Donning the Purple

A small blast from the past that, thanks to some celestial alignments, made it onto my table. The decline of the Roman Empire is always a theme that wins me over, and Donning the Purple does try to say something with that atmosphere: it has the feel of an old, somewhat bad Wallace game resurfacing twenty years later, something like Pericles. For more casual players, though, it may be exactly enough for a pleasant game.

At its core, the game puts you in the declining imperial politics and asks you to make use of whatever your position and your cards provide. Its simplicity becomes apparent quickly: the choices do not open up much, and the game does not build the sense that any deeper strategy is unfolding.

Interaction mainly comes through the struggle over the emperor and through how cards help or hinder that effort. In my game, “farming” the emperor for three years proved remarkably easy and took me to victory without much stress. Yes, the cards helped me, but when such an obvious line works so comfortably, I find it hard to believe that the base box contains much strategic tension.

After reading the expansion following the game, I concluded that the two should have been released together from the start. The base game is simply too simple: an imperial drama without enough intrigue—what tragic economy. With the expansion, however, there is a serious chance that it becomes genuinely competitive.