Four Square Review: Foundations of Rome

[Music] welcome to the dice tower a series of video reviews about board and card games here are your hosts good morning everybody welcome back to the winter spectacular i'm tom vassell i'm stephen baloncore i'm chris yee i'm camila cleghorn and we're taking a look today a live foursquare review of foundations of rome but before we take a look at this there's a contest going on where you can win a 30 gift certificate from game nerds great online gaming store you can get a copy of that um it's probably not enough to get a copy of foundations of rome but you could probably buy something to help you lift weight so that you could pick up the box are you trying to hide but yeah you're really selling yourself a game here well he can hide behind the box the ticket to ride anyhow um so to enter that contest email us at contest dickstar.com in the subject line put the word frosty the snowman the snowman or the delicious dish from wendy you're thinking of frosty the reindeer tom you know they used to have a frost a caramel frosty at wendy's and they stopped making it i'm very annoyed about that it was really delicious about that it was a seasonal thing i would go seasonal stuff should not be allowed because it's always delicious and then it's gone all right foundations of rome i like the pumpkin caramel macaroni stuff for wendy's giant room from emerson matsuchi and arcane wonders it's part of the dice tower essential design frosty please realize throughout this review that i was involved with this to some degree as it came about i did not expect it to be quite so large in fact you're seeing the front of it this is the side um it's a very huge game which young men can't pick up thank you for calling me i insulted you at the same time essentially this is one hand right there full calex think you can get calyx out though like i can see it would fit could you get like fingers in there yes you can but it's all right it requires an apparatus with straps it's not easy okay and i have fairly fat fingers but we'll test later with you um anyhow let's talk about how the game plays and we'll come back give you our thoughts the game is played on a grid two sides of the board uh this side is used for the four or five players the purple and the red are used for that and you're going to have a deck of cards that mat it's on the grid at the beginning of the game each player is going to get some coordinates and they're going to place ownership markers on them so at the beginning of the game you're going to have all the properties here on the board this is a setup for a four-player game and they're going to have these again that shows that you control that property each player has their own whole setup board everyone has the exact same board with different kinds of buildings you have residential buildings you have civic buildings and you have commercial buildings as well as your markers and these special little monument markers so players are going to have these buildings they're going to have their handful of cards you just keep this card somewhere so in case the board gets shuffled you know which properties you control and then there's another board that's going to determine the flow of the game on a player's turn they have three different things that they can do one of them is to purchase a lot one of the you start with six but you can purchase more you can have up to eight lots at any given point in time and you simply pay the cost here in money over it so this would be six to six money and then you'd pay that and then all the cards would slide down you put a new one here i buy this one they slide down i put it here when this deck of cards runs out and then all these cards are gone that ends the round and you're going to proceed to scoring as you take lots you're trying to put lots next to your other lots if possible so g8 would be a good one maybe for red to take but you are limited by your eight that you have on the board so you might want to put more buildings on the board as an action you can go to any of your buildings or any of the monument buildings which i'll show you later and you can put it where it might go so i can take this single building here take this light off the board put it back in my supply and put that or i have two next to each other so i could put this one here you can even later on replace a smaller building putting it back on your board with a larger building as long as you own the areas to put them on now as you're placing these buildings on the board they're going to be giving you benefits population buildings these here are simply going to raise your population marker on the track by the number that it shows on the building these buildings the commercial buildings are going to give you more money so your third action that you can take is simply to take coins whenever you do that you'll take five coins plus the number of the buildings that you have on the board you don't need to go around and count them because your box underneath once you take the building out you see so for example if i take a coin action i'm getting 10 coins five plus two four five more because i put those building out civic buildings don't do anything for you initially they score during the scoring round you can also optionally play and you should always play with monuments and you'll choose a certain number of monuments and each of them they're bigger giant buildings that any player can build and if you build them you put one of your markers in the show that it's yours and they give you special bonuses but they also might have special requirements to build them as you put them on the board at the end of an era when the cards run out players are going to do their scoring commercial buildings are going to give you points equal to whatever is underneath them so if i was that red player that i showed you earlier they're going to get the points that are listed here so this one's worth three points and this one's worth three points and you keep track on this point track here players are going to get points for civic buildings based on the buildings that they're next to so for example this building here gives you one point for every other building it's next to even if it's someone else's building some give you points for being next to citizens coins civic buildings etc then you're going to get points for your population whoever has the highest population is going to score points to that number in this case would be purple would get eight points plus the population bonus of the round so it's four extra four points seven points and ten points that you'll get then the next highest in this case six gets points equal to where highest is so green would get eight blue would get six red would get two yellow doesn't get any because they never got onto the board so you'll keep track of these victory points up here and you'll go again this happens in all three eras the only difference is in final scoring you get points for the empty lots that you never put buildings in you've already seen a little bit here of just how gorgeous these pieces are i mean these are 3d models they all come in boards they're all going to have a plastic lid placed on them like shown here and then they are all slid into a box the deluxe version also comes with a pile of extra pieces here that are all listed in the rulebook for different modules so it gives you some information about the different monuments that are in the game it also shows you happily how to put everything back into each of the different sections which is useful but like i said there's a different modules here cooperative module i haven't played that yet the objectives module a module for ceiling and monuments is technically its own module but like i said i really feel like you should always play with the monuments okay so realize this is the one of the this is an early copy i know they're washing some copies of the things i saw that it hasn't shipped yet it's a bear to ship this thing you don't say we got to talk about that first of all five copies the component quality is very few the component quality of this is both amazing daunting and not for everybody right well this is uh so even the base game is like a hundred dollars isn't that right and then and that comes with like four players and then for x amount more you get the fifth player plus more monuments and then for more you can get a uh what do they call that the sun drop well anyway it doesn't really matter because it was a kickstarter game so this is not going to retain not going to retail specifically okay but we're talking about it like i like this a lot but this doesn't go to game night very often because it does i have a game bag i think it does just like that you lug it in one game you couldn't hold it earlier but i'm go but i'm working on you know getting stronger so i can i can actually carry this game but anyway so you said so you said that you would put this in your bag and it's the one game that fits in your bag and it's worth it for that do you consider this a main game of the night this would be your game night game should we start with that kind of commentary but the answer is yes okay yeah the answer is yes i can see this as a game i mean it's not that long it's an hour at most usually right i'm gonna i'm gonna give away a little bit here i'm gonna this was good oh wow wow spoilers this is like stop the presents says it's good all right how do you want to go no i'm sorry about that here's the thing it's clearly overproduced okay we're not gonna pretend otherwise yes i gotta say though i like the buildings i like the look of it on the board i think and i think they did a good job with those i can instantly tell what almost every building does we have to look up the monuments if you play with them yeah but the rest of the buildings i like i like the player trays and when you take a building off it shows you what you get from that there's one minor thing i don't like about the production besides the gigantic size of it but i don't like these trays the little tokens that you put on the board they're little um the ones that you put on the mic or the ones both of them initially there's a little plastic piece that comes in that goes on top of those if that's not in there right those fall out every time let me show you no problem okay full out of pull out of each player tray oh come on they're a mess oh come on so so you immediately as you as you take the thing out and you get it all ready to play i just said it was a minor thing literally you put this on the table you're ready to start now the game you got to organize those right after you clean up again i said it's minor things for a customized tray that doesn't that doesn't work it doesn't quite do its job that is a letdown it's irrelevant everyone out there not irrelevant so i mean if you spent that much time on the components on the custom trays as we said and then it doesn't function properly but there's a little plastic piece that goes on top of them to hold them in place i just found that little extra plastic piece to be annoying oh so this is a tombastle mistake that's why i said it's really minor so here's what i'll say about the production of this game is that i personally disagree with this on a fundamental level i would never own this game this is ridiculous in terms of the gameplay though what i would prefer is if the monuments were the cool minis and everything and if they could stand out as monuments you accomplished something huge you built a fantastic monument right your your latrine does not need to be the same size as the monument that you build or you're like your little level one bank it makes everything feel less special when everything is as ludicrously overproduced as it is and then i also want to say someone's gonna argue about the word overproduced we'll talk about that in a minute as well we will yes okay well yeah because i was going to argue that actually that's where i was going so i i did not think about that with the monument with the monsters not feeling as special or spectacular when you build them and i can definitely see that i think i had not thought of that and i would agree with it but i think over produced is getting thrown around and is going to get thrown around with this but i don't think i consider it over produced because i i think that i would not want to play a we'll say tile version of this i think the over production the production to me of it is what makes me want to play it under i need anymore so go ahead please so i 100 of course it's overproduced i mean by definition this isn't overproducing is it over produced okay but completely disagreeing with the fact that you're not latrine they don't have that but whatever your pot your population building they don't have one of those trains but you're like you know your residential building you know which is small looking sitting next to the coliseum looks it's not to scale exactly but it it looks phenomenal and as you're building collectively building this in front of everybody it looks astonishing we'll talk about gameplay in a second and sure as camilla implied if you're playing with tiles just flat what do you call the polyamino tiles it wouldn't look nearly as interesting and would also look very hard to distinguish buildings i think if they're just flat pieces it looks great and just as phenomenal no does everybody want a a calyx cubed game like this no but all right well what were you going to say i really wanna know what chris was gonna say so the thing about overproduction is i think that this game is really funny you can play this game in 45 minutes i love uh i i love games that have a grid i love games that you can kind of map things out and build them up i like polyamido things but i thought about bringing this home this week to play it one more time before this review and it was too daunting that for me is when a game goes from really nice production and i do appreciate a good production to over produce is when it gets in the way of me saying let me pull this one off the shelf this one is sitting here free available to me to play whenever i want and i chose not to even bring it home but what's daunting and i chose not define the word daunting to me what is dawn i mean the game is humongous but what's thought that the play i taught the game at the retreat that's not what you're talking about we're all very proud of you listen tom no i don't i mean daunting to me sound like twilight imperium fourth edition is a daunting name he's talking about production and you know that right but i don't i don't match the gameplay i love the gameplay actually but to yeah to just say okay we're gonna if you took that production out of it i think the experience significantly suffers because of it yes no all right this is where i'm going to come in because i played this game on paper paper tokens and stuff when emerson was first designing it and showing us dice our essential and i love the game i think the production elevates it but i want to be really careful here because some people i've already said in the chat and i know it's going to come across that way that if it wasn't nicely produced that this would be an okay game i think this game is really fun despite whether it's great production or not yes so i think the buildings everything look great but if it was with tiles i still love the game i love the whole real simple decision draft the card put something out or play you know play a building it's i mean sorry draft a card take money play a building really simple decisions and yet it feels very interactive it feels fun it has a little bit of a choir with the the things out there i love the gameplay i want to be really clear on that well yeah i guess to that to that point as well i yeah not docking the dot docking the gameplay but i don't think i would want to play the game because every building is unique you know whether it's population whether it's the civilian ones you know whatever they're all unique so i can't imagine being on paper or being on tiles that organization because of this production of it and you have this tray you can clearly see what does what if you were just handed a bag full of tiles all right let me organize my tiles where does the one do the what the you know it would just be that to me would be much more daunting than the size that this brings um well what did you guys think of the gameplay all right now we get the gameplay who's going first who's got the lowest three lowest numbers would you go no no no no no so gameplay-wise it's good right or it has familiar notes you're talking about a choir uh instantly i thought of new york 1901 another game similar to this where you have to get plots of land and i like that a lot i like the little sliding market of cards where you're buying up the different spots of the grid hopefully trying to make a really nice size thing that's going to fit this building i want to build out there because it's going to give me these bonuses and stuff some of these other games are much simpler this game manages to be quick and not too not too much but also you're building up an income engine you're building up a victory point engine and so i do like that part a lot i think what that offers is a little bit more unique than some of the other games like the new york 1901s and stuff one of the games i compared it to my head was sentry okay because century has those real quick decisions like this game does take something do this card sliding and century i don't know i felt some similarities to that okay yeah got the card river or whatever you want to call it also it's the same designer so that's probably why i always i thought acquire meets um was it princess of princess of christmas that's a terrible comparison this is why he only reviews a few games but all right yes what did you think of the gameplay i loved it i absolutely loved the gameplay um trying to move out off of the the production of course the acquire portion of the game i think is fantastic as implemented where you're you know you're grabbing the lots and you're grabbing a lot that you have enough money to afford but gosh i need that one up there on the chart it's going to cost me 16 now but so i'll take an income action so therefore and hopefully a couple people grab some of the lower ones then i can grab with the money that works so well um the the population track is i'm so happy that emerson put that in the game where population doesn't mean a lot sometimes in the game but you can't fall too far behind or you or if somebody if somebody everyone's rushing up on the population track you're still going to get this big population who cares just get one it's the dynamic there is very interesting and sometimes you just want i'm so close to being in front of that first person you just jump in first you get the first and you get the extra bonus each error i love the whole population thing then there's the area control portion of it so as you can tell i really like this and i love the production sorry i know he liked it because i taught it to him and then he i kept turning around and he kept playing it i think i played it four times at the retreat at least three times now there's a bunch of i i haven't played all the modules i would like to try some more of the modules like there's the one i'm a little worried about trying is the trading yeah i would not i don't know if i want to bring that into this game i think some people might like it better but i think it might make the game well it would turn it to it would double the length that would be double right of the game if you could trade i didn't see how there's a moderating works i've heard about it i can be like hey i'll give you b4 if you give me three dollars and c7 you're like ah you know that would really lengthen you would have to be very streamlined to take you know if you can't do it in like three seconds or five seconds but i do like i mentioned the monuments is technically not in the base game i'll never play without it you need the money i need the money i would want the monuments otherwise it's too late it's so symmetrical without the without the monuments everyone's got exactly the same stuff the monuments really just that extra like oh that the colosseum is so cool for what i'm doing when you plop this big thing down did you feel like the game was mean enough like you could take a property someone else once i did i feel like it's a perfect amount of me because you can do it because there's a little bit of that like oh this kind of helps me but it really helps them so therefore i'm going to take it but i think one of my favorite things was once i have something it's mine no one's taking it it's mine and it's precious and i'm not giving it up mine and if you make too many decisions of like i'm going to take that from you so you don't have it i have a lot of disparate plots that do nothing for that right exactly long term it doesn't help so i think it was the perfect balance of mean versus focus on yourself tom feed on being mean to me okay first of all you could have taken the property i let it go around once i'm going around two weeks on being mean to me and counter drafting my property locks yeah game plan was i want to say i think my favorite thing about it gameplay wise was just the simplicity like on your turn there's what only three things you can do and i love that i think just it's very streamlined in its rules it's really easy to teach pretty much anyone can pick it up um you know even even a non-gamer maybe a little bit more nudging and helping of them but i really think it is a it's on the lighter side of games you know which which makes it very approachable but then they feel like they got this huge experience because it is grandiose and large and tactile and so you get a gamer experience with somebody who can only handle or is only ready for a lighter experience or people that just prefer lighter games you know gamers that prefer lighter games so i think it really um makes itself really accessible with that and then i i mean we've all talked about the market you know those tough decisions of like okay i'm gonna pass this turn so i can get money because that one that one card i need hasn't come out yet you know so timing your turns right but also not leaving things in the market too long that you really want that someone might kind of do that hate drafting buying i guess you know and so so i i think it also makes for very interesting decisions with your limited choices the market the way it comes out um i think it's really interesting but it still maintains its lightness you know that it's ease of entry i'll say very approachable right and any game where you have like a pass action like oh that's a wasted turn but i got a pile of money right and it's good every turn feels yeah every turn feels like you're progressing which is good the pass action is is i mean i did it multiple usually like you said that's a negative thing in a game it's like oh it's the past turn no because i feel like that pass action sets you up not just for one it's not a placeholder you know it really does set you up multiple turns and when you take it in the round makes a difference and every coin you get is important right so if you get eight more coins look at all those things i can now buy so it's so critical to pass or just to take a comment is it called commerce action or something like that it's called pass okay i don't think it's called pass no yeah okay but functionally yeah right fortunately you're just taking money i'm not building i'm not getting land but i'm taking them yeah i'm taking the bank all right chris what's your final thoughts and rating there's a lot to digest because i love this gameplay i really do i think the game should come in a box about the quarter of this size i cannot humanly recommend this to another person right because because of just this product like i said if i have the feeling of i have access to this right now right last night i could have taken it home played it with my wife enjoyed a nice pleasant two-player game of it but i just think i don't want to deal with just the the load of the carrying it and the and just the table space of it all that is what i mean by dawn someone in the chat was saying like what do you mean by dante that's what i mean it's a weird mental load i'm giving this game a 6.5 because i enjoy the gameplay so much and i i absolutely disagree with the form factor of it i i think it's just ridiculous by the way it's fun by the way this is again just to put it in perspective this is six times the size of a tick to right box right standard box take the right six ticking through my boxes now yeah yeah it is five or six i i measured it i took a tick or dry box and i measured it you're terrible at measurements it's five maybe it's fine okay go ahead go ahead like this what do you get five times the size what's your opinions in rating 11 11 is that what i'm hearing put it up put the number up survey said 11 vision i was just kidding 11. okay so so 11. it's a 10. i told roy to put 11 up there because it was funny it is i can't believe i said 11. yes it really is survey says there we go thank you he's the best so no so it is it is to me like a perfect game i'm sorry chris i'm sorry we have such a dissonance here sorry why am i and i think a lot of people will absolutely agree with you and i think a lot of people will agree with me and there's no wrong in that it's not really wrong that's the great thing about the hobby sure is this game for everybody pull is this game for everybody the answer is no i mean how many games at a 100 plus dollar price point can any human being have it's just kind of hard the game play here is just so solid first i played i said wow this is a really good game and the production's crazy i played a second i said oh my god this is a really good game and the production is crazy so i immediately said i had to have this game for those reasons it's going to look great you can play with anybody as we've been saying and bring it out you almost almost play it with grandma you can certainly play it with with rarely young kids easily down to eight the game is solid on every level love it will be my collection forever all right and 11. this one goes to take a look at my rating is it an 11 no no it's a 9. i really do like this game i was in the thought process about the size of the box okay full disclosure i said make it a smaller box however it was decided to make the bigger box i'm not upset about that i really do like how it looks yes i agree with chris i can't just throw this and carry it around but i can have it at my house some games i want to be big i don't want every game to be giant um but i like this one and the the rome itself looks awesome but taking all down the picture this is one of my favorite games by gameplay i think emerson is one of the best designers on the market to make games that have really fast decisions that feel meaningful and you know what way back in the day there was a game called big city which was a city building with the plastic pieces and it's not that great of a game it's okay but it was elevated by those cool buildings these buildings beat up the big city buildings and make them cry mercy and it's also a good game that's a good combo for me so i really like the game that is wrong but also realize i have a part of the game so thanks to essential thanks keep that in mind awesome well i i really like the game um i think the gameplay is is very streamlined i really enjoy that part of it and i think for me what makes what sells this game is that again just the number of groups that it fits you know i can take it to experienced gamers who prefer light games i can take it to inexperienced games who want an experience so i gave it a 7.5 um what pulled it down for me was it's just not really in my wheelhouse you know like it's a game that i would take to the game pretty much no not enough blood um are you like lots of conflict um we'll talk i i do but i'm very particular with what if there was a backstabbing caesar expansion yes make it like that 11. no um so i i really like that this is a game that i would take knowing a play group to a play group but it's not one that i'd be like i really want to play this game you know so this i think the my rating is so high because i think it is so great it's so low because it's not specifically my type of game if that makes sense and so i settled somewhere you know right there in the middle definitely would recommend it i don't have a problem with the size because i think the size is what brings the experience and which allows it to reach so many people so i this is a game that i would not want a smaller box because i want everything that comes in this size box so if this is a game i'm going to get and to reach all those people it's worth it it is worth a full calyx cube 7.5 that's how we measure games it's worth a galaxy space because we are limited to that and that's true that's yeah that's everyone's different on what their storage is and and what their tastes are absolutely right all right well that's foundations of rome thanks for watching until next time i'm tom vassell i'm stephen boncourt i'm chris yeah and i'm camila cleghorn thanks for coming let's keep moving [Music] [Music] you

Channel: The Dice Tower

Views: 26,320

Keywords: board game, board, game, dice, card game, cards, catan, monopoly, tower, dice tower, vasel, review, tom vasel, vassel, settlers, gaming, GeekUsername: TomVasel, board game review, boardgame, uno, ticket to ride, apples to apples, educational games, educational, top 10, juegosdemesa, Brettspiele, ボードゲーム, brädspel, jeuxdesociété, משחקילוח, 보드게임, deskováhra, graplanszowa, bordspel, 棋盘游戏, gioco da tavolo, desková hra, gra planszowa, настольная игра, trò chơi trên bàn cờ, jogo de tabuleiro, لعبة اللوحة

Id: LWofB7Hh9PE

Length: 29min 47sec (1787 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 03 2022