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At the height of its power, the Roman Empire covered a vast amount of territory and brought major advancements in engineering, architecture, science, art, and literature. Corruption and economic crisis has made the empire unstable and paved the way for aggressive barbarian tribes to attack.
bcnevan
Mixed bag overall, but does OK in adjusting the Pandemic system to the Roman setting. There's definitely some thematic nonsense that occurs in the mapping of the pre-existing system onto the chosen setting. The invasion pathing is a nice touch and keeps the pressure on the players as the game progresses. Even a single city with three barbarians is a large threat, as that city can relatively quickly cause 4 decline or just cause an action suck that makes the game unwinnable (playing on the harder difficulties). But due to the way the map, cards, and legions combine together, the game wants to be played in one single way. If you don't play the game in that way, the additional randomized elements introduced as compared to normal Pandemic can cause action efficiency to leak in more uncontrollable ways. Even further, the combination of initial conditions and programmed invasion pathing lessens variation between plays. But the game does seem to acknowledge this by putting more interest in the player roles, having a somewhat large set of event cards, and using the battle dice. Still, its probably best for sporadic play or mixed in with other plays of the other Pandemic boxes (e.g. Iberia, Rising Tide). As of now, this seems very much like a game that I will like less the more I play it.
Ben_Bos
I like the game. I don’t like Pandemic, but this theme is a bit better and dice rolling is much needed or else Pandemic games are simply too dry. I would rate the Cthulhu game just above it as the spreading mechanic is packed into a more thematic appearance of the next Boss in Cthulhu which suits that game even better. I would say around a 6 Great time filler and not easy but not a wargame.
Bluedude303
We played it for the first time last night (Jan 18) and our first game we got absolutely walloped. An unlucky revolt on the very first draw, with an unlucky city filling with 3 cubes next to another, that I promptly drew... yeah not the most friendly first time. However, after losing that first game in short order, we learned enough to try again. Fall of Rome is a very tight game. Getting around the map takes time. Several times we had the cards ready to forge an alliance, but then had to take a turn or two to get to a barbarian of the colour to make the actual alliance. Definitely want to spend more time with it. It's clearly a well designed, tight game on top of the Pandemic system. We'll have to see who comes out on top for this vs Pandemic Iberia.