At first glance, The Barracks Emperors seems to be a bit of an unusual game to appear on the GMT Games website. It’s not a wargame, although it does feature player conflict. It’s not a historical simulation, although it is historically themed. And it’s not part of a great series, although it does share its setting and some of its material with the light wargame Time of Crisis, and its expansion The Age of Iron and Rust.

To find a game reminiscent of The Barracks Emperors in GMT’s stable, you’d want to think about Battle Line, Reiner Knizia’s card game that put an ancient war theme on three-card poker and took it to a new level of play. Like Battle Line, The Barracks Emperors is a themed card game rooted in traditional card games, with new mechanics that add tactical depth and player competition. It’s a trick-taking game at heart, with a core mechanic that may remind you of games like Spades or Bridge, but this isn’t your grandfather’s card game. It’s not a friendly Euro game either. The Barracks Emperors adds a number of twists that turn a simple trick-taking game into a veritable battle, requiring players to find ways to leverage multiple different aspects of card play to cleverly steal Emperor Cards away from the other players (the “tricks” – representing opportunities to seize the throne of Rome).

One playtester memorably described The Barracks Emperors as “trick taking, weaponized.”

The purpose of this article is to explain some more about how The Barracks Emperors works, focusing on the twists that make it distinctive and take a “simple” trick-taking game to the “weaponized” level.

Descended from Traditional Trick-Taking Games

To start, it’s helpful to understand the lineage from which The Barracks Emperors descends. If you didn’t grow up playing traditional trick-taking games like Spades, Hearts, or Bridge, let’s review the general basics in a nutshell.

In most traditional games, a standard deck of cards is dealt out to form the players’ hands. Then, players compete for a sequence of “tricks”, played out one at a time. For each trick, each player in turn contributes one card from their hand. The player who played the best card wins the trick, setting the cards that comprise it aside for scoring.

Which card is the best in the trick depends on the rules of the game, but typically it’s the highest “trump” card in the trick, or else the highest card of the suit led by the first player in the trick if no trump is played. In a game like Spades, the suit of spades is always trump. In a game like Bridge, the trump suit is chosen by the player who wins an auction-style bid.  In a game like Hearts, there is no trump suit.

In The Barracks Emperors, instead of the four traditional suits of Spades, Hearts, Clubs, and Diamonds, Influence Cards come in only three suits – Red for Military influence, Blue for Senate influence, and Yellow for Populace influence. (Players of Time of Crisis will recognize these suits.) Each suit has cards numbered 1 through 8.

A trick to be won is explicitly represented by an Emperor Card, around which players place their Influence Cards. When all four positions around the Emperor Card are filled the trick is “completed”. Then the owner of the best Influence Card placed next to the Emperor Card wins the trick, taking the Emperor Card for scoring. Be sure to watch the color shown on the Emperor Card – that denotes the trump suit to be used for evaluating who wins that trick.

But that’s where the twists offered by The Barracks Emperors begin to depart from the realm of traditional trick-taking games.

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

Twist #1: All Tricks Are In Play At Once

The most distinctive and important twist is that all 13 tricks that make up one game round are in play all at once, with 13 Emperor Cards being randomly dealt into a grid on the board.

In a traditional game, each trick is played one at a time, and each player takes a turn playing a card to that trick only. Then the next trick is played. In The Barracks Emperors, players can see all 13 tricks laid out on the board, and as each player takes their turn, they may choose to play their card on any trick that is still in play.

This means that tricks are not just resolved one at a time in a certain order. Players must assess all of the tricks still in play and decide where their next play needs to be made most urgently. You can find the best match between the cards in your hand and all the plays still available to you, but your opponents can do the same. Timing is important – among other factors to consider is the fact that if you place the third card on a trick, you might be giving the player on the fourth side a golden opportunity to know what he needs to play to win the trick, but at some point your options may be limited!

Players place Influence Cards into the spaces marked with dashed lines around the Emperor Cards. Note the icons on the edges of the Emperor Cards. Each player can only place their Influence Cards into an open space that is on the edge of an Emperor Card denoted by their faction’s icon. If I’m playing the Swords faction, I can only play on the Swords edge of an Emperor Card on the board. This is very important and leads to the next twist…

Twist #2: Card Ownership Is A Relative Thing

Once you play an Influence Card down to the board, how do you remember you were the one who played it? The answer is:  You don’t. When a card is played to the board, it is no longer owned by a given player, and it may impact up to four different tricks for all four players.

Notice how most of the spaces where an Influence Card may be placed are adjacent to more than one Emperor Card. A player may only play a card on the edge of an Emperor Card denoted by their own faction icon, but in doing so, the player has also put that card into play on behalf of other players on other tricks!

Playing an Influence Card that helps you win a trick might also be helping another player win a different trick if you’re not careful. Players need to find ways to play Influence Cards that are more beneficial for themselves than for their opponents. Or sometimes you may want to play an Influence Card that specifically blocks another player. Or you may want to play a card in a location only to finish a trick that you’re going to win.

Your first play of the round might be rather straightforward. Perhaps you simply put your highest-value card on a matching-color Emperor Card where your card does NOT match the color of any of the other neighboring Emperor Cards, thus putting starting yourself off in a good position and not helping anyone else. But as the open places to play start to get filled, the “terrain” of the board can rapidly shift. It’s the ways in which the Emperor Card locations and the played Influence Cards interlock on the board that can make decisions difficult as the round proceeds.

Twist #3: Same-Value Cards Cancel Each Other

Influence Cards have values of 1 through 8, but there are two cards of each value within each of the three suits (except for 1 and 2, which have only one card each.) What happens if multiple cards of the same value are played on the same Emperor Card? There is no mechanism in the game to track who played which card first, or which suit was “led” on the trick, like is done in traditional trick-taking games. Instead, in The Barracks Emperors, two or more Influence Cards of the same value played on the same Emperor Card are IGNORED for the purposes of evaluating who wins the trick, regardless of their suits. So even the highest trump card can be undermined by any other card, trump or not, that matches its number.

This gives players an additional tactic to employ when deciding how to place their cards – if your opponent has a higher card than you have on a trick you want, perhaps you can play a card that matches your opponent’s number in order to cancel it out!

It’s relatively rare, but what happens if all four cards in a trick are ignored due to matching values? In that case, no one wins the trick and all cards remain in place. There are a number of ways that deadlock might be broken in future plays (see Twist #5.)

Twist #4: Winning Cards are Removed, Losing Cards Remain

When a player wins a trick, they collect the Emperor Card for scoring, and the Influence Cards that comprised the trick must be cleaned up. 

First, the Influence Card that won the trick is removed from the board. Then, any cards that are no longer adjacent to any Emperor Cards are also removed – they can no longer win any tricks, so they’re useless. Any other non-winning cards that are still adjacent to at least one Emperor Card remain on the board where they are.

Even though this just appears to be a simple clean up step, there’s a tactical opportunity hidden here as well: Another way to get rid of an opponent’s card that threatens a trick you want to capture for yourself might be by playing a card to complete a neighboring trick that will be won by that troublesome card, causing it to be removed!

Twist #5:  Every Card Played Also Grants a Special Ability

Just like in our previous game, Time of Crisis, each Influence Card you play in The Barracks Emperors has not only a value printed on it, but also has a special ability that the player can choose to use for a surprise effect that breaks the rules of the game. (As a tip of the hat to Time of Crisis, which is also set in the Roman Crisis of the Third Century, all of the special abilities in The Barracks Emperors share the same names and are designed to have effects reminiscent of their Time of Crisis namesakes.)

Many of these abilities give the players special ways to move, remove, modify, or otherwise affect other cards on the board. Some of them are helpful in very apparent situations (such as Spiculum’s ability to remove another card already played on the same trick), but others are quite subtle (such as Frumentarii’s ability to allow you to draw a hidden card off the top of the deck.) Some of them are abilities that stay in play on the board after you place the card, affecting how tricks that include the card are resolved (such as Quaestor’s ability to turn a trick into a “no trump” trick.)

All the abilities can be quite useful for boosting your position if you plan and use them carefully. It’s another factor to take into consideration when playing your cards – perhaps it’s not the highest-value card for you on the trick where you’re playing it, but it gives you a special ability that allows you to capture a trick elsewhere?

(Note: These special abilities can be a lot to digest, particularly for new players who are unfamiliar with the deck. If you prefer a less complex game, you can always play the “Plebeian” Game where the special abilities are ignored, but we think letting the players figure out how to exploit the special abilities they have in hand is a big part of the tactical fun of the game.)

Twist #6: Balanced Card Drafting

In a game like Spades or Bridge, you get dealt your full hand of cards at the start of the round. Of course, it’s up to the players to figure out how to make the best of what they’re dealt, but it does mean that you can feel like you just got dealt a bad hand.

The Barracks Emperors offers a big twist on this approach: Players are only dealt four cards to start the round. Then, after a player has taken his turn, he immediately selects a new Influence Card from the four face-up cards in the Forum to replace the one he played.

But as a balancing mechanism, the cards in the Forum are always kept sorted from lowest value to highest value. When a player draws from the Forum, he is only able to choose from a subset of cards permitted by the card he played during his turn.

Recall that Influence Cards are number 1 through 8. If you play a card of the lowest value (1 or 2), you can choose any card from the four in the Forum. If you play a card of the highest value (7 or 8), you may only choose the lowest-valued card in the Forum. Playing a card of value 5 or 6 gives you a choice of the lowest two cards and playing a card of value 3 or 4 gives you a choice of the lowest three cards.

So, playing a low-value card that is less likely to win a trick will give a player a much better selection for their replacement card, but playing a high-value card that is quite likely to win a trick will give a player a very limited choice. It can be tough decision – can you wait to play your best card until the limited choice you will get in the Forum is something you can live with? Is there a place where you can safely play your low-value card so you can grab that high-value card that you really want?

There are also a couple of other tactical considerations hidden in this mechanic: 

First, you will need to consider the full value of the cards you’re drafting. Do you just want the highest value card? Or do you want a card of a particular suit? Or do you want a certain special ability that will open a door for you (see Twist #5)? Or maybe you even need a specific value to try to force a match (see Twist #3)? Or just possibly you might need to hate-draft to keep a certain card away from an opponent? So many options….

Second, canny players will try to keep track of what their opponents draft. Those special ability surprises can be mitigated if you know which ones are in which player’s hand. And it’s certainly worthwhile to know if someone has a higher trump card than you have.

Twist #7: Barbarians!

It wouldn’t be the Crisis of the Third Century without Barbarians.

I’ve been holding something back in the above sections: There’s a fourth “suit” of sorts in the game. Barbarian Cards are like Influence Cards (but are, by definition, different), and 10 of them are always shuffled into the Influence Card deck each round. Additionally, each round begins with one Barbarian Card placed on each of the board edges in the Barbarian Start spaces. They get placed into the Forum like Influence Cards, and players draft them like Influence Cards. But all Barbarian Cards are Gray – that is, they never match the trump suit of an Emperor Card – and have a value of zero. 

Barbarians can never win a trick for a player; even in the very rare case when a Barbarian Card might be the “best” card on a trick, the Emperor is instead killed in battle and no one captures it. Why would players want to have zero-value Barbarian Cards?

First, they serve a very important purpose. Notice that each player has three spaces for Influence Cards along his side of the board where only that player may place cards (normally.) Left alone, the player could delay playing cards into those spaces until the end of the round, basically assuring that he gets the important last play on those tricks. This could be rather boring and predictable. But these edge spaces are marked as Barbarian Homeland spaces as well. Any player can place a Barbarian Card into any Barbarian Homeland space. This puts some pressure on players to watch their edge spaces, lest they get filled with Barbarians.

Second, a Barbarian Card can be discarded instead of played to move any one Barbarian Card that is already on the board. Barbarians may be moved from any space to any diagonally adjacent space, and they cover up any Influence Card that is already in that space! So, with care a player can cause a Barbarian to neutralize an Influence Card that is getting in his way of capturing a trick.

But the risks of dealing with Barbarians are significant: Once a Barbarian is placed on the board, all players have essentially equal access to move it, and perhaps it will turn in a direction you don’t care for. Also, drafting and playing a Barbarian Card has an opportunity cost – if you’re playing a card that can’t win you a trick to foil someone else’s plans, you’ve passed up the chance to play a good card for yourself. But you probably can’t ignore the Barbarians entirely, so it’s another tricky decision to make when considering your strategy.

Twist #8: The End Is Uncertain

The final twist is that you may not actually end up resolving all the tricks on the board in a round, and so you need to plan ending plays accordingly.

A round ends immediately whenever a player has no valid play that he can make on the board. Depending on how players place their cards throughout the round, it’s very possible one player could wind up with fewer places to play than other players, and the round could end rather suddenly.

Players should be conscious of how constricted open spaces are becoming and play carefully – sometimes you can use special abilities and other tactics to force the round to extend a couple of turns if you need more time. Or you might be able to aggressively deny spaces for another player in order to cause a round to end sooner if that suits your needs.

On the other hand, be aware that you are forced to play if you are able. As Emperor Cards are captured and removed from the board, your options dwindle. You could find yourself in a position where you must play a card you’d rather not play, possibly giving end-round tricks away to other players. You might be able to keep your options open by drafting cards with certain useful special abilities.

Options for Everyone

So without laboriously explaining all the rules to the game (you can find copies of the playtest rules on boardgamegeek.com), hopefully you can see that this is a card game with some really interesting competitive options that should satisfy the wargamer in you, but it’s also a game that is pretty easy to learn and teach, and can be quite suitable for families or as a fairly meaty filler game.

We’re providing several options for playing the game, so you can tune your experience with it to your liking.

First, you can choose how many rounds to play. The full game is intended to be 3 rounds, which will probably take about 90 minutes. If you’d like a shorter game, there’s no reason you can’t play just 1 or 2 rounds for roughly 30- and 60-minute games, respectively.

As mentioned earlier, if you’d like a more predictable and less complex game, play without using the special abilities. This makes for a game that will be more chess-like with fewer opportunities for dramatic reversals.

The game is designed for four players, but the two-player and three-player versions work almost identically with almost no changes to the rules. The most recent game I played was a three-player game, and I really didn’t even miss the fourth player. 

If you enjoy partnership trick-taking games like Bridge, try the four-player partnership game. It’s played just the same as the regular four-player game except you combine your scoring with your partner across the table. You’d be surprised how much your tactics will change when you have a partner to count on.

Finally, there are rules for a solitaire game that challenges you to build a high score against three ‘bot opponents (run by very easy-to-play AI rules) while trying to keep the Barbarians from sacking Rome. There are a few rule changes for this version, but it really does capture the feel of the game and will let a solo player practice and learn the cards.

We hope you’ll check out The Barracks Emperors, currently on the P500 list!