With this My Favorite Wargame Cards Series, I hope to take a look at a specific card from the various wargames that I have played and share how it is used in the game. I am not a strategist and frankly I am not that good at games but I do understand how things should work and be used in games. With that being said, here is the next entry in this series.

#72: Commodus from The Wars of Marcus Aurelius: Rome 170-180CE from Hollandspiele

The Wars of Marcus Aurelius: Rome 170-180CE is a solitaire only game that uses cards similarly to a CDG to simulate the strategic level struggle of the Romans led by Marcus Aurelius to stave off the invasions of Germanic tribes and Sarmatian raiders as they encroach on Roman territory across the Danube River. That’s the history. And it is really well integrated. The game play is very fun, strategic, with lots of decision points about what to do and what cards to use, and it is really challenging.

In the game, the Roman player has a deck of Roman Cards that can be used for the printed events for various effects or that can be discarded to take any number of actions such as attack a Barbarian army or Off-Map Conflict enemy, advance the marker on the Imperium Track, add two Level 1 Forts to any eligible map spaces, flip one Level 1 Fort to a Level 2 Fort among several other actions. Sometimes the printed events in the game are just more powerful than discarding a card for just 1 action so you have to pay attention to this economy and make sure you get the most out of your cards. Now, keep in mind, sometimes discarding a good card whose ability is not right for the current situation you find yourself in is part of the game but you have to use these cards wisely to do well in the game.

The game uses two separate decks of cards including the Barbarian Deck (Green) and The Roman Deck (Red). Both of the decks are made up of 50 cards each but each have very different purposes. The Barbarian Deck is used to determine the actions of the invading Germanic tribes as well as events that effect the war effort including mutinies, plague and the will of the people. While the Roman Deck provides the resources and events that are used by the Roman player to mount a defense against the invasions and to fight back each of the different barbarian tribes. There are unique cards called Late War Cards in the deck that will be held out until the start of the 175CE turn at which time they will be mixed in with the cards to form a new Late War Deck. There are also special cards that are marked with an asterisk that if played for the event will be discarded from the game to form what is called a History Pile.

In this entry, we will focus on the Roman Card Commodus, which provides some opportunity to shore up your failing Imperium Points or even cancel an ongoing Mutiny of your troops on the board. In my first 5 or 6 plays of the game, the most common way that I lost was by allowing the Imperium Point Track to reach zero, which results in Marcus Aurelius being usurped and the player immediately losing the game. I was confounded and very frustrated about why I couldn’t prevent this from happening! I could see the end coming but struggled with keeping that Track above water. There are a few cards included in the Roman Deck that provide increases to the Imperium Track and I highly recommend you take these type of events when they come into your hand rather than discarding these cards to take another action, that might seem important at the time, but in the end these events are just too efficient to pass on. Commodus will provide you an option. This option is taking the +2 IP or another type of action such as ending a Mutiny (very important as it usually takes you discarding a card and losing an IP) or drawing two cards to add to your hand (imagine if you can only draw that Local Guides card you have been looking for or the Ambush that you need to take on the Quadi in their Home space). It becomes a choice of “either/or” and I am here to tell you the only reason the “or option” is provided is to lure you away from the real prize in that of gaining the +2 IP. Please listen to my advice and take the +2 IP. You will thank me in the end! Remember, that the concept of Imperium Points (IP) represent the Emperor’s overall political authority and stability in Rome. If the IP track ever reaches zero, the player immediately loses due to usurpation. Points are lost from specific card events, barbarian surges, and certain combat results, requiring players to prioritize special events to gain them back

Commodus was Roman emperor from 177 to 192AD, first serving as nominal co-emperor under his father Marcus Aurelius and then ruling alone from 180AD. Commodus’s sole reign is commonly thought to mark the end of the Pax Romana, a golden age of peace and prosperity in the history of the Roman Empire.

Commodus accompanied his father during the Marcomannic Wars in 172AD and on a tour of the Eastern provinces in 176AD. The following year, he became the youngest emperor and consul up to that point, at the age of 16. His solo reign saw less military conflict than that of Marcus Aurelius, but internal intrigues and conspiracies abounded, goading Commodus to an increasingly dictatorial style of leadership. This culminated in his creating a deific personality cult, including his performances as a gladiator in the Colosseum. Throughout his reign, Commodus entrusted the management of daily routine affairs to his palace chamberlain and praetorian prefects, namely Saoterus, Perennis, and Cleander. Roman soldiers and the general populace generally liked Commodus during his reign, largely because he was popular with the masses and focused on lavish spending rather than costly foreign wars. He was adored for presenting himself as a masculine, gladiatorial Hercules, though the Senate despised him

Commodus was assassinated by the wrestler Narcissus in 192AD, ending the Nerva–Antonine dynasty. He was succeeded by Pertinax, the first claimant in the tumultuous Year of the Five Emperors.

I shot a playthrough video for the game and you can watch that at the following link:

I also followed that up with a full video review sharing my thoughts:

In the next entry in this series, we will take a look at Russian Leader Tsar Alexander I from Congress of Vienna from GMT Games.

-Grant

I like weird games (derogatory) almost as much as I like weird games (complimentary).

Belinda’s Big Bonus is a weird game (weird).

Having your game designed by Amabel Holland sets certain expectations, despite any difficulties in pinning her down to a single genre or register. Similarly, basing a game on an erotic novel series, in this case Belinda Blinked by Rocky Flintstone, also sets certain expectations. Yet Belinda’s Big Bonus isn’t especially erotic. I wouldn’t call it funny, either, although it’s possible I’m just not in on the joke. Neither does it strike me as “so bad it’s good.” Mostly, it’s twice as complicated as one would expect from a licensed game. It reminds me of nothing so much as one of those business guys whose entire life is conducted through Google Calendar invites.

First of all, we should open with a disclaimer. I know very little about Belinda Blinked. I considered reading the first one as research for this review — “research,” I say — but decided against it. Sometimes knowing less is knowing more. That’s our motto here in the United States. It’s written on our dollars and everything. While scant few people are going to play this thing sans foreknowledge, I happen to be one of them, and if there’s any one quality a critic requires, it’s the resolute belief that one’s experiences are valid no matter how uninformed. Here I stand.

Which is to say, perhaps Belinda Blinked is about managing one’s schedule, suffering from jet-lag, and mixing up which actions cost which payment. Maybe. In which case, may I offer my deepest apologies to Holland, Flintstone, and Belinda herself. Forgive this prude, for he knows not what he do.

At the game’s outset, players step into the not-yet-broken-in business shoes of interns at Steele’s Pots and Pans. Their task is to earn some millions of pounds for the company. They do this by…

Look, this is the first problem with Belinda’s Big Bonus, and it’s a doozy. As any gaming evangelical knows, it’s hard enough describing a board game to newcomers, and Belinda’s Big Bonus is no board game for newcomers. There are mechanisms aplenty in this trunk, packed together like someone mixed the first-aid kit with the snack bag. There’s a calendar timekeeping system, the kind popularized by Martin Wallace titles, and cards that may exist either in a market, your hand, or a tableau, with interactions dependent on their current source — except sometimes they can be spent from two of those places, and the rulebook is conversational and, although it’s amusing, this doesn’t lend itself to learning the damn thing.

Here’s the short version. Turns are variable, conducted by whomever is farthest back on the calendar. On those turns, you spend some amount of time to make connections — which is to say, put cards into your tableau from either the market or your hand — do spy stuff — gain cards into your hand, from the deck this time — rest to refresh the cards in your tableau, make a business deal by throwing away the cards you painstakingly contacted or spied upon — and, in the process, try to persuade your fellow players to spend some of their cards instead, because these business deals are often collaborative and dole out benefits to multiple players — or perhaps visit a calendar event on the appointed date to gain some advantage.

If that sounds confusing, try teaching it. I’m no stranger to Holland’s more tangled designs, but this one found the most uncomfortable spot on the seesaw between complexity and anticipation: the fulcrum. Belinda’s Big Bonus feels like it should be a light game, looks like a light game, has that licensed light-game air to it, and then, kapow, but a kapow more like a punch to the schnoz than something erotic, it smacks you with a clutter of ideas.

For all that, there is an interesting game in here. The gist is that you need to build out your tableau and hand in order to spend those same cards to make business deals. Along the way, your characters provide something like an engine.

There’s even a narrative to the whole thing. Sir James Godwin makes it easier to attract Bella Ridley to your work group. Meanwhile, James Spooner, the Laird of Gretna Green, brings Cosmo Macaroon into the fold through some act of espionage. Later, your connections to Bella and Cosmo will help you make a deal in Texas, USA for nine million pounds sterling. Unfortunately, that same deal enriches a rival intern by five million pounds, so you try to squeeze some contribution from so-and-so at the table rather than merely handing the commission to whichever competitor is sitting in last place.

Those are genuine dramatic and narrative beats! Along the way, though, Belinda’s Big Bonus is burdened by bloated bits. It’s easy to paint oneself into a corner, for instance, by spending too many cards on an eager deal. This can leave one player sitting around with very little to do but play catch-up. And, hey, that’s their fault, right? If we were playing one of Holland’s cube-rail games, such a possibility would act as evidence of the game’s forthrightness. But here, the possibility comes across less like an honest appraisal of the perils of betting everything on some bad stock tips, and more like an unexpected heel-turn on the game’s part.

Here’s another example. Belinda’s Big Bonus includes the possibility of a traitor moment. When the game concludes, the player in last place might reveal that they now hold the majority of connections to Steele’s rival firm, Bisch Herstellung. This turns them into “the special one” and wins the game in a sudden coup. Cool!

Except, like everything else in Belinda’s Big Bonus, the rules governing the reveal are so text-heavy that it doesn’t feel like an amusing capstone. It’s closer to checking a technical manual to see if you’ve successfully told a joke. It isn’t hard, exactly. Nothing in the game is hard. But it’s less fluid than it ought to be, keeping everybody’s attention on these mismatched processes rather than on the parade of characters and situations strutting across the table.

Then again, maybe I’m not in on the joke. Maybe a Belinda Blinked game should be more complicated than most licensed titles. Maybe it should buck common sense by being an erotic game with no eroticism, a business game with no head for business, a whimsy with lots of rules printed on the board. Maybe it should be a big meta-joke at my expense. Maybe this game doesn’t exist for anyone but me, and it was sent to me solely so that everybody could point and laugh and say, ha ha, you took our prank earnestly, you big stupid fool, you moron, you lame-o.

That would be okay. I don’t mind. In the game’s cast of characters, I feel most like the guy anxiously cleaning a stain from his tie. I don’t need to get everything. Sometimes, I even revel in how little I understand. For example, I’ve had a lovely time not understanding Belinda’s Big Bonus. Maybe you’ll have a lovely time not understanding it as well. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.

 

A complimentary copy of Belinda’s Big Bonus was provided by the publisher.

(If what I’m doing at Space-Biff! is valuable to you in some way, please consider dropping by my Patreon campaign or Ko-fi. Right now, supporters can read about which films I watched in 2025, including some brief thoughts on each. That’s 44 movies! That’s a lot, unless you see, like, 45 or more movies in a year!)

Back when I was in the dating pool — the late Pleistocene, oh ho ho — I would sometimes tell women that my only qualification for a life partner was somebody I could “play boggle in bed” with. This was, of course, a euphemism for playing Bill Cooke and Allan Turoff’s 1972 word-making board game Boggle. While atop a bed. Because beds are cozy. And let me tell you, that joke goes so much harder among people who don’t play so many board games that they immediately assume that’s what I meant by “Boggle” in the first place.

Amabel Holland’s cross4 falls into the category of retro word games. Like Boggle, I suppose. Frankly, I would rather play Boggle. Which perhaps isn’t a ding against cross4 so much as it is a statement about how great Boggle is.

cross4 is a crossword-making game. Actually, cross4 is four crossword-making games. In each, the basics remain untouched. You roll a septet of dice that show various letters. Then you take those letters — some or all, it’s up to you — and assign them to the blank spaces of a crossword puzzle. Making a word is a must. Making a good, obscure, or interesting word is optional. Actually, making good, obscure, or interesting words is probably one of the surest ways to fail.

The details change depending on the specific variant of cross4 currently being played. There’s Solitaire, where your objective is solely to score lots of points. There’s the Heads-Down varietal, where everybody labors over their own grid until someone makes a fatal mistake. The most interesting modes are Two-Player Duel and Elimination, both of which lean into the format’s natural idiosyncrasies. Basically, at regular intervals, everybody swaps grids. This transforms cross4 from a relatively straightforward affair into the sort of game where you can lay traps. Oh, and write good, obscure, or interesting words that your fellow players might struggle to use. Then again, such flippant play might come around to bite you in the hindquarters.

I mention idiosyncrasies. This game has plenty of them. Like the sprawling crossword space, with its multiple grid-spanning openings that are a real PITA to bridge. Or that issue’s compounding factor, the fact that there are seven dice, not quite enough to actually span such wide gaps, necessitating that players first build out a few shorter words. Planning ahead is a must, but planning ahead is hard as hell. And I say that as somebody who likes crossword-making games.

No less idiosyncratic, but far less confounding, are the dice themselves. Printed off-center and slightly scuffed, these rounded hexahedrons are the perfect imitation of what one might discover in an old copy of — well, in an old copy of Boggle. They feel like something you’d uncover in a grandparent’s game closet, although they’re tuned in a way that many old letter-dice games were not. For one thing, you’re actually guaranteed at least one vowel per roll.

But it’s not their tuning, but their sheer power as forgeries that make them stand out. Did Holland roll them through sand to achieve the optimal degree of rasp? Did she instruct her printer to make sure some of the bubbles were printed that crucial millimeter off center? They aren’t even quite the same size. In the era of machine-milled cellulose sponge, that’s more impressive than total uniformity. I hope it doesn’t come across as too dismissive to say that I’m tempted to keep the dice and chuck the game.

Dismissive or not, that’s my feeling here. Playing cross4, it was hard to shake off its redolence to another nostalgia-laden project: UFO 50, the 2024 collection of video games created in part by Hot Streak, Spots, and Scape Goat designer Jon Perry. Setting aside their obvious differences in scale, UFO 50 also adopted the limitations of an older format, in its case the systems, graphics, and inputs of 8-bit video games, in order to create something that was recognizably displaced in time, but also gifted the advantages of modern design principles. The result in that case was many things. Throwback archaeology. A meditation on the swift passage of video game tech. Even a bit of a flex for some of today’s most talented game creators.

With cross4, Holland does something similar. The rather large distinction, though, is that cross4 is a bijou, a displaced trinket, which evokes time-worn aesthetics and sensibilities, makes a few small corrections to how many of these games were busted right out of the box, but then settles into a series of games that are, at best, fine. To keep up the comparison to UFO 50, it’s more Block Koala than Party House.

The short version is that cross4 comes across as more of a vanity project than as something most people are liable to seek out, but I can’t deny that many of its smaller touches charmed me nonetheless. The grid-swapping modes, for example, and how they transform the gameplay from pure frustration to an ever-evolving minefield, or the way the rules are printed on the back of the box rather than afforded a booklet, or the dice. Above all, the dice. To handle them is to remember something we played long ago. It was not a very good game, but we sprawled on our bellies atop shag carpets, and the house smelled of stew and dog hair, and the television was always somehow tuned to 24-hour Matlock.

Which is to say, thanks for the memories, cross4. As for the crosswords… eh.

 

A complimentary copy of Cross4 was provided by the publisher.

(If what I’m doing at Space-Biff! is valuable to you in some way, please consider dropping by my Patreon campaign or Ko-fi. Right now, supporters can read about which films I watched in 2025, including some brief thoughts on each. That’s 44 movies! That’s a lot, unless you see, like, 45 or more movies in a year!)

With this My Favorite Wargame Cards Series, I hope to take a look at a specific card from the various wargames that I have played and share how it is used in the game. I am not a strategist and frankly I am not that good at games but I do understand how things should work and be used in games. With that being said, here is the next entry in this series.

#63: Militia from Stilicho: Last of the Romans from Hollandspiele

Stilicho: Last of the Romans is a very well designed and interesting solo experience that plays in 60-90 minutes. But, due to the unforgiving nature of the random card draws and its reliance on dice luck, that admittedly can be mitigated through cagey card play and proper decisions, the game can be over very quickly. In fact, my very first play a few years ago lasted only 2 rounds and was over in about 15 minutes. Remember that the historical Stilicho only made it to Round 3! The cards are at the heart of the game here and make it a very tense and decision filled experience. Having to analyze each card, measuring its utility against the board state and what pressing matters the player must address while also fretting over having to discard a good Event Card that just isn’t useful at this point in time to take an action can be really agonizing. I think that this design works even better than its predecessor Wars of Marcus Aurelius.

The cards are a form of multi-use cards, as most Card Driven Games are, as they can either be used for the printed events on the cards or simply to be discarded to take one of a number of actions available to the player. It is important to read every aspect of the card thoroughly as some cards have multiple effects, differing effects depending on what the state of the game is or whether one Barbarian has surrendered or may have several prerequisites to that card being allowed to be played.

There are some events that are too important to your efforts to ever discard to take an action as they provide you with such great benefit and are more efficient than taking individual actions. Don’t get me wrong though the playability of a card is always dependent on when in the course of the game the card is drawn. An example of what I am talking about is the Militia Roman Card.

During the game, some cards will cause Unrest Markers to be placed on the various tracks that wind their way through the provinces. These Unrest Markers represent the erosion and weakening of Roman control, the spread of fear throughout the populace due to the threat of usurpers and ultimate civil war as well as the logistical difficulties of defending against barbarian incursions. They act as a critical, accumulating threat that, if left unchecked, can lead to widespread revolts, which are one of the primary ways a player loses the game. Unrest Markers are placed in Dioceses when specific enemy cards (particularly the Vandals) are activated or reach the end of their movement tracks. If a Diocese already contains an Unrest Marker when a new one is triggered, it indicates increasing instability, requiring the player to flip an existing, lower-level Unrest Marker to its “Revolt” side. Unrest/Revolt Markers increase the difficulty of battles in that province. When attacking or defending in a affected Diocese, the marker adds to the enemy’s strength. Also, a major loss condition in the game is having too many Revolt Markers on the board simultaneously. Managing and removing these markers is essential for survival. Unrest Markers are placed in a specific order across the board—starting from Hispania and moving through Gallia to Italia—which dictates the geographic spread of the crisis. Players must spend valuable actions (usually by discarding cards) or use specific Event Cards such as the Militia card to remove these counters from the board. 

Before the late 2nd century BC, Rome used a citizen militia or levy of property-owning men aged 16–46, serving unpaid during summer campaigns. Organized by wealth, they formed three lines—hastati, principes, triarii—and provided their own equipment. They were crucial for seasonal defense and expansion, as well as for patrolling and safeguarding supply lines, trade routes and newly conquered territories, ultimately transitioning to a professional army after 107 BC. The citizen troops were grouped into maniples based on age and wealth, with the poorest acting as light-armed skirmishers (velites). Service was typically restricted to the annual campaign season, often ending with the Festival of the October Horse on 19 October. The militia employed a three-line, checkerboard formation to allow for tactical flexibility. Due to many reasons, the militia system was phased out after 107 BC in favor of a full-time, professional army, although conscription remained as a, mostly unpopular, option for raising forces.

I wrote a series of Action Points on the various aspects of the game and you can read those at the following links:

Action Point 1 – the Mapsheet focusing on the three Fronts down which your enemies advance, but also covering the different spaces and boxes that effect play such as the Olympius Track, Game Turn Track, Army Box, Leader Box and Recovery Box

Action Point 2 – look at the cards that drive the game and examine the makeup of both the Enemy Deck and the Roman Deck.

Action Point 3 – look into the Roman Phase and examine how cards are discarded to take one of nine different actions.

Action Point 4 – look at a few examples of Battles and how they are resolved.

Action Point 5 – look at a few points of strategy that will help you do better in the game.

I shot a playthrough video for the game and you can watch that at the following link:

I also followed that up with a full video review sharing my thoughts:

In the next entry in this series, we will take a look at Guns of August from Paths of Glory: The First World War, 1914-1918 from GMT Games.

-Grant