standard’ unit is a Sword Guy, which adds one sword to the stand. Duh. If a stand takes two wounds, it must remove a gladiator. There are limited amount of special guys, 8 of each. In 5 player all gladiators will be drafted, so Swords guys can be considered limited too.
Net Guys are useless against animals but against a gladiator stand they eliminate a gladiator from the ensuing conflict, before dice are thrown.
Prong Guys give a reroll to the stand with the most Prongers.
Spear Guys give initiative. Usually initiative is given to the attacker but if the defender has more spears he rolls dice first. This is important because combat is NOT simultaneous.
Shield Guys stop simple wounds at a 1-1 ratio. So if a stand has 2 shield guys but 3 single stars are rolled, the stand still takes 1 wound.
Tactics: This game is actually deeper than it lets on (but not by much). Positioning and order in which you draft the gladiators is pretty important, because there are a lot of counters to various stand designs, and you don’t want to tip your hand. The most sought after units are net guys and shield guys, and getting doubles of them on a stand make that a pretty powerful stand. Try not to get doubles of spear guys and prong guys on the same stand, severe diminishing returns.
Review: has it really been 10 years since we first demo’d this at the last Milwaukee Gencon? This truly was the gateway game for NF. Sure we had played Settlers, but this was our first sortie into the true designer board game genre. For that reason, I still have a soft spot for Gladiators. We don’t play it at all anymore, because we really explored all of the nuances and the luck involved makes the game chaotic. Overall rating 5.5/10. If someone requested I bring this to NF I would and would enjoy playing it, but I’m not going bring it up ever again.
Oh the nostalgia! Bring this on friday, I totally want to play again. It definitely has a soft spot in my heart too.
ReplyDeleteOne problem I remember with this game was once a stand gets wounded, it becomes a target for all the other players. afterall, if you MUST do something, why wouldn't you go after the weakest? less risk to yourself. to take the point further, once a stand loses structural integrity, it's toast :) Like blood in the water, I actually remember humming the jaws theme.
It's also difficult to come back when you are behind. I guess you need to get lucky, which is the problem with the game. but it'sa good game! I'd give it more than 5.5. Board game geek ranks it 2842 :) Pretty bad, I wonder how many Knizia games rank worse...
Ever been in a Turkish prison?
ReplyDeleteSorry, I missed most of the post as I jumped down to write that line. :P