- We're buying lots and building resplendent libraries!
That's right, it's Foundations of Rome from Arcane Wonders.
(lively music)
This city-planning Caesar-fest
pits two to four players against one another
in a competition for glory points.
By building the most impressive and well-placed structures
in Rome, one player will be crowned
as the most influential person in the empire.
Setup begins with the city board, placed center.
Place the market board and curia board nearby.
Each player then chooses a color, and no fighting about it,
or else, you get stabbed in the Senate.
That's what happens!
Take the corresponding player board,
buildings, and ownership tokens.
Place one ownership token per player
next to the scoring track and the population track.
Randomly choose a first player,
who takes five coins to start.
Increase the starting coin for each player
progressively by one, which means the next player clockwise
takes six coins, the next seven, and so forth.
Prep the lot cards depending on the number of players.
For a four-player game, remove all the red lot cards.
For three players, also remove the purple lot cards,
and for two players, also also remove the blue lot cards.
This shrinks the board a bit for any game
with less than five players,
which uses all of the lot cards.
Now, keep your eyes peeled for the five-player expansion.
There's a link to the teaser in the description below.
Shuffle the remaining lot cards and deal six to each player.
Next, players place ownership tokens
on each lot for which they have the card.
The lot cards, including any acquired during the game,
remain in a pile in front of each player.
Split the remaining lot cards into three
approximately equal piles, and place one pile
on each of the Round 1, Round 2, and Round 3
spaces on the market board.
Finally, reveal six lot cards from the Round 1 pile
and place them in the for sale area of the market.
Gameplay occurs over three rounds,
each representing about 10 years of history in Rome.
Players take turns starting with
the first player and proceeding clockwise,
taking one of the following actions,
take income, buy a lot, or construct a building.
After taking their action, play passes to the next player.
The take income action allows a player
to petition Romulus, the king of Rome,
for five coins, which they immediately gain.
Additionally, the active player gains one coin
for each coin symbol on buildings they control in the city.
The buy a lot action may be taken only if
the active player still has ownership tokens
remaining in their personal supply.
If so, they may select and pay for one
new lot card on the market, paying its cost,
and adding it to their area.
They then place one of their ownership tokens
on the matching lot in the city.
All cards in the market then slide to the left,
and a card from the current round pile
is revealed and placed in the rightmost spot.
Once all the cards in the market have been purchased,
the round will end.
More on rounds ending in a sec.
The third action, construct a building,
allows the player to take one of their 24 buildings
and place it on the city board,
provided they own a set of adjacent lots
that match the size of the building.
Once placed, the player returns the lot ownership tokens
to their supply for later use.
During this action, a player may also build
over a building they've already constructed.
To do so, the new building must be bigger
than the building or buildings it replaces.
Constructing in this way removes a building
from the city board, replacing it with the new structure.
In all cases, this action costs zero coins.
Romulus pays for the supplies and labor in Rome.
Players continue their turns, gaining coins,
buying lots, and constructing buildings.
Once all the lot cards from a round pile have been depleted,
and all cards have been bought from the market,
all players get one final turn to collect income or build.
Then, the round ends.
At the end of each round, players
proceed through the following steps,
citizen scoring, civic building bonuses, and collect coins.
First, in citizen scoring, each player counts
the population symbols on their buildings
on the city board, marking the total
on the population track.
They then score glory points equal
to their population total.
The player or players with the most
citizens in each round score a bonus,
four glory points in Round 1,
seven in Round 2, and 10 in Round 3.
If two players tie, they both get the bonus.
Next, players receive glory points
based on their civic buildings on the city board.
These have special glory reward icons,
which provide points based on the building types
adjacent to the civic building.
The owner of such an adjacent building
doesn't matter for the purposes of scoring,
so being next to an opponent's structure
can still provide points.
Some of these icons include points
for citizens on adjacent residential buildings,
points for coins on adjacent commercial buildings,
points for adjacent civic buildings,
and points for any adjacent buildings, regardless of type.
Next, players collect coins from the bank
equal to the number of coin symbols
on their commercial buildings on the city board.
In the final round, players are instead
awarded glory points for each coin symbol.
After all players have proceeded through those steps
and collected points and coins, refill the market board
with cards from the next round's pile.
A new round begins with the player to the left
of the person who took the last turn in the previous round.
After the third round, the game ends.
Players collect glory instead of coins
for the end-of-round phase, collect victory points
for each commercial building constructed,
and players score one glory point for each
ownership token they still have on the city board.
The player who has the most glory points is appointed
the leader of the new Senate and wins the game.
And that's Foundations of Rome.
You can check out this game on Kickstarter.
And remember that some of these pieces,
like the building colors, are subject to change.
I'm Becca Scott, and if I were in the Senate,
I probably woulda stabbed Caesar, too.
Groupthink.
Anyway, you can watch me and my friends
play this game and other amazing games
on "Game the Game," right here on Geek & Sundry.
We'll see you there!
Don't stab your friends, though.
That's bad.
(lively music)
(cheerful electronic music) (pop)