our review

Ancient Imperial Residence

Porta Nigra

Trier and her famous Black Gate

Trier and her famous Black Gate, an impressive witness to the great past of the town. Trier was founded as Augusta Treverorum at the time of Emperor Augustus, was extended and upgraded over the course of centuries and, finally, was made Imperial residence of the Roman Emperors.

We are builders in Trier at the time in which the city was built and developed.

At the start of the game the supply cards are set out ready as are six building and 14 honor cards; each player takes 20 sesterces, one torch token as well as the  action card deck of his color. This deck of eight cards is shuffled and you draw two cards in hand. You put down your player board in your color and take your corresponding builder marker piece, three action markers and five Romans of your color, the remaining ten Romans are put into general stock.

This takes us to the game itself and we encounter the first surprise: in a game with three and four players we play only two rounds! Which without fail provokes the question of how long a round takes? Well, exactly as long as it takes all players to play all their eight actions once. This is followed by an interim scoring and a final scoring, after the second round - or third round for two players.

In detail, a player turn comprises two phases: Refill Phase and Action Phase. In your first turn of the game you place your builder at the start of the turn into one of the four quarters of the board.

Then, and in all further turns in the refill phase, you check the number of building bricks in the market and replenish them if necessary. To do so you draw a supply card and place a brick into each shop that is marked on the card with +1, if necessary also on top of a brick already in the shop. This drawing of a supply card and placing bricks is repeated until a total of at least 14 bricks is on the market. If the draw pile is empty, you shuffle the discard pile for a new draw pile.

Then you check the building cards; when there are fewer than six cards on display, you refill them from the draw pile. If this is empty, you do not refill building cards.

As the final step in the refill phase you check the number of honor cards and refill them, if necessary, to 14 from the stack; again you do not refill if the stack is empty.

This takes us to the Action phase of a player turn and this is very easy – you play one of the two action cards in your hand, use maybe Influence markers and draw a card. The cards show varying combinations of actions out of five action options and the number of torches depicted on the card indicates how many of the actions depicted on the card you can do once, you mark them with one of your action markers. Action options are:

- Buy a brick: You buy a brick from a shop with bricks, either in the shop of the color indicated on the card or, for the grey brick symbol, a brick from any shop of your choice. If necessary you move your builder into the quarter with the necessary shop color and pay one sesterce for each change of quarter, then you buy the brick and pay the cost, which is between 1 and 5 sesterces. The white shop can be reached from any quarter without moving. If you do not have enough money, you cannot do this action.

- Place a Building Element: you can place a building element on an empty building lot in the quarter where your builder is currently located. Such a building element comprises one to eight bricks of a color – white can replace any color – and must comply with the conditions indicated by the building lot as regards to color and number of pieces. Porta Nigra always demands between three and eight brick pieces. On a Building Element that was correctly composed you must place on of your Roman markers – if you cannot do this, you cannot place a building element – and then score victory points and a building card, in case of a building card being on display which shows the building to which you did ad the element and also the color of the bricks used. Then you put the building element onto the slot and might trigger builder rewards, if the new total of your bricks at the building (they can be identified by your Roman on top) can be divided by three.  

- Take an influence token: You can use those influence tokens for actions, at any time in your turn, for buying an honor card (once per turn), taking a Roman from general stock or placing a building element.

- Take a torch token: You can use a Torch marker in later turns to give you an extra action. When there is an action symbol left you your action card that you want to use, you cover it with a torch token, which then goes back into general stock. Torches can also give you one Sesterce from the bank for each torch symbol or marker - you either discard a torch token or forfeit an action and cover the torch symbol on your action card.

- Take coins: You take coins according to the symbol on the card.

When all eight action cards have been played, there is an interim scoring for each player: You count the number of bricks that you have built on the board, double the total and split this total any way you like into sesterces and victory points.

There are several ways in which the game can end:

- At the end of the second or third round

- In a player turn both brick market and stock of bricks are empty

- Someone builds his 15^th building element and is thus out of Romans. In the two latter cases the player who triggered the end scores five victory points, finishes his turn and all other players have one more turn.

In the final scoring you get points for sets of building cards, Final Scoring cards and for Romans, Sesterces, Influence tokens, Torch tokens and Bricks in your player board as well as for majorities in bricks in buildings and win with most points.

Porta Nigra is a highly sophisticated game, it seems simple and easy and suddenly you are in the middle of a game with surprising depth and far-reaching decisions. Due to the always varying multiple actions on the cards you find yourself in a fascinating mix of strategy and tactics – what must I plan for, what is best to be done immediately, do I have enough money to go to the yellow shop and pay for two yellow bricks or is it better to buy a Final scoring card with my influence points or, even better, a Roman for the next Building Element, and so on and so on.

The components are nice and fit the topic well, the bricks have already been eye catchers in Torres and Die Baumeister von Arkadia. What I like especially well, as it saves a lot of sorting efforts and also components, is the fact the the bricks take their color from their location. When in a red shop, they are red and stay red in the player storage area and work as red bricks in a building slot that demands red bricks. The element of chance is small, too, all have the same set of cards and the same options over the course of the game. A very well-made game, which in my opinion was too much overlooked in the games crop of 2015.

Dagmar de Cassan

Players: 2-4

Age: 12+

Time: 90+

Designer: Wolfgang Kramer. Michael Kiesling

Artist: Michael Menzel

Price: ca. 50 Euro

Publisher: eggertspiele / Pegasus Spiele 2015

Web: www.pegasus.de

Genre: Collect, build, sets

Users: With friends

Version: multi

Rules: de en + fr

In-game text:

Comments:

Easy, straightforward rules

Lots of in-game depth

Few chance elements

Compares to:

Die Baumeister von Arkadia and other building games with demands for location and building materials

Other editions:

Stronghold Games (en), Gigamic (fr)

My rating: 7

Dagmar de Cassan

A very well-made, good mix of strategy and tactic based on very straightforward easy mechanisms, with quick access to the game also for more inexperienced players.

Chance (pink): 0

Tactic (turquoise): 2

Strategy (blue): 2

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 0

Communication (red): 0

Interaction (brown): 3

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0