Monday, 15 August 2016

Gladiatoris

Box Art
Gladiatoris is a board game that has been developed over several years now and finally looks like it is at the stage where it will be put into production, probably by some form of crowd-funding.
The picture on the right I think shows the final box art for the initial release. Whilst not to everyone's taste I'm guessing, there's no denying that it's pretty and piccies of semi-clad females is always a good selling tactic I suppose.
My reservations about it is of course the fact that it depicts a female Retiarius and the evidence for female gladiators in the first place (let alone female retiarii) is very sparse to say the least.
Here's a list  of what the new game will have in the box.
Early version of the game

Components
Rulebook (24 pages)
Games Book (24 pages)
15 Twelve sided Dice (6 x attack, 6 x defence, 1 x beasts, 1 x blue)
 44 Miniatures (10 x red, 10 x green, 10 x blue, 10 x orange, 4 x grey)
157 Cards (67 x fighter, 30 x munera, 60 x manoeuvre)
24 Board Sections (13 x hexagonal, 10 x trapezoidal, 1 x CRONOS)
23 Hexagonal reversible markers
173 Tokens (65 x wounds, 96 x coins, 6 x pavidus, 6 x palms)
2 Help cards
Since the early version of the game (see photograph above) the board has been made into a re-arrangeable one using individual sections (there are also other shaped sections coming in the inevitable planned expansions). The miniatures included with the game have also had great care taken with them and have been commissioned  with some superb sculpts.
The Yellow Faction

The initial release has four factions, each themed to specific Gladiator themes, for example the red faction "The Scutarii" are referred to as the large shield faction
The Scutarii Faction
The quality of the sculpts can be seen from the photographs and I have no doubt that some of the many great figure painters out there will produce some wonderful renditions (myself not included)

The Green Faction
All the core gladiators, that you expect in any gladiator game, are represented amongst the factions (as well as some what I would call had artistic license - such as the female retiarius) , but there are also three animals and three identical unarmed male minis in each 'set' that I have no idea of their purpose!
The Blue Faction
   There are plans for many expansions too, to allow for up to six players in the game, by the introduction of another two factions and many other features.
Gladiatoris has a Facebook page HERE and a website HERE  if you wish to follow their progress in this project. There is also a blog (I think is probably now pretty much defunct) that shows the then intended expansions, HERE, very useful for the history of this game
There is also a Boardgamegeek page (of course), that can be found HERE that does show the older (read inferior) original minis.

I'm quite excited by this game and hope if you're interested in Gladiator combat games then you are too.