Caesar & Cleopatra

From: Rio Grande List Price: $20 Players: 2 Playing Time: 30 minutes  Type of game: Card Skill level: 8 Complexity: 4  Reviewed by: Peter Sarrett, Issue 23, April 2000

Caesar & Cleopatra has actually been around for quite a while, but somehow managed to slip below the review radar. Rio Grande’s introduction of an English version provides an excellent opportunity to rectify that oversight, for this is an outstanding two-player card game that deserves to be noticed.

Each player assumes the role of either Caesar or Cleopatra in a struggle for power over Roman officials. The two sides have uniquely themed but functionally identical sets of cards, each divided into two decks. The first holds numeric influence cards while the cards in the second deck enable the performance of special actions during the game. Five sets of Roman patricians separate the players, and it is these cards players try to capture.

Players exert influence by playing influence cards beneath a group of patricians. Players may only play one card face down or two cards face up each turn. As in Lost Cities each player’s cards form their own stacks on one side of the tableau. No player can have more than five cards beneath any one group. When one group accumulates eight cards between Caesar and Cleopatra combined, a vote is called. The player whose cards total the highest value collects a patrician card from that group and discards his highest card from that stack. The other player discards his lowest card, and all other cards from both players remain. Each player’s number deck also includes a pair of philosophers that are played like the other influence cards. Opposing philosophers cancel each other out. Any remaining philosophers “reinterpret” the vote and, although discards remain the same, award the patrician to the player with the lower total.

If that were the only way votes got triggered the game would be too predictable, so another deck of cards enters the picture. This deck, from which one card gets flipped each turn, holds one card for each patrician group, a couple of orgies, and a reshuffle. If a patrician group comes up, that group holds a vote. Since each group is represented exactly once in the deck, once a group appears activity in that group tends to subside until the deck is reshuffled. Like the scoring cards in Union Pacific, this mechanism puts pressure on each player to choose his actions carefully and decide where and when to push his luck. There’s no way to know which card will come up next, so players must play their hunches, assess their goals, and minimize their risk.

Ah yes… goals. Players score a point for each patrician they claim, plus a bonus point for having a majority of patricians in a group and another bonus point for nabbing all of a group’s patricians. Each player is also secretly assigned one of three possible groups at the start of the game, with the possibility of both players getting the same group. Controlling a majority of that group’s patricians earns yet another bonus. This combination of factors—which groups are still in the voting deck and which earns you a bonus—subtly directs players’ attention throughout the game.

Each player also has a deck of action cards at his disposal. Only one action card can be played per turn, but they can pack a wallop. Scouts flip up all face-down cards in a target stack, and Assassins remove any face-up card. Castling lets a player mix together any two of his stacks as he wishes, then relay those cards face down. With a Spy a player can look at his opponent’s hand and trash the card of his choice. In dire circumstances a player can call down the Wrath of God, destroying all cards of both factions influencing a target group. Finally, a Veto can be handy to cancel the effect of an opponent’s action card. Each player can order his action card deck as desired at the start of the game, but can’t peek at or change the order once the game begins. While some card types are duplicated, each individual card in the game may be played only once.

Each player holds five cards at a time. When he fills his hand at the end of a turn, a player can draw from his number deck, action deck, or both. This freedom makes hand management a vital aspect of the game. Sometimes a player will use an action card just to free up another slot in his hand and increase his chances of drawing the card he’s looking for.

The ability to play a card face down is an interesting strategic option, but in practice is rarely used. The strategic advantages offered by playing cards face down are outweighed by the sheer force of numbers playing two cards each turn provides. Players spending many turns playing cards face-down are likely to get trampled by a faster-moving open opponent. Playing everything face-up has the added benefit of making opposing scouts useless, although a savvy player will place these cards at the bottom of his action deck to compensate. Only on rare occasions, such as when playing a philosopher, does the face-down option pull its weight—not for its secrecy, but for the protection from assassins it provides. I have yet to see an all-up approach lose to a mixed one (cue cries of, “the guy’s nuts—I see it all the time!” ringing throughout the land). An untested remedy would be to only allow action cards to be played in conjunction with a face-down influence card, but perhaps this would swing the pendulum too far in the other direction.

Happily, this appears to be a small blemish on a rather large peach. This is easily one of the best of the Kosmos two-player line, with only Lost Cities offering any challenge for the title. If your nose detects a whiff of Banana Republic or Corruption in the air you’re certainly not amiss, but the two-player nature of this game makes it less chaotic and more tactical. Quite a nice bit of game design, really, and now that it’s in English it’s far easier to teach. The cards themselves are attractive and evocative, and their unusual dimensions somehow accentuate the play experience in a way I’m at a loss to explain. Psychologists, please write in. The rest of you can gather your own data by trying the game yourself.