Emperor Trajan plans to have a monument built for eternity: the Forum Trajanum. It is supposed to become the biggest and most glorious Emperor's forum that the Roman world has ever seen — not only in order to demonstrate his success as Princeps Optimus in an imposing manner, but also to foster the well-being and the fame of the honorable citizens of Rome.
In Forum Trajanum, each player governs a Colonia, founded by Trajan himself, and thus is the head of one of the highest-ranking cities in the entire Roman Empire. While the players try to optimally develop their own Colonia, they should not fail in supporting the Emperor's building project to the best of their abilities at the same time. The player who is most successful in doing so will — after expiry of their term of office — be admitted to the small circle of illustrious and mighty personalities surrounding the Emperor.
- rich, layered decisions and asymmetry
- strong thematic integration with mechanics
- engaging tile-drafting and grid-building flow
- rules can be hard to grasp on first read
- longer playtime and heavy weight may deter some players
- urban planning and civil architecture
- ancient Rome; building a forum and related structures
- historical/abstract with strategic tile placement
- Trajan
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- pass-and-activate tile system — two tiles are passed to neighbors; you evaluate one and pass the other
- placement and adjacency scoring — placing tiles on a personal grid; adjacency and patterns influence scoring
- randomized tile drafting — tiles are drafted and revealed; players see two tiles per turn and choose which to activate
- variable end-game scoring — scoring occurs in stages across the game with changing objectives
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- the art is stunning it's got just a beautiful cover on the front
- adorable art this game is called Q Birds
- this might be the best game that I played this year
- the way all of the stuff bounces around is incredibly satisfying on a tactical and strategic level
- it's a lightweight set collection hand management style game
- this is easily the best of this trilogy
- Spring Meadow does it really well
- Underwater Cities might be the best game that I played this year
- Winner's Circle is still really good