Hoplomachus: Origins - Review

Game Name:	Hoplomachus: Origins	Published Year:	2015
Game Publisher:	Chip Theory Games	Player Scale:	1-2
Game Designer:	Adam Carlson, Josh J. Carlson	Run Time:	15-30 min

 

“Ave, Imperator, morituri te salutant”

Introduction

The Hoplomachus series brings us back to ancient times, to fight as a group of gladiators in the Roman arena games. There are currently 3 games in the series, but I will talk about the more recent one released, Hoplomachus Origins. On this one, instead of playing in the arenas of Rome, you’ll be playing in 3 different arenas of other civilisations trying to gain fame to finally make it into the greatest arena. This game differentiates from the other two in the series as the fight conditions change and it incorporates a drafting mechanic at the beginning of the game.

How it plays



The first part of the game corresponds to the drafting. The two players will have to choose, one at a time, the gladiators and tactics they wish to use for their combats. There are different gladiator houses that you can choose from and you can mix as you wish. You will choose a total of 8 chips, and in every combat, you will use a maximum of 6. You’re also limited to use only one champion per combat, though you can draft multiple if you wish, these are more powerful gladiators.

There are two different kinds of chips you can choose from. Gladiators, which have different abilities depending on their class, and different stats. There is a wide range of abilities in the game, ranging from basic attacks of different kinds to alternative attacks or passive abilities. This is one of the most interesting parts of the game as depending on the different mix of abilities you have in combat you’ll have different strategies. The other kind of chips are tactics, these are special abilities you can deploy in a fight to temper with your opponent or aid you, but at the expense of taking the space of a gladiator.



Once the draft is done, the fights begin. You will play on the 3 arenas, but at in a randomly chosen order. Every arena has a different objective. In the Atlantis Arena, the first gladiator deployed will be your leader, which will have double the life, and the objective is to kill the other leader. In El Dorado arena, both teams have a treasure chest, and your objective is to carry it to the other side of the arena. And the third arena, Xanadu, you’ll need to control the centre of the arena, where at the beginning of the round you’ll score a point for every gladiator you have in those hexes and whoever gets to 6 points first wins the fight. Alternatively, you can always win by killing all the gladiators from the other team.

The fights play with a very simple set of rules: deploy, move, attack. In a player’s turn you will be able first to deploy a gladiator and/or tactic, then you’ll be able to move all your gladiators deployed in previous rounds and finally attack with those gladiators. Then is the other player’s go. As you can see the gameplay is very simple, but there is a lot of strategy behind your choices, as the fights are brutal and fast to play, every decision matters.



As a handicap for the winner, the player who’s lost will choose one of the chips in the opponent’s pool and will eliminate it from the game. Also as you are running a house of gladiators you will earn and lose reputation as you keep winning or losing. This reputation will hold for all your games of Hoplomachus Origins, and will modify the drafting rules at the beginning of every game just for you. This is a very cool addition to the game, that you don’t need to use if you don’t like it, but is a very cool system to compare scores with your friends, and remain in the top of the reputation chart will be a real challenge, as for every 10 reputation a harder handicap will come in effect.

The solo game



The game comes with specific solo rules, in the form of 20 different trials. In the solo game, you will face different challenges against special champions. You will only draft 6 and the rules for drafting will be different for every trial. These start quite easy but will rapidly increase in difficulty and will be a real challenge in the latest ones. The premise of the solo game is that once you win a trial you can go to the next one, and if you fail you can attempt it once more or you will fall to the previous trial. The opposing team will follow some simple AI rules to move and attack, plus the champions will act depending on the dice rolls.

Opinion

The game system is very simple, so is very easy to explain and get going, but there is so much strategy in those combats with all the different abilities, that makes every game unique and very challenging to master. There is a lot of interaction between the different gladiators that you can exploit in your favour. Fights play in 5/10 min each, so is very fast to play, and it makes for a very interesting game in such short gameplay time. Just using this game, you have 33 different skills, not counting the different basic attacks. The game comes with a total of 20 Gladiators from 5 different schools, plus 8 tactics. But the good thing is that if you own the other games you can mix the units to have a bigger pool for the draft, increasing the choice and replayability of the game even further, which is already big. The solo mode is very well implemented and makes for a challenging and very entertaining game that plays fast and is quite different even if you replay the same trial.



Component wise, this is very high quality, the games are not cheap but they are worth every penny, not just for such a good gameplay but you get top notch components. All the information is displayed in the heavy poker chips and the art is quite good. The arena maps are on neoprene mats with very cool art. This game is the cheapest of the 3 in the series so it makes a good entry point if you are interested. The games can only be purchased from Chips theory games website directly, they do that to keep the cost down as and now they support EU friendly shipping with very reasonable prices. The box is quite big and it comes a bit empty, but they will probably release more content for it in the future, plus there are already a few mini expansions that are compatible if you want to increase the pool of gladiators.

The good: Lots of strategy and tactics involved in the game and it plays fast with simple game mechanics. The components are very good quality. The solo game is excellent. The house reputation is a neat addition to the game.

The bad: The price is high, you get quality, but it might put some people off. For me is worth it, and this is the best entry point being the cheapest of the three. It will take a few games until you see some abilities in play and start forging your tactics.

You might also like: Hoplomachus: The Lost Cities, Hoplomachus: Rise of Rome and Too Many Bones.

That’s it for my review of Hoplomachus Origins folks.

I’ll see you around in the arena and don’t expect mercy!

Jesus

 

Summoner's Isle Review

There is only one way, and there is only one place, where you can go to become a true Summoner; you must prove your mettle, your cunning and your skill on Summoner’s Isle.  Only those who are able to balance their energies, and wise enough to harness the powers of the land can ever hope of becoming a Summoner.

Game: Summoner's Isle

Designer: Robbie Munn

Publisher: Peculiarity

Artist: Simon Holland

Player Count: 2 - 4

Run Time: 40 - 60 mins

Summoner’s Isle is an area control game, pitching equally matches forces against one another across a small, interconnected map.  Energy is the only commodity in this game, used to determine the winner and also used for Summoning magical creatures, and as the game title suggests, you’ll be doing this quite a bit.  In this game you’ll be looking to completely and exclusively control Territories, doing so will grant you a little Energy bonus as your Summoner is more directly connect to that area of the Isle.  You’ll also want to make sure you have a few Sprites in each Territory, as these little magical creatures also buoy up your power.  Ensuring you always reap more than your sow is key to success.  It's very difficult too.

Creatures are Summoned and perform their actions in a strict order: Wryms –your Energy-draining power houses, Trolls – the stalwart core of you magical little force and Sprites – that are really only very good if you have loads of them.  Each has a different cost to Summon, each has a different amount of actions it can take, and each has its own attack/defence modifiers.  Attacking is obviously pretty good for you, as it stops your opponents controlling too many Territories, and in vanquishing an opponent’s creature you’ll earn a little Energy for your troubles.  This also makes losing each battle fairly costly.

[caption id="attachment_2830" align="alignnone" width="1920"] These are your Wym's and they are very, very hard to kill, except with another Wrym.[/caption]

At the end of each round, each player, in turn, adjusts their Energy, first depending on how much energy they have they’ll gain a little more, or even lose some.  After that their Sprites grant a little bonus before finally, the Island itself grants the dominion bonus.

Managing your Energy expenditure is a very tricky balance to master, and the whole tracker and bonus system works wonderfully to create a very neat economy.  You need to spend it to make it, literally, but if you spend it poorly, or too rashly you’ll end up out of magical-energy-pocket.  Being too conservative is also not going to do you any favours, particularly towards the end of the game.  The game, if not the other players drive you forward, it feeds on the conflict which is exactly what you need to do.

[caption id="attachment_2829" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Trolls make up the backbonme of your force, with 3 actions they can clear away Sprites and even take on a Wyrm if they're lucky[/caption]

For me, a sign of a good game is one where the ‘game’ lingers after the components have been put back in the box, and that is what has happened each and every time I played Summoner’s Isle.  As the tokens are been cleared away people are pointing at Territories saying things like “I should have protected that more.” Or “I should never have let you hold that for so long.”  Tactics were discussed and strategies refined, despite the small box size and the apparent simplicity of the game it has a deceptive strategic depth.

With only three types of creatures, one would feel that it is fairly obvious how each should be used, but that really isn’t the case.  Wyrm’s are built for attacking and Sprites are made for defence, but you need your Sprites to defend on-masse otherwise they are no good at all.  And sure, your Wyrm will charge through pretty everything on the board – but with only two actions you never want to leave your Wyrm open for attack from a host of Trolls or worse yet; another Wrym. This does mean that people who occasionally suffer from Analysis Paralysis are likely to find themselves overwhelmed with choice in this game – as there is always something you can, you will always be able to affect the ebb and flow of the game, how much and how well is all down to you.

[caption id="attachment_2828" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Sprites are an utter necessity in any game, without them, you can't hope to get enough energy for future turns, but they present a weak link in your defences[/caption]

At times it can feel like this game can be unforgiving, where errors in placement and unfortunate die rolls can be crushing, costing you creatures and energy bonuses, yet the catch up mechanic never really drops any player out of the game – I’ve seen some pretty monumental comebacks over a just a couple of turns, and I’ve seen “runaway leaders” quickly stumble and fall.

[caption id="attachment_2825" align="alignnone" width="1920"] That domination bonus is so important, sometimes you can't risk attacking[/caption]

On my playthroughs of this game I’ve found that time has been eaten up, for such a small box, Summoner’s Isle eats up the minutes, but in doing so you are rarely left out of the game with little to no downtime.  The staggering of Summoning and Actions having been broken down across the creatures meaning you will never have to wait long for your go, and yet that between your Wyrm’s attack and your Troll’s, the landscape will most likely have changed significantly.  Further to this the combat system, a simple blend of rudimentary deterministic and a single die roll, keeps the pace of action up – with such a small map, and with scores usually very tight and balanced, each player is invested in all combats, even when they are not their own.  I found that there was plenty of whooping and groaning from everyone around the table when the die was cast – in fact I was told to stop bringing “really fun games” to my gaming club as “fun” interferes with all the MtG that other people are trying to concentrate on.  True story.

Summoner’s Isle is a beautiful, dynamic game of area control and hand/troop management with a carefully balanced economy.  The game propels you forward into the conflict which is resolved quickly, deftly and – often – loudly.  The catch-up energy tracker means that getting too far ahead is a really hard fought battle, and falling behind is easy to recover from. Win or lose a game of Summoner’s Isle you’ll want to come back as you’ll be convinced you can play it better, but so will everyone else.

Edit: Summoner's Isle will be coming to Kickstarter sometime in September 2018 - the best way to stay informed is to Like the Summoner's Isle Facebook page here.