Overview
At a glance
Is this game right for my group?
ABG editorial scores on a 1–5 scale.
Harder to teach
High replayability
Highly interactive
Scales well
Deep strategy
How it plays
How does it play?
Enter the theater of Carthage where only one Gladiator will survive. Take heed for every move could be your last!
Core mechanisms
Key systems that shape the decisions players make.
Deck / Bag Building
Add new pieces during play to improve the cards, tokens, or dice drawn later.
Cooperative Game
Players coordinate their actions toward a shared objective and win or lose together.
Hand Management
Time and sequence a limited hand of cards to preserve future options.
Player Elimination
Players can be removed from contention before the game ends.
Variable Player Powers
Each player has different abilities, restrictions, or strategic advantages.
Take That
Direct negative effects at selected opponents.
Read the full game description
Enter the theater of Carthage where only one Gladiator will survive. Take heed for every move could be your last! Carthage is a deck-building board game in which players move around a hex-based arena and face off in gladiatorial warfare to earn crowd favor, gain armor, and battle to the death. This game uses blended mechanisms of deck-building, hand management, and a whole lot of ruthless "take-that" combat. A round begins with the combat phase where players play action cards, after which they spend crowd favor points to build better combat options, lobby the crowd for advantages, or assemble their starting deck into a more lethal combination of tactics. ?Carthage utilizes deck-building and miniatures to give players a progressive game experience...ending in a vicious crescendo of blood and glory! Gladiators start in the theater as weak combatants, but as their actions gain crowd favor, they can develop their tactics (deck) into a lethal combination of damage, armor, and movement on the hex-based arena. Featuring a unique modular ruleset which allows players to alter the game complexity, play time, and strategic depth!