The Thurn and Taxis-All Roads Lead to Rome expansion consists of 2 expansions. This review only pertains to the Audience expansion.


The Rules

There are five carriages that are headed to Rome. Anytime a player closes a route and doesn't place a house in the city, the player advances the Rome carriage southward towards Rome. At the beginning of the game, each player places one of his envoys in each of the five carriages. Each of these envoys has a value of 1 to 5 victory points. The carriages will reach Rome at different points in the game. The goal is to be the last person of a particular point value to get an audience. (So if the green player gets their 5-point envoy there first, and then the yellow player gets their second, only the yellow player will get the points).

In the 2-player version, the carriages start halfway down the board, closer to Rome.


The Pieces

As someone has mentioned before, the box is cavernous. The pieces take up maybe one eighth the entire box. The carriages are wood and beautifully painted. The board is colorful and detailed, about a quarter to a third the size of the original board. The envoy cardboard chit pieces are also quite detailed and the artwork is quite nice.


My Opinions

Bear in mind that I've only played the Audience expansion in a 2-player game. My wife and I both felt that the expansion didn't really add much to the game.

There is some strategy to which carriage you should place which envoy. But since all of the carriages reached Rome well before the game ended, none of the envoys were in danger of not scoring points.

Neither of us really let the Rome carriages affect our game play.