Yesterday’s board game club was a bit of a short affair for me, but I got what I wanted: a game of Struggle for Rome, the new historical Catan game.

It’s pretty neat game, I think. There are lots of standard Catan elements, but lots of new. The most interesting feature is the way the tribes work: first they’re nomads, who wander around Europe pillaging cities. When they’ve pillaged enough, they can settle down and start conquering neighbouring cities to expand their kingdom.

I thought the game was somewhat clumsy, but worked pretty well. I’m sure it would go a lot more smoothly with experienced players. It should also be a bit faster: now our game took 100 minutes, which was perhaps a tad too much. Based on Geek comments, some people have taken up to three hours to play, which would be horrific, because there just isn’t that much content in the game.

I kind of liked it and wouldn’t mind playing it again to explore the game a bit, but if I never play the game again, I don’t think I’ve lost much. The German copy I had is up for sale immediately, because the game is coming out in Finnish this year and I’ll get a Finnish copy eventually. Which I’m probably going to sell, too, but maybe I’ll get to play the game again then.