Gods from afar go to war in ASGARD...

 

 

So I hope my little intro video was viewable? If not, I am sorry about that, this is my first time trying to add a video to my blog and in fact, just creating a video. Wow I think you have to film short shots in order to edit it after instead of one long video which you probably can't cut parts out (like the one I tried to do with actual review - I sneezed very loudly and also my head was cut off - ok I am using a simple camera and not a video camera - my bad for that).

Anyways, getting to the review of the game.

I had a couple of negatives with this game: first major one was that the game was very long to setup and was quite hard to figure the round and turn sequences. There are a lot of rules and special rules and so on that you have to read and re-read the rules. I setup a 4 player game and ended up only getting through one round and it took me a total of about 2 hours in total; I am sure that if it was all setup and I played a second time, I think it would be faster but it was a very complicated game.

Just look at the size of the board and all the little tiles, figurines and cards... Just think about trying to place all of this on the board... it took me about 30 minutes to do this.

Another negative was that it seemed that certain areas on the board were not defined until the end of the rulebook and yes you are supposed to read the entire thing but it would have been nice to see a board layout with area identifications and what the area does.

They do give you a board layout but just in order to place all the little things.

I also have to say that Thor looks kind of dinky in this game.
Now on the other hand, the artwork is really nice in general and board looks really nice. The actual God cards are well illustrated and the little figures are well cut and detailed (as far as detail can go on little wooden figures - but at least you really know which is a giant - larger black figure).

The point of the game is to accumulate as many victory points by the end of the 5th round (and the 5th round is the final battle between the gods) and you do this by following very long and strange phase actions.

You start the game with 3 influence discs and these count towards taking actions from the gods.
In the first phase, you take 3 God cards from your pile and each player (starting with the first player which was decided randomly with the turn tiles) shows one God car and takes their influence disc and places on the Gods' square (each God has different abilities and rune stones - the stones are needed to build temples which give you victory points); if you look at Thor above, if you place a disc on the top rune, you get 2 runes from his supply and you also get the special ability of playing another turn, if you place a disc on the bottom right (temple spot), you can build a temple (if you have the right stones to do it) and then you must pay the God one unit to him or her (which is identified on the bottom left - topmost of the two) and then place your disc there (making it that you lose a disc, thus a future action possibility).

You can also place your disc on the Asgard area, which again should have actually been identified on the actual board, which then allows you to recruit new units, purchase new influence discs (which again is really long to explain) and take those discs and go to battle.

So this goes on until all players have place all three discs and then you move on to the action phase.

In the action phase, there is a lot going on, but once again, in turn order to choose which disc to remove from a God and take the action (which could be taking stones, building temples, or much more stuff - each God has their own unique abilities). Now if you are in the Asgard area, you have many actions you can take (like I mentioned previously).

Then, if needed, there is a battle phase which is cool but just adds more complication to a game that has so much going on at the same time... you really need to focus and look at everything on the board.

So that is all over and the round ends and then you refresh the board and start all over again but this time you add a new evil God to the mix (sorry to mention this so late, but there are three Gods that come into play as the rounds progress).

I don't even know how to really explain this game without actually creating an actual video demo of the game because there is just too much going on in this game.

I was looking forward to playing it and I think it will be a lot of fun playing a real game, but for now...
This game gets 2.5 dice out of 5.

Once again, this game was provided by and available to buy at Multizone

 

When you play the Game of Thrones...

 

 

You win or you die... Yep that is the famous line from the books and the show brought to you by none other than Cersei Lannister.

 

Ok well when you play this Board Game you will not literally die but you will have a lot of fun trying to take over Westoros as one of the 6 houses (Baratheon, Stark, Lannister, Greyjoy, Tyrell and Martel). However, the less players you are, the less houses there are to choose from... I actually don't get that part but whatever.

 

On with the review...
 



Here's a game that, when you open the box, you are like WOAH that is a lot of stuff and look at the size of the game board... well it is quite intimidating and quite hard to learn unless you read the rules book very carefully and check out the tutorial video posted by Fantasy Flight Games (best to just buy the game, read the manual and play a few rounds with 3 houses by yourself - that is what I did and now I can play it as well as teach it).

So I started a game by myself as 3 different houses (Stark, Lannister and Baratheon) in order to learn the basis steps of playing this game; some of you are going to say "But you can cheat this way", true, but the point was not to win (which Stark did) but to learn and review.

House setup after a few rounds.

Almost every step of the game I had to re-read the section in the manual until I got it straight the head but even then, I would sometimes make mistakes. For instance I was using Raid orders to remove March orders and you can't do that... Or using the special order of the consolidate power to gain more power instead of either choose to gain more power or to muster new units and a stronghold or castle... Or finally figuring out how ships work. Yep there is a lot to learn in this game including playing Westoros cards, defending against wildling attacks, planning your next move, trying to bargain with other players and make alliances and then breaking them when you are in a good position and so much more.

 

I do love all the details; from the house cards, to the power tokens and the board is just beautiful... large but beautiful. What is cool is that FFG used the same art work from their card game on this game or vice versa (not sure which was first).

 

As you can see, the board is huge and the screens are used to hide the total number of power tokens you have, which are used to bid on the influence tracks.

The fewer players there are, the less houses you can choose from but also there are areas on the board that you cannot even set foot in.

 

This is a really hard game and could take up to 4 hours to play (if you are 6 players). I really enjoyed it and would love to see how this game actually plays out with other players. Like I said the details are awesome and it is a must have for any Game of Thrones fan out there.

 

I find that this game can be easily learned if you know how to play Risk... take a chance at expanding and take the chance of losing the advantage. The picture here shows the round track and the Victory track. If the 10 rounds are up, the house closest to controlling 7 castles or strongholds is the winner, but if a house gets to the 7 before the 10 rounds are up, then kudos to them and they win.

I will quickly go through the gameplay:
Each house screen tells you how to setup your starting positions on the influence tracks, the supply line and the victory track and where to place your starting units.

First round you do not play Westeros cards, you start with placing orders on areas you control with at least one unit on it (a unit is represented by the little plastic figurines - footman, knight, ship and siege machine).

Then, you reveal the orders by all players.

Then, you do the orders revealed in this order:

1. Raid orders
2. March orders (which leads to combat and that is a whole separate area to learn...)
• You declare which area you are going into
• If there are enemy units, you start a combat, otherwise you simply take control of the area.
• In combat you total the unit strength (footmen = 1, knights = 2, ships = 1 and siege machines = 4 - note that siege machines only count their strength when in a controlled area with a stronghold or castle), then you add the strength of the house card you play and then add any bonuses if you hold the Valyrian blade and then resolve the conflict (the house with the highest strength wins and then counting the number of swords or towers on house cards - swords determine how many units are lost from the battle and towers determine how many of those units are safe from the swords - and then retreating the units - for the losing house, to either an empty area or to a friendly controlled area - for the winning house, well they take control of the new area).
• You can also use the defense orders and the support orders in combat in order to help you win or defend.
3. Consolidate power orders.

When all this is done and the board is all clean, the next round begins, but this time you must play a card from each of the three decks of cards (I, II, III) in the Westeros area and do whatever the card says to do (from being attacked by Wildlings to Mustering new units to Adjusting the Supply track).

Then you continue as you did in the first round until there is a winner.



I don't know what else I can say about this game other than how awesome it is and what fun you can have with a lot of players. Also, a great replay value because no player ever thinks the same.

I will definitely give this game a 5 dice out of 5.

This game was provided by and available at:

You are litterally building with dice.

There are all sorts of dice games out there, but when you here dice building game, you think ok like a deck building game right? Well this game actually builds something using the actual dice.

The game is Blueprints, not even on the shelves yet. Multizone was nice enough to lend me a copy of the game to get to know and play it and then review it.

Well Frankly this game is as simple as it gets, ok not as simple as Zombie Dice but close.

The premise of the game is to roll dice and build what is illustrated on the blueprint card. Simple no!!!

You do this over 3 rounds and at the end of each round you count the points and give out award cards and at also reward cards (frankly I did not use the reward cards).

Here is a typical 4 player setup:

Each player gets a screen to hide what blueprint they are trying to reproduce and on the back of those screens it shows how to score your points (this is handy when planning your strategy of what resource to use to build your blueprint).

Let's talk about the game play:
The first player is chosen by who built the last thing (in real life) and then on the following rounds, whoever scored lowest goes first and play proceeds in a clockwise order.
The first player than chooses 7 dice from the dice bag (which by the way is really too small for the number of dice they give you so get a bigger bag if you can) and rolls them in the middle of the gaming area and then you place them in numerical order (lowest to highest). The color of the dice do matter in this game but not when placing them on the game area: Clear = glass, Black = stone, Brown = wood and Green = recycled.

The colors of the dice come into play for scoring:

I don't know if you can well or not, but wood dice give you points (you might want to read the screens to see the actual point amounts) depending on how many other dice are touching it (top, bottom, left, right, front, behind). Glass dice give you points for top face value of the dice. Stone dice give you points depending on what level (how high) they are. Finally, the recycled dice give you points for each green dice you use in general to build your blueprint.

So there is quite a bit of strategy needed for this game, but even though it says that the minimum age is 14 years old, I played this with my two young boys and they had fun trying to pick the right dice and just build.

So moving on with the gameplay, again with the first player, he chooses one of the dice in the game area and places it on his or her blueprint taking into account that if you need to build multiple levels you must place a dice with a face value greater than or equal to the dice below it (example: you have a green dice on the bottom with a 3 showing, you must place a dice - any color - above it that is either a 3 or greater) so don't go placing a 6 on the bottom otherwise you will not be able to finish your print.

Once that player picked a die, the player then chooses a random one from the bag, rolls it and places it in line with the others (never changing the face values of the ones already on the table).

Play proceeds until all players have chose and placed 6 dice on their print (however, there may be times that you cannot place a die so that die is lost and you will not be able to finish your construction and not get the extra 6 points it is worth).

Now when the round ends, you count up the points and if you noticed there were two extra dice laid out on the points card, these are used to break ties, the first player of the tie takes the top die and uses it on his print and the second uses the second die and then you recount the points. If a player completed the print, they get 6 bonus points.

Then the awards are given out, bronze to the third highest score, silver to the second and gold to the first.

And as you can see, there are also points for these cards which are added to the final score at the end of the three rounds.







So there is not much more to say about this game, I really liked it and it is a really quick game to pick up and play. I suggest this game for families and even with small kids because it helps them count and learn some minor strategies of gameplay.

I will give this game 4.5 dice out of 5.

This game was provided by and available for sale by:

Dominion made it easy to build a deck...

Hello folks, today I decided to kill 2 birds with 1 stone... figuratively speaking of course :)

Yes today I am going to review not one, not two but five yes 4 different deck building games:
Thunderstone, DC, Lord of the Rings and Star Trek.

I have to start by saying that Dominion is the game that started the deck building franchise and many different companies have taken that game as their basis in creating their own versions of games.

What is a deck building game? Is it like Magic? or Pokémon? or any other card game where you have to buy and buy and buy tons of packs, starter decks and singles just to make the right combination of cards to create the outmost powerful deck to defeat ALL your foes... No, not all; a deck building game is simple and can probably even be taught to a 5-year-old... I actually did teach my 5 year old how to play DC deck building.

The one thing that sets the deck building game apart from the card games, is that you only need to buy one simple single box and if your friends are generous enough and will play with you often enough... maybe you can all split on the cost... why not? Yes every single box is identical so don't go buying 4 boxes of DC or Star Trek or Lord of the rings... ok there are expansions that can be added to or be played separately from the 'base' game if you can say that.

The premises is simple, you start with a simple starting deck of usually 10 cards (well this is the case for these games) which are usually composed of starter cards (in DC you have punch cards and vulnerability cards, in LOTR you have a hero's weapon, some courage and despair cards, in Star Trek you have Starfleet personnel and some gadgets and in Thunderstone you have some heroes and such). Now each game is setup quite differently except for the LOTR and DC since they are all made from the same company which is a bit redundant but still gives you different gameplay value.

Let's start with Lord of the Rings (2 to 5 players):

Setup: Like I said before you get 10 cards that are given out to the players (all the same cards except that here if you choose one of the many heroes (like Aragorn, Gimli, Merry, Pippin, Gandalf, etc.) you also get a special hero card which is usually an item or a maneuver card). Then you place the Corruption cards in a separate pile, the Arch enemies in a separate pile (now there is an impossible mode with the arch enemies but I frankly have not tried yet but I will soon because supposedly it is a good challenge for long time players), the valor cards into a separate pile and finally all the rest of the cards are put into a main deck which will be used to fill in the blank spaces on the table (I will get to that soon).

Once this is done, you take the top 5 cards from the main deck and lie them face up so everyone can see and this is where the game begins. So each player draws a starting hand of 5 cards from their deck and any cards that have power options on them, make it that you can purchase cards from the lineup, however, once you are done your turn, you must draw a new set of 5 cards (after discarding you previous hand, even the cards you did not use) and reveal a new card for the lineup from the main deck. Now here you could get an enemy (not the same as an arch enemy) that has an AMBUSH keyword on it... this will affect the current player directly... it could mean you lose a card, gain a corruption and so on; not usually good things, however again there are cards you can purchase have a defense capability to block these ambushes.

Each player does this one after the other and play continues on until someone decides to try and fight the current Arch Enemy. To do this, you need to have more power than what the cost of the card is (kind of like their hit points). If you can accomplish, this arch enemy now becomes part of your deck (just like any cards you picked up from the lineup) and now you must discard your current hand and played cards and draw a new hand and then flip over the next arch enemy... now they have group ambush on them which affects everyone playing unless they have a defense card.

As you can see, I currently have 2 versions of LOTR deck building games, one is the Fellowship of the ring and the other is the Two Towers (they actually have the heroes accordingly as well - you will not find Faramir in the first set and you won't find Boromir in the second set). Now they can be played as separate games (which I actually recommend) or you can mix them together to make one giant game (the rules on how to do this are included with the Two Towers set).

In the first one you have 1 way of losing the game (not including not being the player with the most victory points); run out of cards in the main deck; SIMPLE. In the second one, there are 2 ways to lose; run out of cards in the main deck or run out of cards in the WALL deck (yes there is the Hornburg wall that is part of the second set rules and once it is breached, more problems can occur to the players) .

How to win, simple defeat all the arch enemies and you all win the game, but there still has to be a single winner right? Well count up those victory points and see who did the best at building their deck.

DC deck building (2 to 5 players):

This is pretty much the same as Lord of the Rings, except that the heroes themselves have a super power on the hero card so you don't get that special card with your starting deck. You still get the starter cards and the piles of other cards are separated (super villains, kick, weakness, and the main deck). Same rules, you use power to buy cards and use power to defeat the super villains. The one difference is that when a villain is put into the lineup from the main deck, they don't have ambushes like in the LOTR, but they do have attacks for when you play them as part of your hand against other players. So again you lose by depleting the main deck or you win by defeating all super villains and you have a single winner by victory points (see not much difference - but gives you the choice of games with similar rules).

Both of theses games were created by Cryptozoic and frankly I really liked both versions (I talk about LOTR as one because they are simply add-ons). They offer tons of replay value because the super villains or archenemies never come out the same way, the hero you randomly choose at the beginning of the game makes it that your deck will change almost every game and once you play often enough, you get to know the best combos to play. There is eventually going to be an add-on to the DC game called "Heroes Unite" that will see Nightwing, Hawkman and others join forces with the current game. There is also supposed to be a third add-on game for LOTR but I have not seen any news on when that is going to happen.

So all in all, these two games each get 5 out of 5 dice... (the pics were just too big).

Moving on to Star Trek (this set also includes the add-on).

"Space, the final frontier" well you know how it goes.
Yes they made a Star Trek deck building game and why not... it is based on the same concept as LOTR and DC but it is quite different and can be played for a long time and they added different scenarios so you can play co-op. I do have to complain about the size of the box(es). As you can see in the picture to the left, there is tons of room and I have the base set and expansion in here... they filled in the blanks with styrofoam inserts (which I actually used in the Thunderstone box because there too is a lot of wasted space - I will talk about this later). The box is really sturdy though and could hold a lot of cards, now there is another expansion or a base set for the Original series, but I never saw the original series and frankly I loved TNG.

The setup is practically the same as the two other games:
You have your starting deck which includes a few ensigns and lieutenants and a few extra gizmos that help you get started on decking building quickly.
You have the main deck which contains characters, weapons, events, etc. and I believe there has to be at least 500 cards in there... well ok maybe not, there sure are a lot of cards. Oh yeah this main deck fills the empty whole in the Starbase area... which is a setup of 9 face up cards that you can purchase with XP points (not power).

Then you have the mission deck which is filled with mysterious adventures, missions, starships which you can either attack or try and diplomacy so that you can take it as your own starship (trust me, you will want to get a new starship once you see the crappy starter one you start with), wars and so on.





Finally, there are three piles for the ensigns, lieutenants and commanders you can purchase and add to your deck in order to use to buy future cards (you can pretty only buy cards using these three types of cards so make sure you have a good stock of them... however there are also come cards and characters that allow you to upgrade a card for another).

The player turns are rather simple but could get confusing at times... first you draw five cards and you can either do the following (in any order):
1- Search - which means you select a card in the starbase area and discard and replace it with a new card from the main deck (some cards let you do this more than once).
2- Purchase - buy cards from starbase or from the three other piles (ensigns, lieutenants or commanders) and add them to your deck.
3- Explore - which allows you to flip over the top card of the mission deck and attempt to win victory points by completing the goal or mission, withstanding an event, winning a war or defeating or diplomacy a starship.
4- Trash - this means you can simply take a card from your hand and trash it; no longer use it. This sometimes comes in handy if you have too many ensigns clogging up your hand.

I won't go into the exact details of the rules, so please read them carefully or search the Internet for video tutorials (which is what I do for most of my games).

This one I thought I was going to get my wife to play along because she is a huge Star Trek fan, but she actually has not tried it, however she did try the DC game and really liked that one (but in all fairness, my wife is NOT a gamer like I am). When I read the rules I found it a little hard to understand, now I mentioned before about different game versions in this game, well there are two extra scenarios where you faceoff as a team against the Borg, there are missions involving the Klingon civil war and the Romulans... for each of these scenarios, there are extra cards that need to be in the mission deck and certain starter starships to use. I have to be honest, I have not played any of the other versions but I do intend on doing so soon.

I really like this game as well, it was fun once you got into it and understood everything you could do... one think I liked, was the fact that the game did not end until someone reached 400 victory points via the mission deck, so even if the main deck ran out of cards, you simply reshuffled them and started all over. A two player game can be short, but a 5 or more player game can be long but still a lot of fun. It is fun to see all the characters from the TNG shows and the movies that involve the TNG crew... and even sometimes you will fall upon the picture of a character on a card that you will recognize the face and say "Hey this actor played another Star Trek character in another show."

I do have to say, though, that there are some really useless cards in this game, I am sure if it is because I don't really know what they do, but I just find they are cards no one would actually want to have in their decks...

All in all this game will get 3.5 dice out of 5.

Finally, THUNDERSTONE... I am sure most of you know this game as the Advanced version, well the one I have is the starter set and let me tell you, it really is a starter set... they really want you to purchase the expansions just so you can actually use some of the cool stuff this box offers...

 

Ok the great thing about this box, not the game, is that it comes with really nice dividers for all the different kinds of cards, but as I mentioned before, waste of space if you do not intend on getting the expansions... see on the right, look those are the foam inserts from Star Trek just waiting to be replaced with more cards; oh and look at that centre hole just begging to be filled by something cool... I don't know what that could be but anyways.

Onto the review... this one is a bit more complex and the goal is to the defeat the red dragon that is protecting the Thunderstone in the caves... I really suggest you read ALL the rules or play with someone who really knows what they are doing.

You start the game with basic cards and the setup of the game is quite complicated because you have to setup based on setup cards you draw beforehand... long story short, it took about 30 minutes just to set this game up... and about 2 hours to play and that was on the short version...
Now, once again you have an area (called the village) where you can buy heroes, upgrades, weapons, items and so on in order to help you defeat monsters in the cave. To enter the cave you need a torch card or a card that shows a number of torches it is worth... the more torches you play the less power you need to defeat a monster in the cave... simply put, if you enter a cave without a torch, the first monster will get a +2 power advantage, the second monster will get a +4, the next on a +6 and finally a +8 on the last guy, so if you can amass a good number of torches you can avoid these add-on powers (I hope I got that right, I don't feel like peeling through the actual rule book right now).

So you keep buying cards and entering the cave to defeat enemies in order to win the game... you only lose if, once the dragon appears, makes it's way to the first position of the cave. Simple no... well it is once you start playing.

Frankly I was hoping for something a bit more similar to LOTR and DC or even to Star Trek, but I was a tad disappointed in this one. However, if you are into it and want to proceed on adding the expansions, it might have a great replay value because right now the purpose is to destroy the dragon and that is all... and I find the cards that can make up the village area are a little weak in my opinion.

So this game will get a 2 dice out of 5.

Well that is all for now, hope you enjoyed reading about these deck building games and I hope that you will even choose to try some of them or even purchase them...

Don't forget to leave comments or questions below the post so I can have a view of what people are hoping to get from these posts.

Thanks and build on...

Games provided by and available at: Multizone

181 rue Principale Gatineau
819-685-3399

140 Boulevard Gréber Gatineau
 819-561-1411

As Host, you have the power in Spartacus A Game of Blood and Treachery

Hello gamer fans out there, finally I have my first review and it will be for a game based on a TV series (I know, ugh, these usually suck); well to tell you the truth, the first I played this and went through a game with some friends, they actually responded by saying how this was a surprise that it was so good for a game based on a TV show.



Spartacus A Game of Blood and Treachery









So as you can see by the box, it looks pretty cool right? Well it is actually really cool otherwise I would not necessarily be writing about it (ok yes I would even if it sucked - as a reader you are entitled to hear the truth sometimes).

It does say Mature Content for 17+. Well frankly there is no blood and gore coming out of the cards or plastic figurines, there is no nudity or sex whatsoever in the images and frankly if you are looking hard enough you MAY find some swear words... but good luck with that (I think I found one so far).

Now this is the base set, there is an expansion called The Serpents and The Wolf and I do have this set inserted into the game.

So we were 5 five guys playing (up to 6 players) and we had a really good time with it.

First of all, let me get down to the basics; how do we play?

There is a lot of cool stuff in the boxes for this game; coins, favor and champion tokens, tons of dice, a host marker, house tiles, house boards, market cards, intrigue, figurines and I think that is all. But what to do with all of this right? Well it is easy.

 You start by choosing either randomly or selectively your house.

 

On the house card, you will see your starting assets (number of Guards, Slaves, Gladiators and Gold) as well as some special house abilities to use during the course of the game and finally a scoring track which lets you know what level you are at and what your hand limit is for the round. If you get to 12 you win. For a short game, start everyone at 7, for a medium length game, start everyone at 4 and for the long game (about 2.5 to 3 hours) start at 0.

The level is very important in this game because the higher you are the more cards (intrigue) you can play without asking for help - a little more on this later on. And the higher the level, the more cards you have in hand.

Nonce all the players have chosen their house, they now choose their figurine that will depict them in the arena battles (more on that later).

Very Cool!!!

Then you the 'banker' hands out the assets (there are special market cards with a white border that are the starting gladiators and slaves which are randomly distributed) as described on the house cards to each player. The banker is the person in charge of taking and giving gold and flipping Market cards...

Once all this is done, you are ready to start the game, this setup could take about 15 minutes to do.

There are 4 (FOUR) phases in this game: UPKEEP, INTRIGUE, MARKET and ARENA.

During the Upkeep phase you refresh all your cards (this only happens after the first turn because you have not done any actions during the setup); refreshing a card means to flip it over to see the image side and not the back side of the card - which in turn means exhausted or used.

If you have been in battles and have injuries on either your slaves or gladiators, you can try and heal them (you must roll a 4 or greater on a single die).

Finally, you balance your ledgers - what the heck is that? you say, well you have to pay 1 gold for each gladiator you own, and receive one gold for each slave you own (i.e. if you have 3 slaves and 5 gladiators, you must pay the bank 2 gold, if you cannot afford this, you must FREE a gladiator until you are able to pay - if you have more slaves than gladiators, then you make money)

In the Intrigue phase;

you get 3 cards from the intrigue pile then you can either play a scheme card or cash in the card for gold (this is represented in the bottom left of the card). You can use your house special abilities, if able, or you use certain asset abilities (like on a slave that says you can steal gold from another house or something like that). There are also reaction cards in this pile and these are usually used to foil a scheme being played against you or you can bribe someone to get your help (yes that happens and should happen a lot in this game). You can even ask other houses for help in playing a card by using their levels and yours to add them up to be equal or higher than the cost of the card to play it and you can this by bribing them again. However, you can always bribe one person then help the other... oooohhh. TREACHERY...

Then once you are all mad at each other, it is time to set up the market;

The market is split into three steps as well; the first one is open market where all players can attempt to sell some of their better gladiators, slaves, weapons, armor and so on to hopefully get some extra gold to buy even better items or slaves, etc.
I think that is self explanatory, won't go further with that (but feel free to leave comments if you have questions).

Then the banker will place, face down, on the arena, a number of market cards equal to the number of players (4 players, 4 cards and so on). Then one card at a time, the banker reveals the first card; now each player takes all their gold and hides it from view and then places an amount in his or her hand to place the wager, the player with the highest wager wins that card... if there is a tie, you put down that money on the table and bid a second time, thus increasing the amount the person wanted to pay for that card (which could benefit you later on). And you do this for each market card until they are all gone.

Then it is time to bet  (like wagering for a card) on being host of the games; the higher you bet, the more chances you get to be the host and that comes with certain benefits.

Finally, the Arena phase; here is where being the host comes in handy. The host gains one level of influence (remember that track on the top of the house board, well you go up one). Then the host invited either 2 players to battle with their gladiators in the arena, or calls a primus (a battle of 4 players or gladiators - I say or because you could say that one team of 2 is from the same house). When it is a primus, it is 2 VS 2 but be careful, some gladiators can switch sides and it can easily become 3 VS 1.

Then the banker pays tribute to any gladiator that has favor or champion status (2 gold for favor and 5 for champion - wait am I mistaken? Sorry 6 gold for champions). Each house then has the ability to place bids on the houses battling in the arena by choosing which team or single house will win (which pays 1:1) or whether a gladiator - no matter which one - will get injured or decapitated (more on how this happens later) which pays 2:1. PS the max amount of gold you can bid on these is 3. Now once the bidding is done... time for the actual battle.

 

LET THE BATTLE BEGIN!!!
Yes look at cool this looks, figurines, dice and watch out for betrayal cards that can be played during a battle or gladiators who switch sides. I don't want to get into too may details about how the battle plays out but here is a simple version:
Each house roles blue dice to see who goes first, then decides to move and attack or attack and move (ok this is funny, I have to say, remember when I said about the language issue, well just now, I noticed on the box on the side when you open is has a nice strong profanity so ok be careful around the young ones).
You attack with the red dice and you defend with the black dice. Taking wounds costs you dice, yes you lose dice equal to the number of hits you take (read the rules for taking wounds) and as you lose dice, you either lose, get injured or get decapitated. However, the host then gets to decide whether the losing or injured gladiator lives (thumbs up) or dies (thumbs down). Once the winner is determined, you settle the wagers and the winning house gains influence and the winning gladiator(s) gets a favor token - after three, it becomes a champion.

Then you start all over.

Ok so here is my review on this... is this ok of a format, explain the game and then review it or just review it...? Please send me comments below.

I was a bit sceptical and mind-blowned when I read the rules because it seemed so difficult to play but once you play a couple of round and you make mistakes you really get into it. I really liked the betting on cards and the actual battles the most, but I find that the treachery is up there as well. You do need to be at least 3 players because otherwise you will be sending your gladiators into battle each time even if you are host (which you can do in a primus or regular battle - but it is more fun to see the others sweat it out). The contents of the box is really cool and the tokens and boards and so on are very sturdy. The dice are really nice and you get LOTS of them and even more if you buy the expansion... so many cards to play and so many cards to buy. I find this has a great replay value as well because each battle will be different and you are betting all the time and using or keeping your money.

My rating system will be used via number of dice (1 being bad and 5 being awesome).
This games gets:

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