This game has it all. Well under 30 minute play time (usually about 20 min or so). Its artwork is excellent and holds the theme very well. The game does reflect something of trying to run a Roman republic with characters and buildings. It’s no Republic of Rome game politically or Hannibal RvC militarily, but has enough of the ideas that it plays out nicely. It’s also vastly simpler than either of those!

Most of these small 2 player games are either abstract or luck driven. Many of the latter come down to some degree of managing the luck as best you can. Abstract games are usually brain burners. I don’t want my small game to be so intellectually challenging. Any game requires you to think but the permutations on abstract thinking games gets boring for me. Most likely cause I am not very good at that sort of thing. I tend to be a bit more creative in my thinking and Roma allows me a degree of freedom in this respect.

I like games that have a bit of chance to them. Its makes a game less predictable and allows for more random variation from game to game. Usually, a game has only one or two elements of luck for these small 2 player jobbies. As a result they tend to have their newness and playability wear off very quickly. Many elements of Roma's play have a degree of randomness, but as the game progresses you are able to manipulate that to your advantage. In other words play the hand that’s dealt to you and improve it as you go along.

You can alter the cards in play based on you willingness to play the hand as is or commit to getting the hand you want. Die rolls allow you to draw new cards and the number on the die determines how many you can look at, but you can only keep one of those. Don’t like any? Spend another die roll and look at more. You get 3 die rolls per turn.

Need money? Use a die to generate some. The number on the die is how much you get! Some people complain about the Mercator card. Bah, if you don’t want your opponent to have it, kill him! Mercator can buy victory points from your opponent and ultimately when these have been depleted from either your hand or the pool the game is over.

I like to think of the generation of victory points as how much you are able to please your populace. Forums are a great way of generating these points. If you run out of victory points you loose. If the victory point pool runs out, he who has the most points wins.

You get to roll dice, but how those dice are used is up to you. So you really do manage the luck and how well you can make those decisions is your life line. I have played a lot of games so far and I can say that it is going to go strong for us for many, many more plays. No other short two player game has lasted near the number of plays this one has. Every game is fun fun fun and different in the way it plays out. There isn’t one strategy that will always work. It has to change each game based on the available options at any given moment.