Charioteer

Having grown tired of the heavy baggage left by Circus Maximus in my sinful youth—different times, different tastes, far more free time—I was happy to see Charioteer promising a heavily simplified version of the idea. I backed it gladly, and on that promise, it did not disappoint me.

At its core, it is a very comfortable hand-management game, with a light touch of Texas Hold’Em. I hold cards and try to match their symbols in order to move my chariot forward in the race. Its logic is immediate, it can be explained in five minutes, and we do not have to untangle rules before the fun begins.

The interaction lies in the race itself and in who manages to make the best use of the available matches to take the lead. With five players, a game lasts just under an hour, so it fits very naturally at the end of a game night. There is some strategy and it is not entirely yolo, although it is nowhere near Thunder Alley with chariots—it is clearly simpler—while the leading position also comes with the familiar runaway-leader issues.

If I simply want an easy, quick end-of-night game, somewhere around the level of Space Base, Charioteer is a good choice. My main objection is that, for a GMT game and at its price, it feels very slight: I would have liked some asymmetry, campaign rules, an event deck, something to give it more depth. And I definitely would have liked a better-written manual, because it is a shame for such a simple game to make itself seem harder than it really is.