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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