Donning the Purple

The decline of the Roman Empire is a setting that practically writes its own threats, alliances, and fingers burned by the throne. Donning the Purple has the spare ambition of an older, less successful Wallace design: Pericles twenty years on, with less patience for consequences. A more relaxed group may have a pleasant game with it. That is not nothing. It just is not enough.

At its core, the game has you manage the emperor and the opportunities supplied by the cards, trying to come out ahead as the years pass. Players are connected by their attention to the same imperial office and what follows from it, but the system does not seem to build enough layers on that sound initial premise.

The telling part is that I could farm the emperor for three years and win without breaking a sweat. The cards fell kindly, certainly, but when such a direct route pays so comfortably, it is hard to call the game strategically distinctive; it has looked at Rome and decided that intrigue is optional.

After the game, the expansion appears to add precisely what the base game needed to grow teeth. They ought to have been released together in one box, because Donning the Purple alone is simpler than its subject can bear. With the expansion it may become a contender; without it, it is a good idea sent out half-dressed.