Total War: ROME – The Board Game is good, but is it a Pyrrhic victory?

Total War is one of my favourite video game series. You can imagine my excitement when I saw that Total War: ROME – The Board Game was in development and immediately began to imagine how they might have captured some of the best mechanics from the much-loved games. The reality is that somehow, passionate developer Simon Hall has captured a huge amount of what makes Total War such a classic — but in doing so, his ambition may potentially have overstretched the mechanisms and systems available to him. 

Total War: ROME – The Board Game is without doubt one of the most far-reaching board games that many of you will play, and despite obvious efforts to simplify it, I think it’s this scope that is both its best and its most challenging feature. I feel as though listing all of its features would be nigh on impossible for a written review, but I’m going to try and give you a sense of what you might expect here.

For starters, the players are going to choose one of the four nations included in the base game — this includes Rome, Carthage, Greece and the combined Barbarian tribes of Gaul and Germania. Each of these has several unique features, most notably including a completely unique deck of army cards and a comprehensive technology tree that can be developed throughout the game. To emphasise the level of focus we’re discussing here, one of the Roman tech-tree upgrades means that the Roman player will replace their entire deck of army cards with a replacement deck that represents the Marian Reforms. 

However, despite the breadth of its features, Total War: ROME – The Board Game has clearly been designed to favour simplicity wherever possible. To name some examples which I’ll come back to later — combat is a dice based affair where entire units can be killed in a single hit, whilst the actions of agents are often resolved instantly or at worst (in terms of timing) after a quick roll of the dice. This, I think, is because any other system would make an already slow game excruciatingly ponderous for players who are waiting for their turn.

Each game begins with an initiative phase that will be repeated at the beginning of each round thereafter. The initiative is decided by the players being dealt cards with a value between one and X, where X is the number of players (i.e. 1-4 in a four player game) or potentially up to 12 if you have the additional faction booster pack. Each player can then commit gold to whatever number they already drew, with the player who has the highest total then able to determine both who will act first and the direction (clockwise or anti-clockwise) in which play will go.

After this, play moves onto the agent phase and this is where things get interesting — in both good and bad ways. Each player initially draws five action cards for this phase (and draws until they have five in later Agent phases) and then decides what to do with them. Each player has three agent models that can move up to five spaces across land and sea, with sea movement being limited to spaces with ports — i.e. an agent could move one across land, then three across sea (from port to port) and then one more on land.

Each action card is multi-use and there are aspects here that could confuse less experienced players. A card can be used for its symbol (top left), its written effect (bottom) or simply as cash (top right.) For symbol actions, the effect on the card almost always has to link to an agent and affects only the region they are in — for example sowing discord, assassinating a general or robbing a wealthy city. For the written effect, the opposite is most often true — with the player able to pick an effect and just activate it, however this only applies for cards that list the “agent phase” along the bottom. The final option, cash, simply allows a player to cash an action card in for money. 

Bear in mind that each player will move all three agents and resolve up to five Action cards in this phase before passing to the next player. In an extreme example, this can cause massive changes to the board before a sword is even raised. It’s not uncommon for at least two of the capital cities (Rome and Carthage being the typical targets) to be subject to at least two revolts on the first turn, and even in one extreme example, for a significant general to have been assassinated.

I’m going to try and review elements of Total War: ROME – The Board Game as I describe them, such is the size and scale of it, and starting with the agent phase, you’re probably going to identify the initial sentiment that I’ll probably repeat several times as I go. In short, I find the agent phase to be quite reminiscent of the game, and quite fun, but unbelievably swingy for a board game and on most occasions, a bit of a slog for later players to sit through. 

For a dominant central player (like Rome), watching two or even all three of your opponents tear down your cities and armies with next to no chance to reply (there are some action cards that do provide defense) is infuriating and far from fun. I appreciate what is intended here and I recognise it as a part of the video game, but I don’t enjoy the implementation of it here and I think perhaps if I play more (which I might well do) I would probably suggest taking one agent turn and then passing so that at the very least, the phase feels more dynamic. 

After this, there’s a tax phase that I am not going to cover here — but for completeness this is where you’ll draw all your gold from the regions that you control. The reason I mentioned unrest earlier is that one unrest token will reduce tax revenue, whilst two will remove it entirely. This makes crippling enemy economies a significant part of Total War: ROME – The Board Game and one that you must take into account as you play.

Next up is the campaign phase, and during this step, each player (again taking all their actions before passing) will place armies (and/or navies) onto the board, move them and potentially take other actions such as subjugating new regions or quelling unrest. This is where a lot of the real excitement in Total War: ROME – The Board Game comes from, and there’s definitely a sentiment that moving armies, positioning them strategically and deciding when to risk them with a potentially hazardous sea crossing is some of the most fun you can have with Total War: ROME – The Board Game.

Additionally, each army in Total War: ROME – The Board Game consists of up to ten cards — each including either a unit or a general that will add its weight to battle. These cards are kept face down in stacks beneath each army slot on the players personal board, meaning that unless an agent action has forced that player to reveal them (or later a better quality general might get a sneak peak) then the actual content of an army will be a mystery to the other players, although the number of cards in each stack is public information.

Coming to my thoughts on the campaign phase, and as I’ve said this is one of the most interesting parts of the game, however, that comes with caveats. Firstly, turns can take an absolute age. At the outset of the game (and probably for at least the two or three rounds after until battles have taken their toll) each player will have access to four full armies and two navies, with potentially all six “things” being moved, engaging in dice rolling and potentially having to do a much more drawn out battle with one or more other players. For the player in the last initiative slot, that’s potentially eighteen movements to sit through, which is optimistically 20 minutes or so.

There’s also some fiddliness here that does rear its head, especially as the game wears on. For example armies made up entirely of cavalry move faster than those with infantry — but erm, who checks that when the army stacks are meant to be secret? Armies can join a navy at a cost of one movement for each and disembark in the same way, so you sometimes have to move an army two to get here and then move a navy three to get there and then spend a point of movement from both to embark.

Navies also have intercept rules meaning that if an opposing navy passes by in an adjacent space, a battle may be forced. Conversely, any ship in port cannot be attacked.  It does all work in a fairly logical way (especially if you know the video game), but it also feels quite “loose” to me in terms of modern board game conventions and mechanics.

Of course, the clue as to what Total War: ROME – The Board Game is really all about comes in the name, and you can’t fight wars without doing battle. When armies meet, they must either retreat or fight — with a successful attempt to retreat being determined by a roll-off between the two generals. In short, a better general should have a better chance of bringing a retreating foe to battle (or will have a better chance of retreating themselves) and this in itself feels logical and works well.

When battle is joined, Total War: ROME – The Board Game changes dramatically from a map based game that might feel a bit like Risk or any of a hundred other games to some, to something that really explores the nuances of ancient battles (albeit in a simplified way). To mimic this, and considering I’ve already written three pages, I’m going to massively simplify the explanation here for ease of reading.

In short, players are going to set up a battle (using the battle board expansion if they have it, or if not just out on the table) by understanding the terrain first and then comparing generals. The first part of this (terrain) determines how many skirmishes (or phases of battle) must be fought using the “difficult terrain” dice on cards (which often favours lighter or less formal troops and certainly infantry over cavalry or chariots) whilst any battles after that will be fought using “good going” dice. Having not mentioned the difference in dice before, Total War: ROME – The Board Game features five colours of skull dice ranging from “rubbish” to “almost inevitable” in terms of results.

Whether fighting for terrain or in good going, each phase of battle takes place as a head to head fight between two units — one on each side and picked in secret. If one side has a better general than the other, then they’ll get a number of reveal actions equal to the difference in stars between the two generals. A reveal means that the “better” general can force the other player to reveal one of their battle cards first, allowing the better general to then change their choice to suit them.

When each card has faced off (and suffered wounds or even been killed altogether) there may be some extra attacks to deal with for cards that one side has in excess over the other or when cavalry is involved and must fight for the wings etc. A few other rules apply, such as for example with artillery (which the barbarians will never get) that can affect army size and attack first, and there’s also a rule about the need for main battle cards. This latter one was missed a lot, and basically it means that if a force is ever made up of skirmishers, irregulars and similar unit types (all marked with the appropriate symbols) then it will simply disband as a fighting force.

Following this, a number of things can happen — including the disbanding of armies that are completely broken, but more often than not, both armies will survive and if there is a victor, then points will be dished out based on the extent of their victory. I really can’t stress enough how the battle system in Total War: ROME – The Board Game simultaneously soars at its highest point, and falters in the dirt at its lowest. 

Some battles devolve into such a chaos of muddled rules and wasted time that neither party knows what has happened and struggles to correct it, whilst others deliver the kind of masterful victories of generals like Alexander, Caesar or Hannibal — sometimes against all odds — and have everyone around the table cheering and sighing.

Now, I really need to wrap this up, but there’s still plenty more to cover. There are those tech trees into which you can invest your gold, there’s the ability to recruit new unit cards from a huge stack and there are even buildings as varied as barracks and markets that layer in small and usually manageable (but nonetheless additional) rules. I’ve played some heavy, heavy games in my time and I don’t think Total War: ROME – The Board Game is quite as heavy as the most complex of them, yet sadly, somehow, it manages to achieve similarly complex things but with a veneer of fiddliness and complexity that will just about take it out of reach for most people.

In summary then, Total War: ROME – The Board Game is a really nice looking game that has the same lofty ambitions as a young Julius Caesar. You can “feel” how it stands among the games around it with shoulders back and chin held high, its systems and rich features glistening in the Mediterranean sun. Yet when night falls, in the shadows of torchlight in the back streets of Rome, fiddly rules and excessive downtime plot its downfall — ultimately leaving Total War: ROME – The Board Game blood splattered and broken on the steps of The Forum. A valiant effort that captures so much of the video game, there’s definitely something here and I will explore it some more, but be cautious who you introduce it to and especially how long you set out to play it.

Total War; Rome – The Board Game is currently available online, the most reliable stockist at time of writing appears to be Zatu Games.

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