Is this game for kids? I think it’s for kids. But if it’s for kids, why does it have the theme and art of a stuffy euro strategy game? Is it for non-gamers? Families? The elderly? It does bear a striking similarity to a certain ever-popular retirement home staple. Does it even matter? There’s not much of a reason to care as the game’s lukewarm time in the sun has already drawn to a quiet close. Well, I suppose insights into game theory and design have come to me from stranger places, so let’s give this review a proper go. Shall we? *ahem* Rise Of Augustus is a dead simple probability game about drawing tokens from a bag, and it is very, very, VERY similar to Bingo.
Players start the game by choosing 3 of 6 “Objective” cards dealt to them and placing them in a row on the table. Each objective shows a set of icons on their left side indicating the token draws needed to complete them. They come in two types, “Senators” and “Provinces”, and may or may not have an activation power listed on the right. In addition to these objectives, players also get a reference tile telling them how many of each token type are in the bag to help them calculate odds and 7 wooden figurines for marking off the icons on their objectives as the respective tokens are drawn from the bag. In the middle of the table are placed several more objectives to choose from as the game progresses and an array of rewards a user can claim depending on which objectives they manage to complete. There are rewards for completing certain amounts of objectives, completing sets of objectives such as three senators or three green provinces, and completing provinces that have the most illustrations of wheat or gold resources on them. Bizarrely, the way resources work feels like the result of a late-stage design pivot to make the game more palatable to a younger demographic. There are many different supposed “resources” as indicated by the card art, but the only two that actually do anything are wheat and gold. Very odd.
A chosen player is tasked with drawing tokens from the bag and continues doing so, announcing each of the icons as they are drawn so players can mark off the appropriate icons on their objectives, until they draw a joker which lets players mark any icon of their choosing. At that point, all drawn tokens are placed back into the bag and it’s passed to the next player to begin drawing tokens anew. It would not affect the game in any way if only one player drew the tokens for the entire game, but I am just sharing the rules as they are stated in the rulebook. It’s my guess that the bag passing was only included to create the illusion that the game has “turns” and to differentiate it from Bingo, but it doesn’t really matter. When a player marks the last icon on any of their objectives, they are supposed to yell out out “Ave Caesar!” but in my experience most yell “Bingo!” instead. It’s pretty easy to understand why. When a player completes an objective in this manner they get all their markers back, move the objective to their scoring row, activate its power if it has one, check to see if they’ve fulfilled the requirements for any rewards, and choose a new objective from the center of the table. The game ends after any player scores their 7th objective. Points on completed objectives, rewards, and activated powers are tallied, and the highest score wins.
Okay, so it’s not just Bingo as some people have claimed, but it ain’t much of a game regardless. It seems to have been intended as a “My First Euro Game” of sorts. The only real decisions you make are which objectives you take, as the harder objectives to complete typically score higher amounts of points and come with better powers. For example, an objective that requires several uncommon tokens might give you an excellent power that scores you additional victory points for particular icons on your other scored objectives. So there is some ability to set up basic combos and strategies, yes, but it doesn’t require much thought to play the game at a more or less optimal level due to the randomness of the token draws. There is also an ever so slight press your luck mechanism with the way taking rewards works. One of the reward categories is for number of scored objectives, but you are only allowed to choose one of these the entire game. So if you hold out for the 6 objective reward and get beaten to it, you may find yourself in a situation where you don’t get to take any of them. The wheat and gold rewards are similarly risky as any player that comes from behind and ties you for number of resources will steal them from you. This can create a bit of a Mexican stand-off where neither of two players wants to be the first to take a reward as they know it will soon get stolen by the other player. In practice, absolutely none of this feels consequential, but in the interest of fairness I am acknowledging it anyway.
My issue with Rise Of Augustus is not that it’s deeply mechanically flawed or poorly designed, just that there’s nothing to it. It barely feels like it’s happening while you’re playing it. It’s very much a Euro with training wheels, so in that sense I might give it a pass but in no other. If you’re not teaching a child about rudimentary set collection and card combinations there is no reason to play it. It’s definitely one of the least irritating bad games I’ve played due to its smooth cadence and lack of downtime; I will say that much for it. But when saying a game isn’t annoying is the highest praise you have to give to it, you know you don’t exactly have a classic on your hands. And as far as comparing it with Bingo goes… well, don’t expect grandma and grandpa to be shouting “Ave Caesar!” any time soon.
Rise Of Augustus gets a rating of TWO out of FIVE, indicating it is NOT RECOMMENDED.