Colosseum Board Game First Impressions
Colosseum sees players bid and trade to entertain roaming dignitaries.
Time to put on a show!
Each player is a Roman impresario – producing great spectacles in his or her arena in the hopes of attracting the most spectators.
Colosseum Game Overview
Quick Rules Summary
Players start with a basic 2-space colosseum on the board, 2 basic event programs and some asset tokens.
In phase 1 players take turns buying either a colosseum expansion, an event program, a season ticket or an Emperor’s Loge.
Phase 2 players take turns starting an auction on 3 event tiles with the winner for each auction paying the winning bid and keeping them.
Phase 3 lets players take turns trading event tokens with each other.
In phase 4 players put on events. They roll a die, (2 if they have a Loge) and move any of the Emporer, Senator or Consul pawns. Then they put on an event by matching their event tokens to the requirements of the event program.
This is worth a number of points equal to the event program depending on how many event tokens are missing. They also get a bonus for pawns in their colosseum, season tickets and other factors. Players get that many points and that much cash.
Phase 5 sees each player discard a used event token and the player in last gets one from the player in first.
How do you win?
Points are not cumulative, your score is your single biggest event score in phase 4 after 5 rounds… Highest wins.
Colosseum Main Mechanisms
Auction, Negotiation and Set Collection. it’s a really nice mix and causes a lot of player interaction.
USP
There isn’t really anything truly unique about this game. It is 15 years old at the time of writing so there may have been unique things about it back in 2007.
Theme
It’s a nice theme. It’s easy to think about the combat element of this as a game but putting on a show for the passing bigwigs is a good idea.
Setup
The setup is straightforward if you put it away well. The event tiles are the same on the front but they have 2 different backs that if separated on tear down will allow for easy setup.
Components & Artwork
The little Emporer pawns are really nice, everything else is OK.
The art is dated, but still better than the 2017 reprint.
Ease of Teaching
As with any open information game, it’s easy to teach. The 5 phases are simple on their own and the fairly large crib sheet explains everything you need to know.
As the 5 phases are fairly interlinked, players need to understand how the whole thing works.
Similar Games
Nothing directly similar obviously. But I would suggest Power Grid as an interactive auction game. I’m not a fan of negotiation and trading so I wouldn’t have a suggestion for an alternative for that.
Colosseum Review
Positives
The mix of mechanisms is fun and trying to make them all work for me was a challenge.
The phases are short so if you don’t like one, don’t worry about it which helps because….
Negatives
…I’m not a fan of negotiation so phase 3 wasn’t enjoyable.
The Emporer started in front of my colosseum so I didn’t see him until round 5, the winner had him twice as he started within reach.
I didn’t get any useful event tokens in round 1 so I didn’t get much income and then I had a poor round 2 and this snowballed.
Roll and move?
Colosseum Summary
It’s OK, but get off to a bad start or
Jesta ThaRogue
