From the GMT P500 web page:
From the time that the great Greek city states tore at one another in the Peloponnesian wars, through their subjugation by Philip of Macedon and Alexander the Great’s destruction of the Persian Empire, and the wars among Alexander’s successors . . . over the course of that turbulent century in the East, a new power was scraping its way to the top in the west.
Rome! It began that same century as no more than the leading city of a small league of Latin communities. It ended it controlling all of Italy and on the doorstep to Western preeminence–with only Carthage standing in its way.
The Sword of Rome is the latest in GMT’s acclaimed line of card-driven board games. It uses the popular base system invented by Mark Herman and featured in Ted Raicer’s Paths of Glory. This time, event cards and point-to-point maneuver enable up to four players to recreate the vicious struggles among the peoples of Italy and Sicily in 4th and 3rd Centuries BC. Who will dominate the western Mediterranean–and with it earn the right to vie for control of the known world?
Choose the technologically advanced but fractious Greeks, the fierce and inscrutable Gauls, the Etruscans and their crafty Samnite mountain allies, or the ever efficient Romans. Through a unique adaptation of the event-card system, take on the roles of additional contenders such as Gallic tribes from across the Alps or the mighty naval power of Carthage. Command as the great figures of the age: Rome’s military savior Camillus; Syracusan tyrants from Dionysius to Agathocles, who dared to assault Carthage itself; and Pyrrhus of Epirus, the adventurer king who sought to save the western Greeks.
The Sword of Rome includes rules and events for city loyalty, Roman colonies, tribal raids, Gallic indiscipline, Greek siege craft, Indian war elephants, Roman and Macedonian-style infantry tactics, the mountain fastness of Samnium, and much, much more. The game covers over 100 years of classical history in just 9 hands of cards.
The interplay of each power’s special strengths, of the strategy decks’ 152 event cards, and of up to four players’ diplomatic acumen provides unlimited variety. But the rules remain at low-moderate complexity, and the familiar, underlying system is easily mastered.
Winner of the 2005 International Gamers Award.
Expanded by:
Online Play
