by Saan
ewokalypse wrote:
tommyboy77 wrote:
I bought Spartacus at Gencon this year and I have several questions regarding the rules.
1. When making deals with other players, are you allowed to swap and trade outside the market phase?
2. There is a card thats lets you exaust all of a target players guards and pay gold for every guard, if you cant pay all the gold can you play the card?? My answer is no but Ive had debates about this.
3. Throwing a fight, can you just choose not to attack or defend??
4. When making deals are you allowed to show players cards in your hand??
5. What happens when players are at the winning influence and there is a tie?? I know that tie breakers are deciding in the arena but what happens when both players have no gladiators or slaves to fight with??? This came up while playing recently.
6. With the taking bribes card, do you have to target the same player?? The card states to pay gold to target player. Then give target player -1 inf.
7. Are players allowed to scheme and deal as they see fit??
Thanks, this all for now.
1. When making deals with other players, are you allowed to swap and trade outside the market phase?
2. There is a card thats lets you exaust all of a target players guards and pay gold for every guard, if you cant pay all the gold can you play the card?? My answer is no but Ive had debates about this.
3. Throwing a fight, can you just choose not to attack or defend??
4. When making deals are you allowed to show players cards in your hand??
5. What happens when players are at the winning influence and there is a tie?? I know that tie breakers are deciding in the arena but what happens when both players have no gladiators or slaves to fight with??? This came up while playing recently.
6. With the taking bribes card, do you have to target the same player?? The card states to pay gold to target player. Then give target player -1 inf.
7. Are players allowed to scheme and deal as they see fit??
Thanks, this all for now.
1. No. Open market only. (See page 9.)
2. Don't know; rule book doesn't address this directly. Closest language is "[if a Scheme is successful,] [t]he effects
of the card take place immediately and any costs of the card are paid" (pg. 7), which I think presumes as a condition of legal play that the player actually has enough money to pay costs. I guess it's open to houseruling, though.
3. You can choose not to attack; you can't choose not to defend. (See page 15: "Combatant may attack," but attack mechanics require that "defending Combatant rolls their current Defense Dice Pool simultaneously.")
4. Yup.
5. Highest total value of slaves/equipment/coins wins. (Inferring this from tiebreaker rules on page 17.)
6. Designer said "no" at GenCon (regarding this exact card, I think), but I think this has the potential to cause some problematic rule conflicts. Rulebook doesn't address it squarely. FWIW, my group houseruled that "target dominus" means the same dominus in all instances (per card, obvs).
7. Damn straight. The distinct impression that I got from the designer was that the First Law of Spartacus ("scheme, scheme, scheme"), like the first law of the RPG Paranoia ("games are for fun"), presumptively trumps all rules except those without which the game is unplayable.
I agree with all of these, but a slight addendum to number 1: You can only trade assets (cards face up, in play, in front of you) during the market phase, and you can only trade intrigue cards in your hand during the intrigue phase. Otherwise, no limits on deals. You can always promise to give someone a card or an asset during the next intrigue/market, but nothing is holding you to that promise.