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Nova Roma
Designer: Stan Kordonskiy
Publisher: Half-a-Kingdom Games / 25th Century Games
2023
How to Play:
Designed by Stan Kordonskiy (Endless Winter, Resurgence), Nova Roma sees you taking on the role of ‘head of an ancient and noble Roman house.’ Be the one to please the Emperor the most by the end of the game, and you’ve only gone and won! Happy days.
But what do we mean by ‘please the Emperor the most’? Well, over five rounds, you’ll be taking turns to place one of your three workers onto the grid slap bang in the middle of the main board. Take both the action displayed at the top of the row where you placed your worker, as well as the action at the end of the column. If there’s already one or more of your workers in the row or column from a previous turn, great: power up your action. If you’ve also landed in a row or column where the Emperor was randomly placed at the start of the round, even better: power up your action even more. Nice!
Those actions in the rows and columns see you competing in a range of distinct areas on the main board: constructing buildings (a nice bit of area majority tussling as well as a point scoring card for your immediate troubles), chariot racing, more racing on the high seas as well as hiring ‘specialists’ that might give you one-time, ongoing, or end-of-game bonuses. There are also spaces for some general resource gathering and a ‘wild’ space that lets you do any of the above actions (at a cost)! Powering up your actions when you place your workers is going to be key to your success however: race faster, build more, get more resources…just do more stuff!
At the start of the game, you will have drafted some tiles into your personal ‘Mosaic’ board – a square of nine different, but increasingly challenging strategic objectives. Think ‘have built X amount of buildings’ or ‘have sailed X amount of times’ type stuff. Enjoy having a game of tic-tac-toe throughout the game trying to complete rows, columns, or diagonals of those objectives for some immediate bonuses as well as end-game victory points.
After five rounds, score up how well you have done in each of the individual mini-games across the board as well as how well you have managed to tick off the strategic objectives on your Mosaic board. The person who has scored the most has managed to make the Emperor one happy chap. Good work.
Solo Headlines:
Oh, this was really enjoyable and a decent challenge. I’m not completely adverse to an all-singing, all-dancing solo mode that has a good amount of upkeep, but more often than not, I would prefer something simpler – a lot simpler – and Nova Roma makes things about as simple as it gets. That said, it still pits me against a point-scoring opponent and manages to feel quite fresh at the same time. Excellent.
I could probably summarize the solo mode rules in a sentence or two: Your opponent starts the game with a decent head start in the ‘sailing, building, and chariot racing’ parts of the main board and each round, it creeps even further forward. By the end of the game, it scores in all of those areas, regardless of whether you managed to keep pace. Cards from the main display that you’d normally discard at the end of each round? The opponent keeps them, scoring them at the end of the game. If you didn’t manage to complete some of the strategic objectives on your own personal Mosaic board? The opponent scores those points instead. The End.
It’s a simple, rudimentary process of taking a couple of cards here and there, moving its pieces a little further forward at the end of each round, and then some arbitrary scoring at the end of the game. Perfect for those who don’t mind something so basic that it could almost be a ‘Beat Your Own Score’ solo mode, yet still want something ‘opponent-like’ to compete against. But there’s something else quite tasty going on under the ultra-simplistic hood!
The fact that the solo mode starts with a decent head start in all the point-scoring areas of the main board creates palpable tension – a permanent sense that you’re lagging behind. It compels you to try and catch up, knowing that if you focus on one area, you’re neglecting another area where the opponent is already beating you. On face value, the game’s 15 turns (or 30 actions) might seem bountiful, but in reality, things are incredibly tight – any action you choose to take means you’re not taking another action elsewhere. Knowing that your opponent is already ahead and continues to move ever forwards brings about a real thrill of the chase.
The tension also increases knowing that your opponent will score points at the end of the game for any objectives on your Mosaic board that you haven’t managed to complete. These objectives therefore go from feeling ‘optional but important’ to feeling utterly essential. Your solo opponent scoring for any objectives you haven’t completed may very well be the difference between winning the game or not.
Another element I really enjoyed was trying to manipulate the ‘building’ cards that the solo mode arbitrarily receives at the end of each round – needing to get my timing perfectly right. These cards are worth 1, 2, or 3 points at the end of each round which presents lots of good choices. Can I get to the 3-pointer before the opponent does? Should I leave the 1-point card in place, knowing that the opponent will be forced to take it at the end of the game? If the solo opponent consistently hoovers up cards worth three points every round, that could be another difference between a win and a loss. Trying to manipulate it therefore into taking specific cards adds another nice little area of focus in a game that’s already bristling with things for your eyes to flit over.
The multiplayer version of the game features a tiny animal set collection mini-game with tiles to collect and cards that complement that set collection strategy. However, the solo mode officially doesn’t include this element of the game – though I don’t think it would be particularly game-breaking if players still chose to play with it included. I might however have liked a little more explicit clarity in the solo rules, telling players not to use the tiles and cards when playing solo, as well as explicitly referencing a couple of other very slight differences in end-game scoring for the solo player. A very minor criticism, however.
Challenge-wise, Nova Roma’s solo mode felt just right. In my first 10 plays, I lost the first six games on Easy mode and genuinely scratched my head a little in frustration, thinking that a win was never going to arrive. It arrived in game number seven, and from then on I felt quite confident of winning each time on Easy mode, and even managed a solitary Normal mode victory. I suspect that I could play this game for the rest of my life and probably never win on Hard mode. Things felt pitched just right for this Average Joe player. Solo game plays in c.75mins, possibly a little quicker for those less prone to chewing over every possible option every single turn!
I’ve filed this one on the solo shelf marked ‘simple solo mode, tricky to beat, but heaps of fun trying’. Enjoyed it a lot.
General Headlines:
Before I delve into the heart of the game, I’d like to give a big thumbs up to Nova Roma’s rulebook. I don’t usually mention rulebooks in my reviews, and if I do, it’s usually to vent some frustrations! However, credit where it’s due: Nova Roma’s rulebook was splendid. As someone who learns better visually (YouTube is often my friend), I found that just one thorough read-through of Nova Roma cover to cover gave me the confidence to start my first play. Okay, it’s a medium-weight game, so the ruleset isn’t the heaviest, but even so, kudos to the rulebook for being exemplary in my humble (and subjective!) opinion.
A generally splendid production - big, chunky wooden pieces, good graphic design making things feel really intuitive, and some ever-quirky artwork from The Mico. There is a lot to like here. A couple of tiny (and I mean extremely tiny) gripes: Some of the artwork on the cards is repeated rather than being unique – but I am being a spoiled brat there, expecting every card to be unique! I just like looking at The Mico’s art, and the more I can have, the better, but I know how expensive it may be to have such a big stack of cards, each with unique character art. Additionally, a couple of the tokens in the game (chariot race markers and VP markers) are cardboard in a sea of other chunky wooden pieces, and I might get around to replacing them with wood. It’s a minor gripe, as I say – it’s an otherwise very nice production regardless. Where it might be lacking in these very tiny places, it more than makes up for it everywhere else.
I was a big fan of the recent title Barcelona by Dani Garcia, in no small part due to its splendid worker placement mechanism - place a worker in a grid and take the action in the row and the action in the column. Loved, loved, loved that decision space of needing to seek out and balance two optimum actions rather than just one each turn. Nova Roma turns this up a notch even further by strengthening your individual actions if you place in a row or column that you have already used. Lots of planning ahead - you’re no longer thinking only about this turn’s actions but also about how your worker placement this round might power up your next turn and even the turn after that. There’s lots of pivoting too as the space that you were desperate to use, having lined up your workers with a grand scheme in mind, gets snatched by either your opponent or the solo opponent! Aaarrrrgh. The fact that the actions in each row and column are variable (like in Barcelona) makes each game feel like a unique puzzle to try and solve. It all makes for a good few analysis paralysis moments as you think through every possible row and column combination each turn to find the most optimum one. This might create a little bit of downtime in multiplayer games, but in the solo game, you can deliciously ponder and plot your worker placement route to victory at your leisure without the pressure of other players waiting for you to finish your turn. I love it.
Talking about those mini-games, while they don’t all feel quite as distinct as they do in other similar games that I have played (I’m thinking specifically of Gugong and Tekhenu), they aren’t far off, and they hang together really nicely – particularly as you always feel one resource short of wanting to do the thing that you really, reeeeaaaaallly want to do. This forces you to shift your focus, pivot your plans, and try to grind up enough resources to return back to Plan A. Nothing comes easy; this isn’t just a case of being able to take action after action unimpeded. Don’t have the corn? You won’t be sailing. Don’t have stone? You won’t be building, etc. Using an action to gain those resources can feel like you are missing out on a more important action, as you sense the ‘race’ element of the game creeping more and more away from you and you desperately want to catch up. Playing ‘specialist’ cards into your display for ongoing, one-time, or end-of-game bonuses also uses up an action and feels like a ‘short-term pain = long-term gain’ action, as the race continues on without you. However, there are certainly some delicious choices regarding which Specialist cards might be best to snaffle and get into play. They feel crucial to a victory.
However, it was the Mosaic board that was a personal favourite for me in Nova Roma. I’m a huge fan of heavily signposted strategic objectives in a Euro game. Not only are there nine of them of varying difficulties there for me to chase right from the start of the game, but also trying to achieve them feels like / is a little game of tic-tac-toe for bonuses or end-game victory points. The fact that your Mosaic board is different each game ensures that you approach each game differently. I might be really good at the sailing mini-game, but if my objectives are more geared towards the building mini-game, then I need to start getting good at that or else lose! The mosaic board makes you become an all-round good player – and oh boy, you’re going to need to be an all-rounder to compete here in Rome!
At a Glance:
+ Colourful and quirky table presence – with unmistakeable art from The Mico.
+ Great central worker placement mechanism of ‘take the action in both the row and column’
+ The chase to try and power up your worker placement actions is great.
+ Excellent strategic objectives to chase – tick them off one by one in a game of tic-tac-toe for extra points.
+ Solo mode is simple as it gets to operate, but is a tricky challenge to overcome.
+ A palpable tension throughout as a good chunk of the game involves a ‘race to be ahead’ element.
+ / - The mini games in the game perhaps aren’t as distinct and varied as I have seen in other similar games but still make for an enjoyable experience.
Final Score:
8.5 out of 10 (Reviewed after 11 plays)
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