Circus Maximus
Adding some polish
It’s been a while since I visited this project, but things have been moving along in the background.
There have been several games played and a few tweaks here and there to the rules to really streamline them for what I had in mind, which was a quick and simple game which would be fast and easy to teach with a set of rules that would fit on a single page of A4 paper yet still have plenty of depth.
The whole thing needed to have a visual presence that would encourage people to take a look. Once drawn in, the gameplay had to be fast and obvious so that even without any prior knowledge of the game, you could be up and racing in minutes and after the first turn have a pretty solid understanding of the rules.
Part of making this game look attractive also included the player aids.
Historically, four factions took part in the races, and they were all given colours: Red, Blue, Green or White.
Races would consist of one, two or three teams per faction. So, four, eight or twelve chariots and races would last for seven laps. In this game, we play two laps and have chariots that are colour-coded by the colour of the horses and the colour of the chariots and crew. So far, I have done 8 chariots. Each of the four colours with black horses, and each with white horses. I will add brown horses at a later date.
This way, it is simple at a glance to identify your own chariot, blue with black horses or red with white horses, for example. This was important because the chariots would be moving all over the place, and I didn’t want players to lose track of their own model.
Each turn, the order of play is randomised. I decided to go with a card draw for this and play-tested it with simple bits of paper with coloured boxes. It worked a treat, but it needed to look a bit fancier.
With that in mind, I decided to make some cards to give it a more polished look. The cards would then be stored in a box with dice and, eventually, some markers that are also used in the game.
Here they are, before printing, in case anyone else is looking for something similar. The artwork is all royalty-free.
