The Downfall of Pompeii

If I had to describe the current popular technological advances that face the masses, I'd have to describe it as "blending."  A blu-ray player can also hop onto Hulu or Netflix to stream videos.  Your television can sync with a tablet device and act as a larger screen.  Your phone probably either has a camera or a built-in mp3 player.  Even non-entertainment-based technology seems to be coming together, with bluetooth services available in cars for easy telephone use, shoes that sync with your phone to count your steps, and a chair that refills your empty beer.  Obviously we are living in a golden age.

Now, board games don't have the same luxuries.  We all remember the games that tried to advance technology from earlier times.  They either involved swiping a pretend charge card as you travelled through a mall, playing the sound of a missile that missed a battleship, or using an electronic randomizer to replace dice.  Better blendings in board games tend to come from historical periods, allowing you to either retrace the original rail lines of America, simulate the early settler expansion across America, or in the case of one of my favorite board games, repeat an event that caused the deaths of sixteen thousand people.

Let's dig in.

First, let's examine the game board.

The game board presents a very basic layout of a smaller version of Pompeii, with various locations that I can only assume are slightly accurate.  Each turn, according to the game description, players get to bring "new citizens" into the city, whose wealth and wonders draw people "from all over."  Each player gets their own tokens to represent people in the town, and the early turns are spent placing tokens, trying to fill buildings, and (obviously) locate the strategic areas for what you know is eventually coming.

There's a deck of cards that comes with the game, and players keep a small hand of cards to allow them to place their tokens.  If you place a purple card, you can put your token in a purple building, a blue card allows for blue placement, etc.  However, there are two cards that you have to be aware of.

First you'll draw an A.D. 79 card to let you know that things are about to get real.  The placement of figures gets faster, but you are also able to start drawing "omen" cards, indicating that the volcano is getting active.  Upon drawing one of those cards, you get to represent the people of Pompeii who are seeing the volcano give signs of trouble and resolve the matter the only way that they know how.

You pick up a different colored token and toss it in the volcano as a sacrifice.

No, seriously, it goes in a volcano.  It's hard to see in that first image, so let's get a better view.

Yes, the game comes with a plastic volcano you get to toss people into.  Doing a mock scream as you hurl the figure in isn't required, but I think it tends to add to the atmosphere.

Upon the drawing of the second AD 79 card, the first phase of the game ends.  Each player gets rid of the cards in their hands, any remaining tokens they were unable to place are put back in the box, not put into the volcano (this becomes important later), and it gets down to the grim business of attempting to escape certain death.  Granted, the real citizens of Pompeii were caught almost completely unaware by what was going on, but to end a game with "whoops, everyone dies" really doesn't warrant a second play through.

At this point lava tokens come into play, each with its own symbol tucked in the corner.  The symbols on the lava tokens correlate to spaces on the board where, presumably, lava flows are able to get into the city.  I'm not sure how they manage to get in from the far side of the city from the volcano, but I'm not a vulcanologist, just a guy who loves board games.

Players take turns drawing tokens blindly from a container (a bag or an empty box top held overhead works fine) and places them in positions on the board linked to the symbol.  If it's the first piece, it goes directly on the representing square, but any piece with the same symbol afterwards simply has to be connected to the "chain" of lava pieces.  If the lava splits into two paths, so be it.

After a token is placed, the player gets to move two of their pieces a number of spaces equal to the number of tokens in the space towards the "gates" around the city.  Any pieces that successfully escape are placed in front of the player. A player can only move tokens of their own color.  Any that happen to be in a square when a lava token goes down on it get picked up by the player (even if its his or her own pieces) and tossed in the volcano.  Play continues until every tile is placed.

Now, one fun rule:  any pieces who have no means of reaching a gate, regardless of whether or not they can still move, are tossed into the volcano.  It was not uncommon to see players trying to start to move all of theirs towards one side of the board early on in the game and then try to block all the gates on the other side with lava quickly.

Once the last lava token is placed, the game ends, all the remaining pieces on the board are tossed in the volcano.  Whoever saved the most of their tokens wins, but in the case of a tie, whichever of the tied players with the least number of tokens in the volcano wins.

The game is an absolute blast to play, and I really wish I could play it more often.  There's a certain amount of strategy involved in movement and token placement, but once the lava tokens are randomly drawn, I've seen small armies of tokens get wiped out in just a couple of turns.

If anybody I know is interested, I've got my copy nearby on a shelf and I'd be willing to bust it out any time they want to give it a try, and it's a fun way to acknowledge one of the most terrible natural disasters of the ancient world.  I look forward to the eventual development of the board game based on the earthquake and resulting tsunami that sunk the Greek city of Helike overnight.