This is part two in a series of articles examining all the influence cards in The Barracks Emperors, one suit at a time. Part one, which can be found here, discussed Military cards. In this article, we look some of the uses and subtleties of the cards in the Blue suit. Just as in Time of Crisis, Blue represents power and influence with the Senate of Rome. All the special abilities tied to these cards represent things the Senate or the Emperor might rule on, including “peaceful” ways to deal with barbarians and different ways to draw cards, with one notable exception. Read on!

(Note: All art shown in this article is playtest art only. It is not final.)

Barbarians

Before getting to the Senate influence cards themselves, it may be beneficial to know what the Barbarians cards are and how they work.

Barbarians cards are treated like influence cards – Ten of them are shuffled into the draw deck, and you can draft them from the Forum, just as if they were influence cards. Four of them also start in influence card spaces on the edges of the board each round. 

Barbarians cards don’t represent your faction’s influence in the game; instead, they represent the somewhat unpredictable influence of the various invading barbarian tribes. All Barbarians cards are the same: “You may place this card in any homeland space OR discard it to move any active barbarian to a diagonally-adjacent connected space not containing a barbarian.”

The first thing to notice is that Barbarians cards have no suit and can not be counted as a Military, Senate, or Populace influence card for any purposes. They also have a value of 0, below the value of any influence cards. And since they are, by definition, NOT influence cards, they cannot be affected by other cards that change or move influence cards. With no suit and zero value, a Barbarians card will never be able to capture an Emperor for the player in whose space it is located*. Somewhat like the barbarian units that appear in Time of Crisis, Barbarians in The Barracks Emperors mostly get in the way and may block players’ ability to apply their influence where they would like to.

* In the very rare case that a Barbarian card is the “best” non-canceled card when an Emperor trick is resolved, or if the Emperor is surrounded by four Barbarian cards, the Emperor is killed in battle and no one captures the Emperor. Read up on the fate of the Emperor Valerian for an interesting example.

However, when you have a Barbarians card in your hand, you will get to choose how it is initially played. (This might represent your faction’s regional influence with a local barbarian tribe, or it may just represent your faction’s early knowledge of what the local barbarian tribes are up to.) We didn’t want to have barbarians in The Barracks Emperors appear randomly because, in a game of this nature, we wanted every card a player plays to definitely be something beneficial for himself.

Each play of a Barbarians card gives you two options. The first is to place the card on the board in an influence card space, effectively blocking that space. This placement must be made in a “barbarian homeland space”, which refers to the three edge spaces on each side of the board. Notice that these edge spaces are only adjacent to one Emperor card, so by the rules of the game, only the player seated on that edge of the board may normally play influence cards in those spaces. But ANY player can play a Barbarians card to block those spaces. And a Barbarians card may even be played ON TOP of an influence card that is already in that space. The covered influence card is not removed, but while covered, it is completely neutralized.

The second option a player may choose is to discard the card and instead MOVE a Barbarians card that is already on the board. You can choose any Barbarians card in any location and move it to any diagonally-adjacent space, possibly covering another influence card that is already there. This means that once a Barbarians card is on the board, no one can trust that it won’t be moved and used against them by another player. (Barbarians are friends of no Roman!)

Now on to the Senate cards….

Level 1 Senate Cards

Analogous to Red’s Reinforcements, the level 1 Senate cards are Influence Peddling, which reads, “You may add a +1 (or +2) marker to another Senate influence card already played anywhere on the board.” All of the same comments regarding Reinforcements in part one of this series also apply to Influence Peddling, except for Senate (Blue) influence cards: This ability is a great way to improve the value of your own card to win a trick, or to modify other players’ cards to help you make or break a tie.

Level 2 Senate Cards

Tribute represents Rome’s decision to “pay off” a particularly troublesome tribe so it basically just goes away. It says, “You may discard any active barbarian.  Any influence card it was covering remains.” (An “active” barbarian simply means a Barbarians card in play on the board.)

The use of this card is fairly straightforward: Simply choose a Barbarians card you don’t like and remove it from the board. Many times, another player will have moved Barbarians to cover a very high, trick-winning card that you have played. Removing the Barbarians puts your covered card back in play. Even if you don’t have a good card being covered, a Barbarians card certainly isn’t going to win the trick for you and removing it will allow you to play a useful card in that space for yourself in the future.

Slightly more subtly, you may want to remove Barbarians from a card that, when re-revealed, will cause a tie that prevents another player from winning a trick that you might otherwise win. Or remove Barbarians from an opponent’s trick-winning card that will take a trick away from the leading player. (The enemy of my enemy is my friend!)

If nothing else, you can remove Barbarians from a space with no card below it to just delay the resolution of a trick. (Recall a trick is only resolved when all 4 positions around the Emperor are filled.) Someone else will have to use another action to fill that space for the trick to be resolved.

Playing Tribute as a weak card for an opponent on a trick and using it to remove Barbarians from a good card for yourself on the same trick may allow you to make a surprise capture of an Emperor card. Otherwise, since Tribute has a lower value, it may be difficult to win a trick directly with this card.

Princeps Senatus is an honorary title indicating the leading man in the Senate, a position which carried some measure of prestige even after the Republic fell, although the Emperor was believed to have always taken the title for himself.

To reflect this additional prestige, the card grants this ability: “At the end of your turn, you may draw the top card of the draw deck into your hand AND then select one card from the Forum as normal.” This means that you will end the turn, and will continue the remainder of the round, with an extra card in your hand! The extra one you draw is random, and thus may or may not be of immediate use to you, but expanding your hand size ensures you’ll always have more options than your opponents have.

Generally, playing Princeps Senatus as early in the round as possible will maximize its benefit for you. Since it also has a lower value and can probably be beaten by someone else’s better card later, however, you may want to bury this play in a part of the board where it will harm other players more than it harms you.

Level 3 Senate Cards

Foederati provides another means for dealing with barbarians. During the Roman Empire, it was not uncommon to execute a treaty with various barbarian tribes, generally just to “bring them into the fold” without needing to resort to costly conquest. These tribes, while not full Roman citizens, were under the defense of Rome and were known as foederati (the root of the words “federation” and “federal”).

The Foederati card reads, “You may play this card in a legal space containing a barbarian. If you do, discard the barbarian and any influence card it was covering.” The Barbarians card you remove has been allied by Rome and is now replaced with the Foederati card.

As with Tribute, this ability can rid you completely of a Barbarians card that you don’t like in one of your spaces, so the uses of this card can be similar. But as a higher-level ability, it additionally allows you to immediately replace the Barbarians (and whatever was beneath it) as well. As this is a Senate card, you would probably normally want to play it on a Blue Emperor trick, as it will be a fairly high-value trump card.

However, don’t forget to stay aware of the influence cards that Barbarians cards are covering. (You’re allowed to look any time.) The fact that any card under the Barbarians you replace is also discarded means that you can also permanently get rid of an influence card that was troubling you. Another player may have been planning to move that Barbarians to re-expose a card that he really wanted.

If you would be removing an influence card that you yourself wanted to remain in play, then you may be better off looking at Tribute or another Barbarians card.

Frumentarii offers another method of drawing cards and another quick history lesson. Frumentarii were originally officials of the Roman Empire charged with the collection of wheat, most importantly to feed hungry legions. Because of their broad travel and connections across the empire, it was perhaps inevitable that they would start being used as a type of “secret police”. They knew a lot of people in a lot of places and served as valuable informants for the Emperor.

To reflect this “secret” aspect, the Frumentarii card provides this ability: “Instead of selecting a card from the Forum at the end of your turn, you may look at the top four cards of the draw pile and select one of your choice.” (You return the cards not selected to the bottom of the deck in any order you want.)

Generally, you would want to play this card when you’re not particularly interested in the four face-up cards that are available to draft in the Forum. Also, bear in mind that card drafting in The Barracks Emperors is public, and players who are paying attention can, to some extent, keep track of what cards the other players have drawn. Frumentarii offers you a very rare opportunity to draw a card into your hand that the other players don’t get to see. It’s a semi-random draw, but you may be able to draft a nice surprise for your opponents in this way.

Level 4 Senate Cards

This is perhaps the event that is most different from the others in the game. In Time of Crisis, Damnatio Memoriae is the only way in the game to take victory points away from another player. In a similar vein, Damnatio Memoriae in The Barracks Emperors is the only way to directly take away an Emperor trick card on the board. The card says, “You may remove from the game one Emperor adjacent to the space this card is played in.”

Because of the way the board is set up, most of the spaces in which you could play this card are adjacent to thee or four Emperor cards at the start of the round. Since Damnatio Memoriae is a high-value Senate card, its best use is definitely to play it on an Emperor that you might be able to win (usually a Blue Emperor), while also “damning from memory” a different adjacent Emperor that you know you are not going to be able to win.

If you can’t win an Emperor yourself, you at least want to make sure no one else gets it. This is sure to hurt your opponent who was banking on capturing that Emperor, particularly if it was needed to complete a set.

A Triumph was an honor bestowed by the Senate upon victorious generals from the earliest days of the Republic, and usually claimed as a matter of course by vain Emperors.

Reflecting this victory in battle and subsequent honor, the Triumph card says, “You may play this card in a legal space containing a barbarian. If you do, put the barbarian in your scoring area and discard any influence card it was covering.”

Triumph thus provides another means of removing Barbarians cards, but it offers another step up over Foederati and Tribute:  you now claim the Barbarians card you removed as a victory point. Usually, your victory points come solely from the Emperors that you win, 1 point per Emperor, plus a 3-point bonus for each set of three Emperors (one Red, one Blue, one Yellow) that you’ve been able to collect. Triumph gives you 1 free victory point, equivalent to capturing an extra Emperor (but not subject to set bonuses.) During a three-round game, the 6 total available Triumph victory points can be a good way to help overcome your opponents.

Again, as a high-value Senate card, Triumph is usually best played on a Blue Emperor that you hope to win, when a Barbarians card is in your space. Save this card for exactly that opportunity if you can, but if necessary, don’t be afraid to just score a Barbarians card when you otherwise have no chance of winning that Emperor. One point is better than no points!

The End is Near

Part three will conclude the series, covering the Yellow Populace influence cards. These provide a somewhat eclectic mix of special abilities, but they have some focus on other Yellow cards and provide some interesting ways to change how Emperor tricks are resolved.

If you’re feeling inspired by these ideas for play and looking forward to seeing how you can leverage these cards to victory against your friends, please check out The Barracks Emperors, currently on the P500 list!

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