The year is AD 79 and you are a gladiator. No just any fighter, but a hero traveling the known world to take down the best of the best. Gather your allies and enter the arena. As you prove yourself by defeating the Primuses, you’ll eventually be granted the chance to take down the Scion and have your name carved in the annals of history.
Welcome to Hoplomachus: Victorum, a standalone game in the Hoplomachus series from Chip Theory Games. This solo only game sees you taking your gladiator from the opening act all the way through an epic four act campaign.
Gameplay Overview:
While Hoplomachus: Victorum isn’t a complicated game, it does have quite a few moving parts. So I’m just going to give you a high level overview of the gameplay here. If you want the full ins and outs, you can download a PDF of the rulebook here.
But once you’ve chosen your hero and selected a Scion to eventually face off against, you are ready to begin your quest. The game is split out into 4 acts, with each act taking 12 days. The first thing you do on a day is travel, you can move to any adjacent space on the map, and your location will determine what kind of event you compete in. There are three types:
- Sport: These are non-lethal events: King of the Hill, Capture the Flag, or Sparring. Win these and you’ll be able to recruit one of your opponents to your lineup of teammates or refresh your supply of tactics chips.
- Deathmatch: Just like it sounds, the last team left alive wins and any unit loses are permanent. If you win, your hero gets a stat upgrade in the form of health, leadership, or attack power.
- Opportunity: These aren’t events, but let you draw opportunity cards, which act as goals that when you achieve them, will unlock powerful bonuses for your hero.
After winning your match (or withdrawing in shame), you mark off a day and begin again. At the end of the act, you must face one of the game’s Primuses. These are tough battles with strong rewards. At the end of the fourth act, you’ll face the Scion, a unique bad guy that will test you for all your worth.
To quickly touch on how battles work, you first draw the battle card, which will decide the lineups (both the enemies and how many allies you can bring) and any special rules. The arena itself will also have some unique quirks.
Units are deployed one at a time, and can’t act the turn they enter the arena. Once they are no longer dazed, they can both move and attack on their turn. Attacks are handled via dice rolls, with any hit knocking off a hit point chip from the target. Most all units (and especially your hero) will also have a special ability or two to help them out.
Take out the last one and it’s defeated. If your hero is ever defeated, you must spend one of your blessings or you lose the campaign. It’s important to note that while surviving allies fully heal between battles, your hero’s hit points are persistent between matches. So be careful you don’t risk too much and lose it all.
Game Experience:
Hoplomachus: Victorum is probably going to take you a little bit to fully wrap your head around. While the game itself isn’t that complicated, there are a lot of little exceptions that will have you reaching for the rulebook or player aid quite often.
While the combat loop is pretty straight forward, keeping track of everything is no easy feat. Move and attack is standard—however mixed in with that are the arena rules, combat specific rules based on the card draw, unit powers, and your hero’s prowess powers. It’s a lot to keep track of. My first few battles were pretty slow as I tried to figure out how it all worked and more often than not I’d forget a special rule or ability.
But after you get an act or two under your belt, things run great. Move your location, draw a card, pick units, and duke it out. Eventually you’ll start remembering the more frequent keywords like Taunt that draws in attacks, Tactical that lets you move the turn you enter an arena, and Absorb which only allows the unit to take one damage per attack. I will say there are a few keywords that are a bit too close and I’m constantly getting them mixed up (firststrike and quickstrike, for example).
But overall the game has great variety. There are 8 different regions, each with their own hero, units, arena, and scion. So when you mix and match all of that, there is plenty of replay value here. My first game was with the suggested Krackenlance hero and I had a great time traveling around and slaying enemies with my hook shot. My next game featured the Amazon warrior who could unleash a barrage of arrows from a distance. Each hero not only has their own stats, but a unique deck of upgrade powers. This game just has a ton to offer which helps keep things fresh.
Overall, I love the game. It’s an engaging dice chucker. My biggest gripe is that the campaign is just too long. You are looking at around 1-2 hours per act, with all 4 acts taking you 8-10 hours. While the battles are engaging and the leveling up is fun, eventually it starts to get a little grindy. You are doing the same move, fight, move, turn after turn, and if you spend too much time in one region, the arena rules can make things feel a little repetitive.
But outside of that, I really enjoy the game. Building my squad, trying to figure out how to customize my hero, deciding when to use tactics chips, or which ally I should recruit for my team all lead to some really fun decision points. Chip Theory Games built a really solid system here with Hoplomachus: Victorum and I’m all in on the fun.
And in typical Chip Theory Game fashion, the components are excellent. Hefty poker chips represent the units. There are neoprene mats for the world and your arena. Even the cards are thick and plastic, making sure they will hold up for the long run. The game even comes with a plastic stand to hold all the chips and cards when not in use.
Final Thoughts:
I was really surprised with Hoplomachus: Victorum. While I wasn’t too excited for the gladiator theme with some chunky rules overhead, I ended up playing it for about a week straight. I love the gameplay, upgrading my hero, and just throwing dice around the arena to cause some carnage.
Yes, the game can feel a bit too long and grindy, and the dice rolling or card draw can feel more random than I like. But overall it has a fun gameplay loop. And before you yell at me about the alternate play mode that comes with the Pandora’s Ruin expansion (or downloadable online), I wanted to keep this review solely focused on the core game, but you can keep an eye out for those thoughts in a future review.
But despite its quirks, Hoplomachus: Victorum is an excellent game. The system has a ton of potential for more heroes, more scions, more enemies, and even other arenas to explore. Finally, I should mention that the game is not easy to win. You need to study up on your scion before you play and plan out how you are going to beat it because winning Hoplomachus: Victorum isn’t easy. But it is a ton of fun and quite satisfying when you pull out a victory.
Final Score: 4.5 Stars – An engaging solo game that offers a lot of replay value, but can feel a bit too long and grindy at times. Are you not entertained‽
Hits:
• Lots of content
• Excellent, high quality production values
• Fun, dice chucking battles
• Good variety in the units, heroes, and bosses
Misses:
• Game is long…
• … and can feel grindy
