Fraser McHarg: First Impressions - Sylla

We recently had an unexpected visitor who was available for a few hours of gaming before he had to start work on Saturday afternoon, so Sylla was pulled out of the unplayed pile and the shrink duly cracked and the game punched.

The rules explanation was done from an on-line pdf of the English rules with occasional clarification by checking the French rules (Melissa’s French skills are much better than she admits).

The board may initially look a little confusing, but you soon realise that helps drive the game through the phases and turns very well.

The basic idea of the game is that you are Roman Senators working for the Glory of Rome and its culture.  It can also be quite important that you are seen to be working for the greater Glory of Rome.  There are Prestige points (Res Publica points) and the three elements of culture, being Civic Spirit, Health and Leisure.  At the end of the game there is a multiplier for each of the elements of culture dependent on how that particular cultural aspect has been supported during the game.  If it has a high multiplier obviously you hope that you have been actively it supporting and your opponents have not.

Normally your specific level of support for each of the cultural aspects is kept hidden, but in times of crisis the citizens of Rome demand to see who is working for the Greater Good, thus if Civic Spirit is in crisis all players reveal their personal support for Civic Spirit and the player with the most is rewarded with extra prestige and the player with the least support is penalised prestige.

At the start of the game there are two dynamic things that occur.  Firstly one of the Great Works is publicly discarded, which means the benefits unique to that Great Work will not be available during the game.  In our game the GRANARII was discarded.  We thought that this would not bode well in the feed-the-people stakes and we were correct.

The second thing is when you choose your starting characters.  There is an initial set of ten characters, two each of Senator, Merchant, Legionary, Vestal Virgin and Slave.  Some (half I believe) of these characters are Christian which can have implications during the game and particularly at the end.  In a three player game you choose six characters, in four player you choose an initial four characters.  All the unused characters are shuffled together and form a draw pile for recruitment of future characters to your cause the Glory of Rome.

Each turn consists of seven phases and particular characters can be very influential in specific phases.
I) Determine the Prime Consul (Senator)
II) Recruit a new Character
III) Purchase/build buildings (all characters especially the Slaves)
IV) Receive Income (Merchant)
V) Event Resolution (Legionary and Vestal Virgin)
VI) Build a Great Work (Senator)
VII) Famine and Crisis

Given that the characters are used for everything except for your baseline income there is a lot of decision angst about both which characters to choose initially and then how and when to use their influence.  Do you use your Senators for that special building that you want or save them for their votes in building a Great Work and possibly gain extra prestige and cultural influence?

Merchants are quite useful when obtaining buildings, but you can save them to obtain extra income instead.

The Legionnaires and Vestal Virgins are the only characters that have an influence on which events will affect Rome each turn.  There are always four events in play.  Based on the attention of the Vestal Virgins and the Legionnaires one of these events will be removed, one will be stopped and the other two will impact Rome.  Only those Legionnaires and Vestal Virgins who were not used in the building phase can be used in combating events.  The player that is the most influential in impacting an event will gain cultural rewards for doing so.  These phase can be very political, for example one player may be supporting Health strongly and is not concentrating on Leisure at all.  Thus she would place her characters in a way to stop an event that impacted Health, but wouldn’t do much to stop a negative impact on Leisure, especially if it was being supported by one or more of the other players.

Slaves are only used in obtaining of buildings, however they are the most useful character in this phase.  Six building are presented each turn, two each in a red, yellow and grey zone.  Initially the Prime Consul nominates a building and the next player bids a number of Deeply Thematic Hexagons (DTH) to obtain the building.  The bidding is once around with the building nominator getting the final bid.  Each character type has one or more DTHs of different colours.  Legionnaires and Vestal Virgins have one DTH, Senators and Merchants have two and Slaves have three.  If a red building was nominated and you won the bid with three, then you would have to tap (word used without permission) three characters that had a red DTH and they are no longer available for any action in the rest of that turn.  This is often a very tough call to make, do you up the bid to secure the building or do you pass and save the characters for a later phase?

Now I will say the whole building phase actually works very well and integrates with the characters, I just don’t really know why the Deeply Thematic Hexagons are used to show how the characters are used in building.  Maybe some building materials?  Although why some Vestal Virgins are good with wood and others with stone could also be problematic I suppose :-)

Each turn a new Great Work will be built.  You can contribute to the Great Work with votes from your unused Senators and money.  Those who contribute the most will gain the greater prestige reward from the Great Work and with many of the Great Works the combined effort of all the players is rewarded in cultural advances for all of Rome (remember that cultural multiplier?).

It was mentioned earlier that some characters may be Christian.  This can be relevant if the suppress Christianity event appears and is not stopped or removed.  It is definitely relevant at the end of the game where two special events occur.  The first is the Advent of Christianity and the second is the Freeing of Slaves.  You will gain bonus points for each of your Christian characters and if you will also gain points if you can afford to free your slaves.  Finally you reveal your cultural support and determine your final total by multiplying each by the relevant multiplier to see who has taken control of Rome.

There are many paths you take to lead you to the control of Rome.  In our game Melissa concentrated on Christians, Alan concentrated on First Consul and buildings and I concentrated on Vestal Virgins and Health.  We all enjoyed it and look forward to playing it again.

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