2nd September 2026
It was a busy session as 16 gamers explored dungeons, enticed dragons, squabbled over the 7 hills of Rome and tried to survive a zombie apocalypse.
The session started simply with club favourite Ecosystem as a nice warm up for some new gamers and the other shorter game table brushed up their number skills with 6 Nimmt.
Meanwhile the first long game was setup and 4 gamers were soon attempting area control in Rome Æterna. Once the short games had concluded and some later arrivals had been absorbed three tables got underway.
Æterna sees several families trying to increase their prestige as the Roman Kingdom becomes the Republic and then grows into the Roman Empire, with each era represented by a round. Over the course of the game players will build monuments, conquer new provinces and wrestle for control of each of the seven hills of Rome, making sure to keep the populace fed and unrest at a minimum. Players have a mix of monument and province cards available to play, drafted at the start of each round, with monuments costing coin to play and generally granting bonuses and possibly additional citizens, and provinces costing citizens to play whilst generally bringing in some form of income, be it wheat, stone or cash. Most cards also create unrest, or very occasionally soothe unrest. Unrest is generally considered a bad thing. The unrest track has three markers on with tithes to pay if your marker is on or above it at the end of the round, tithes being randomly attributed at the start of the game. If you can’t pay the tithes, you get a Doom marker. Doom is generally considered a very bad thing.
Resources, in the form of cash, wheat, stone and citizens, are skewed towards the tight end of things, which is unfortunate as being resources, they’re used for quite a few things in the game. Citizens for instance are used to take most actions, and you start with 3. They are placed on the main board to influence the hills, hopefully becoming a prefect if they outnumber another player. They are placed on the main board to build temples, aqueducts or amphitheatres, and if you are a prefect of a hill with a building on, you’ll get something nice at the end of the round. They are also used to conquer new provinces by being sent away, meaning you can’t use them elsewhere. Best to look for ways of getting more then, perhaps by building that monument in your hand. The one that costs 6 aurei. Oh dear, you only have 5 aurei. This is generally considered a painful thing.
The round ends when everyone has passed. Passing early gets more points and allows choice of turn order for next round. End of round includes paying for unrest, bringing your citizens back from the board, and then feeding said citizens with that big pile of wheat you have. You do have a big pile of wheat, right? Oh, and of course there is also the Devastation to take into account. A number of hills (depending on player count) will be devastated based on having higher number of citizens on, and the prefect of these hills will gain some unrest. You probably recall that this is not generally considered a good thing. After three rounds the player with the highest prestige wins. There’s also the possibility that someone has reached the top of the unrest track. If you’ve managed to garner that much unrest the populace defaces all your monuments and erases your name from the history books. This is an automatic loss, no points scored, and is generally considered a less-than-optimal ending.
Steve, Steph, Jyo and Darren donned their togas, brushed off their laurel wreathes and lay down with some grapes to oversee this rise of the Roman Empire, Steve having introduced it to the others recently. There was a bit of muttering during the first drafting phase, with no-one seeming to be overly keen on their cards, but the most muttering was over the unrest track – the initial damage marker, placed at just 2 unrest, incurred a cost of 6 aurei (gold) and 1 wheat, which would not have been considered ideal if it had been placed at one of the higher markers. Early play saw a few monuments and a couple of provinces come out, all quite low-level as everyone was being a bit cautious about gaining unrest. Each hill has 3 bonus tiles allocated at the start of the game, one of which can be activated when a player goes there, and a couple of these in this game had an ability to drop your unrest, meaning those hills were keenly sought after – the tiles dropped 2 unrest, but each tile can only be activated once, so the choice was to be first there but potentially not gain the full benefit of the tile, or wait until you had 2 unrest and hope the tile was still available.
There was some minor scuffling over prefecture of hills, but again, the threat of that first tithe meant no-one was overly keen on being a prefect of a hill that had potential to be devastated, so it wasn’t too bloody.
Darren was first to pass, netting 6 prestige points, but perhaps a bit too early as he still had 2 citizens available – he just wasn’t keen on what he could get for those extra moves against the promise of some early points. Prefecture of the hills meant both Darren and Jyo got caught with the first heavy unrest tithe. Darren had planned for this and built up his bank in order to pay, whilst Jyo opted instead to take an early Doom token, hoping that she could make up for that with later play.
As the Kingdom became the Republic a few hills were being built up with some aqueduct and amphitheatre action, a handful of provinces had been conquered and monuments raised. The drafting for this round had seemingly provided everyone with very expensive cards though, and again the moves were still quite cagey due to that expensive unrest tithe. Steph and Jyo were being a bit more aggressive with the prefecture taking this time round, using the tiles and the amphitheatres to offset the unrest. Darren was first to pass again, this time with no moves to make, trying to claw back the early lead he once had, and wondering if he should perhaps have tried one more thing before passing back in the Kingdom round.
And then the sun rose on the mighty Roman Empire, and it was glorious! Or, not bad at least. Once again, the draft proved to consist of some eye-wateringly expensive cards, and the funds were not exactly overflowing in anyone’s coffers, but glory needs to be seized, so onward the legions marched. Although not very far, as the available provinces all came with a hefty level of unrest which could be hard to offset in the last round. Hard won cash was spent to get some monuments up, and there was some petty squabbling over hilltops. As the dust settled and the prestige was totted up it was a close-run race between Jyo and Steph. Very close. Indeed, so close that it ended up in a draw, with both coming in at 70 points. Steve and Darren were trailing behind with 51 and 42 respectively, but at least their names were not wiped from history. The rise and fall of the Roman Empire in just over 2 hours. Glory be to Rome!
Clanking again this session Clank: Catacombs was back to give some other gamers a go after its popularity the previous session. Iain was back with Agnet, and Jeremy trying Monkeybot, they were joined by Dom playing Lenara and Richie being the naughty Whiskers. (Characters from the Adventuring Party.)
The game started with a big focus on exploring for Whiskers and Monkeybot, with Lenara and Agnet dawdling behind as they couldn’t quite get their decks supplying them the needed boots for walking. Everyone was making lots of clank with Agnet being picked on the most by the dragon - having to heal multiple times during the game. Monkeybot was enjoying the attacks, as each hit powered him up - unlocking boots, fight and skill - though not taking that much overall damage, even though near the end of the game he had run out of clank tokens!
Whiskers was slinking around the dungeon finding interesting and ghostly rooms and trying to make his way to the monkey idol room, which eventually he managed and grabbed two idols (by doing a loop and revisiting the room). Monkeybot swooped in on his spectral steed to nab the last one though, finally enabling some of his extra abilities such as not stopping in crystal caverns. By this time everyone had managed to steal an artifact - both Monkeybot and Lenara used the magical abilities of some Lost Chambers (Altar of the Haunted and the Temple of Gold respectively) to remotely grab an artifact. So the dragon was severely enraged and it was time to head for the exit.
Agnet was hampered in running out of the catacombs at the last minute by a lack of movement, and so got taken down by the dragon and had to be dragged out by villagers. All the other players got their mastery tokens as well as their handfuls of loot. In the end Whiskers got over 120, Monkeybot about 110, Lenara 90 and Agnet trailing with 50.
Wyrmspan was back for its seventh club outing as a middleweight game with a nice theme and artwork to tempt the newcomers. Kathy taught Calvin and Natasha while Jemima (a Wingspan veteran) took up the fourth slot joining for her second turn at taming dragons.
This time the end of round goals were small dragons, dragons that lay more than 2 eggs, aggressive dragons and more than 4 point scoring dragons. Although there was quite a variation per round in how well everyone did towards those objectives overall scores were quite similar as everyone had some good and bad rounds acquiring those types of dragons. So it was down to the other scoring types to determine the best dragon tamer. Calvin made a shrewd late game choice to get the best guild score, Kathy had the best end game dragon ability scoring points, Calvin just won on most eggs, while cached resources and tucked card scores were pretty close. So it was the simple dragon scores that tipped it for Jemima with her dragons worth 11 points more than the next nearest rival, tempting those expensive dragons with shiny silver coins as well as resources and forfeiting turns had paid off.
Some cooperative action was getting underway on the final table with Zombicide, now on its ninth club play - Simon, Iker, Neil and Dave trying to complete a mission while not being eaten by zombies… lots of zombies. The “Drive by” mission was chosen which is rated medium difficulty but in the end proved to be very difficult (spoiler). Its a car-heavy scenario where often two or three of the four players were driving up and down the street running over zombies (and sometimes each other) – we did take a moment to make sure we were playing with right-hand drive cars (in Zombicide the cars are specific seats, only one of which is the drivers seat… which is not very Hollywood).
Each turn players take a number of actions which can be moving, searching, shooting, opening a door etc. Unfortunately, Simon started with a frying pan as his weapon so finding new weapons became a priority. Cars can be searched and weapons can be found but there is also the possibility of finding a hidden Zombie instead. Zombies spawn in hordes at various points on the map and it soon became clear that the least risky way of taking out those outside was to jump into a car and start mowing them down.
The four players battled bravely, but the ever increasing zombie hoard just became too much. When a door is opened to a building Zombies spawn inside and the level at which they spawn is dependent on how high the strongest player has levelled up. It therefore becomes important to try and level up at the same rate, if one player is streets ahead, Zombies spawn at higher levels while the majority of players are still weak and feeble (with a frying pan).
The scenario objective… which only one player made any actual progress on became ever more impossible. While Iker, Neil and Dave drove around outside taking out Zombies, a brave Simon managed to nab three of the seven macguffins. Finally a surge, when you have to place a zombie model but they are already out - which triggers them all to have an action, was too much and the teams’ brains were harvested and the game was lost.
Following the fall of Rome there was another game of Ecosystem and to recover from the zombies a new game at club Botswana.
The good doctor, Reiner Knizia, is back at the club with a very shiny reprint of a 1994 quick card game - Botswana. It’s sort of a stock speculation game, there are five types of animals in the game, each with five of them to collect. The animals have matching suits of cards, running from 0-5. On your turn you play a card, setting the value of that animal, and take any animal (so not necessarily the type of card you played). The round ends when one animal has all six cards played on it - so the end is driven by the players. You score your collection of animals, at the values set by the players. So yeah, it’s a stock speculation game hiding behind a lion, hippo, meerkat, elephant, and a giraffe.
Botswana is meant to be short and sweet. Typically you play a round for each player, so everyone gets to start a round. Scores can vary wildly (see what I did there… wild animals… no, ok moving on). A late zero card can be delicious… did I mention this game looks nice and cute, but can have some much sharper moments – but the whole thing is over in 30 minutes, a nice game to start or end a night on but not a main meal (so to speak).
Next session is on Wednesday September 16th 7.30pm at the St Ives Corn Exchange. Will it be dragons and dungeons again or history and horror? Join us next session to find out and influence the choices.