Carthage Board Game First Impressions

Carthage is all about that gladiatorial life…

…just watch out for those spikey pillars.

Enter the theatre of Carthage where only one Gladiator will survive. Take heed for every move could be your last!

Carthage Game Play

Players choose a gladiator that comes with a mini, player board and a deck of action cards. The player board tracks Armour which starts at 15 and Favour which starts at 0.

In Turn Order, players place their Gladiator along the outside edge of the arena.

Phase 1 – Theater Phase

Basically, this phase starts with a bit of tidying up from the last round that we won’t go into here.

Then a theatre card is flipped face-up from the deck and resolved. These have several effects on the game, they’re basically event cards.

Phase 2 – Action Phase

In Turn Order, players play an action card and resolve it. These have 4 main abilities:

Movement (Blue Foot) – Move X spaces in the Arena.
Damage (Red Blood) – Deal X Damage to an opponent occupying an adjacent space. That opponent then moves
their armour down that many spaces.
Armour (Green Helmet) – Gain that much armour.
Favour (Yellow Cup) – Move the favour cube up that many spaces on your Player Board.

There are some tokens in the arena players can interact with, depending on how the game was set up.

Favour – Gain that much favour.
Damage – Immediately cause that much damage to an adjacent opponent.
Movement – Immediately move that many spaces.
Armour – Gain that much armour.
Pillar – Doesn’t do anything, just a blockage.
Spiked Pillar – Like a pillar, but deals 1 damage to a player knocked into it.

Phase 3 – Favor Phase

Players now spend their favour buying new action cards to add to their deck or use one of the four actions on the game board. These actions are:

Initiate – Take the Starting Player Token.
Focus – Remove a card you don’t want from the discard pile of the player deck.
Evaluate – Replace the 5 available action cards
Lobby – Choose a card from the Theater deck discard pile and place it face down on top of the
deck.

Once a gladiator goes down to 0 armour they are eliminated. Be the last gladiator left to win.

Theme

I do like the theme. I like the ‘favour’ mechanism of playing up to the crowd and your Gladiator feeding off it, getting more skilled in the process.

Setup

Copy a setup from the rulebook and put cards and things around. I didn’t have a hand in setting up but it didn’t take long.

Components & Artwork

The minis are OK, not great. This is the first game I’ve seen from SAS Creative I believe, they’re not CMON by any means but they do the job.

I would have also liked double-layered player boards to keep those cubes in place.

The art is great. It’s a style I really like and although seemingly a bit progressive for the theme, it looks great.

Ease of Teaching

If you know how to play a deck-building game this is easy to pick up. The symbols are clear and few in number so you can get to grips with things quickly.

Carthage Summary

I do like arena fighting games but most are for 2 players. Adrenaline plays more, but most of the others that play more than 2 players require team play. Starcadia Quest: Showdown is the only one I own and that’s a big game to cart around to play 1v1.

Carthage is great as it’s nice and simple to play so turns are really quick. You only have a few things to track so you’re not bogged down in detail. Also, there is only one goal… kill. Ok, well, and survive but kill too.

Sometimes you can have a bit of a nothing turn depending on your draw but they don’t happen too often. You can also get picked on by the other players, but that’s when you know you need to back off out of range.

But if you like a nice quick deck-builder with a different theme then give it a go.

Jesta ThaRogue