I picked up two new games in Melbourne on the weekend. One of them was Pillars of the Earth, which I daresay we’ll play soon enough. The other was Colosseum, which is the one I want to talk about now.

The game is by Wolfgang Kramer and Markus Lübke. I’m not familiar with Lübke’s work, but Kramer is the designer of Princes of Florence – yes, the Top 10 game that both Randy and I have had for some time and never quite gotten around to playing despite both really wanting to. Colosseum is definitely a descendant of Princes, although much more accessible to the casual gamer and with a really nice theme.

The game is played over 5 rounds, during which you hold a succession of events. You score points according to how large a crowd you attract. The winner of the game is whoever attracts the largest crowd to any one of their events – yes, the score doesn’t add, you just take the best result. As you make money from previous events, you can upgrade the stadium, hire more acts, and commission new events. Everything really leads up to the last round, in which the grandest spectacles can be seen.

The game structure is rather simple. In a turn, the following phases happens:

Phase 1: Investing

In turn order, each player may do ONE of the following – buy a new Event Program, expand the size of their Arena, purchase a Season Ticket (which gives +5 spectators at each event), or construct an Emperor’s Loge (which allows them to roll 2 dice during the 4th step instead of 1).

You need bigger Arenas to hold bigger events, and they also make it more likely that nobles will be watching (which increase the spectator numbers as well).

Phase 2: Acquiring Event Asset Tokens

Basically, this a set of auctions for 3 tokens – the tokens are the performers, gladiators, animals, scenery and suchlike that you need to put on your programs. Each player may only win one auction, and may end up not winning any. There are five markets, each with 3 tokens. You nominate which you want to auction, and the winner takes the tokens.

Phase 3: Trading Event Asset Tokens

The first fun bit. You’ve probably just picked up a few tokens you didn’t need… so you get to trade with your opponents for the ones you do need! This is the bit which is most like Settlers of Catan. In addition, if you have 3 tokens of one type and more than anyone else, you get a Star Performer card which draws more spectators to events he stars in. “See Rex, the lion that’s eaten more Christians than any other lion!”

Phase 4: Producing an Event

Step 1: Move Senators, Consuls and the Emperor. Basically, you roll a die and move one of the nobles that many squares around the board. If the noble ends up in your arena, you score extra points.

Step 2: Producing your Event. The card to the right is an event program. To get full points for it, you need to have all the event assets shown – so, four gladiator tiles, four ship tiles, one comedian tile, one torches tile, and one decorations tile. If you don’t have them all, you can still produce it, but you attract less spectators. The bottom-left shows the spectators you attract: 38 for all tiles, only 6 spectators if you’re missing 6 tiles!

Step 3: Count the Spectators at your event – you get bonus spectators past what is shown on the event program for various things: +5 for a season ticket, +5 for each event previously produced, +4 for each star performer, +3 for a senator attending, +5 for a consul attending, and +7 for the Emperor attending!

If you score more than in your previous event, you adjust your score on the board.

Phase 5: Closing Ceremonies

Whoever has the highest score at this point gets a podium token to add to their arena (+3 spectators for all future events); everyone has to discard one asset token used in their event; and whoever is in the lead must give one asset token to the person who is last – of that person’s choice!

And then you repeat. At the end of the 5th turn, the game ends and whoever has held the biggest event wins!

It looks a lot of fun. We should get to play it on Saturday afternoon. It’s for 3-5 players, so let me know if you’re interested.

Cheers,
Merric