If you find yourself attracted to games loaded with player interaction, direct brutal conflict, take-that moments, buckets of dice, and cool plastic guys with swords, then Spartacus is the game created just for you.  In Spartacus, each player represents a House in ancient Rome.  Players manage their money, their alliances, and the gladiatorial prowess of their holdings to earn influence.  Once you have 12 influence, you have won the game.

Spartacus is apparently based on a television show.  I guess if you’re into the show, that would be a plus, but by no means do you need to have any familiarity with the show to appreciate the board game.  The game setting and concepts are broadly familiar to most folks without knowledge of the TV program.  I’ve never seen a minute of the show but I’ve managed to be quite smitten with this game.

Every part of the game lends itself to open ended negotiation. Money may change hands at any time.  The system forces players to collaborate and play politics – and I don’t mean pushing cubes around that represent a political value, but in verbal sparring and metagame positioning.

After taking care of some upkeep, each round starts with the intrigue phase.  Each player is dealt 3 intrigue cards.  For each card, a player can choose to play it, trash it for its monetary value, or save it for later.  Many cards are better later in the game, but a hand limit forces players into hard hand management choices.

Courtesy of boardgamegeek user Sentieiro

The thing that really makes these cards interesting is that they have a minimum influence requirement in order to play them.  So if you only have 6 influence, you can’t play any cards that require 7 or more influence.  At least, you can’t play them at your unilateral discretion.  Players may collude to pool their influence to get cards played.  Some of the cards enrich a player.  Opponents will find themselves cutting a deal to work together to get the card played.

While some cards will mutually benefit players, many others screw an opponent.  This screwage will also likewise require collaboration among the players.  It’s usually pretty easy for player A to convince player B to screw player Me, but the fun part is when the screwage victim starts to pay off people to not collaborate or direct their attention elsewhere.  The hand limit combined with the minimum influence requirements on the cards really drive players to conspire.

Sometimes accumulating influence can backfire.  Just like a trapped crab climbing out of a bucket that gets pulled back down by the other crabs, if you jump ahead in influence, you’ll become a target.  This motivates you to want to not jump ahead and hoard your influence accumulating tricks until one last push at the end.  However, the minimum influence requirement motivates you to grab influence as quick as possible so you can play more cards without needing to collaborate with your opponents.

You are not without recourse in dealing with screwage.  Each player has guards at their disposal.  When someone plays a card to thwack you, you can choose to discard one of your guards.  After discarding the guard, you have a die roll with a fifty/fifty chance of foiling the scheme.  Because each guard is a one time use, and because guards are only successful half the time, it makes it an interesting decision on when to make the best use of your guards.  Looking at your opponent’s stash of guards is another thing to take into consideration when you decide who to screw.

After players are done playing their intrigue cards, we then move on to the market phase.  Players will have gladiators, slaves, equipment, and guards at their disposal.  At this time they may sell these assets to the bank or to each other.  This part of the market phase truly is a free, open market, allowing for the exchange of merchandise.  The open ended negotiation of buying your opponent’s stuff seems like a good idea, but it falls flat in my group and we skip over it pretty fast without much haggling or dealing.

Courtesy of boardgamegeek user Sentieiro

Then some new assets come up for auction.  Players secretly jam the money they intend to bid into their fist and simultaneously reveal.  Only the winner pays any money.  Generally, I don’t find auctions too engaging, but these auctions are fast, quick, and simple, leaving you with the core decision elements of resource management and prioritization.

After players undergo temptation to bid on sweaty fighters and attractive slaves, then the most important thing comes up for auction:  The Host title.

The Host, firstly, increases their influence by one.  This is one of the most straightforward ways to increase your influence.  If a player doesn’t have the muscle to compete in the arena, they still have a path to victory by hosting the games.  The host also has the decision of which players are going to fight in the arena.  Many deals, agreements, and bribes usually accompany this decision.  By doing so, the Host may be able to recoup some of the money spent on the title.  Sometimes players are willing to pay to let their gladiator have a chance at glory, and sometimes players are willing to pay to avoid a lopsided matchup that they will surely lose.

Once a player is invited to the games, he can decline the invitation, but it comes with a stiff -1 influence penalty.  If he accepts, he then chooses a combatant and possibly some equipment.  Which combatant the player chooses to send into the fight is also something up for negotiation.  Players are invited, accept, and put their fighter out one at a time.

Once the combatants are selected, players get a chance to dabble in another really cool system.  They place wagers on who will win the fight.  Not only are bets placed on who will win, but also on exactly to what degree the loser will be crushed.  Placing wagers combines risk management with resource management.  This can be one of the most lucrative ways to make money, if your bets pay off.  It also makes it so that the players that aren’t fighting in the arena still have skin in the game and a vested interest in the outcome.  So even if you’re not participating in the fight, you’re still interested in what’s going on.

Courtesy of boardgamegeek user Markus Hagenauer

Then the gladiators battle for glory.  The combat resolution method:  Buckets of Dice.  Each combatant has three attributes: attack, defense, and speed.  Each attribute has a value, and the player rolls dice equal to the value.  Your total dice for all your attributes also serves as your health.  As a combatant suffers hits, they have to discard dice, and therefore weakening the corresponding attribute.  This is one of the most interesting decisions in battle.  Attack, defense, and speed are all vital, and deciding which to lose is usually tough.

The first thing that happens in combat is players roll all of their speed dice and sum the result.  The highest roller gets to choose which player will go first.  Whoever goes first then chooses to attack and move.  It’s a player’s choice in which order they move or attack.   After the second player has moved and attacked, it cycles back to a new initiative roll.  It repeats until a combatant has been defeated.

When you attack, you roll all of your remaining available attack dice.  The opposing combatant will roll defense dice in response.  Players compare the highest attack die to the highest defense die, the second highest to the second highest, and so on down the line.  Each time attack dice is greater than defense dice, a hit is scored.  To make things more interesting, many gladiators have a special ability.  There may also be other modifiers such as armor, weapons, and special equipment that add additional abilities.

Choosing which dice to lose can be very interesting.  The combat is great because it causes players to directly interact while having to make interesting decisions with meaningful consequences.  We’ve enjoyed the combat so much that even after the game was over, players still had an exhibition match just to see which gladiator would win.  Choosing which dice to discard makes it interesting, rolling buckets of dice makes it exciting.

The owner of the winning combatant gains an additional influence.  If the loser didn’t already get his head chopped off, the Host can decide his fate by giving thumbs up or thumbs down.  This is another decision by the host that can be up for negotiation.  The winning gladiator also gets a favor token, which means he’ll earn some tribute money if he’s ever entered into the games again.  If a gladiator wins 3 times, he becomes a champion, which means the owning household gains an additional +1 influence.

The interaction in this game is off the charts and on multiple levels.  Players are in direct, engaging dialogue to negotiate important game decisions.  Collaboration is going to be inevitably necessary, and there will be conversation to come to a decision that players agree to.  There is also the political positioning of convincing a player that everyone else is on the brink of winning, and you’re the one lagging far behind.  The game also lets you negotiate the cost of exchanging game assets.  The interaction isn’t only at the conversation level.  You are making game decisions that directly impact your opponents standing in the game.

Sparticus also features a strong narrative.  Some of the best stories are going to come from the arena.  But theres nothing about this game that feels dry and abstract.  Everything in the game is linked to a tangible thematic activity, which means everything pushes the story along.  After the game, you won’t be talking about how you won the auction to be able to convert 3 coal to power 4 cities to earn thirty three dollars, you’ll be talking about how Oenomaus ran circles around the mighty Theokeles until he was decapitated.

The game’s cover includes a note that the game is for mature audiences.  The most offensive part is that the F bomb is dropped in some of the flavor text on a couple of cards.  It’s also on the side flap of the bottom portion of the box that is revealed when you remove the lid.  There’s nothing sexually graphic in the game, although it’s obvious those female slaves aren’t out laboring on the farm. There’s blood depicted, but it’s pretty tame considering there’s images of gladiators in the midst of battle.  If your gaming is primarily in a family setting, you might be able to sanitize it with the removal of a few cards, but you’ll have to be careful with this game.

There’s nothing about this game that feels abstract, dry, or an exercise in optimizing a spreadsheet.  There isn’t a hint of multiplayer solitaire.  Players will have to directly confront, slash, screw, and manipulate each other.  And if that’s not an activity that dear friends can enjoy together, then I don’t know what is.