Game: The Downfall of Pompeii
Year: 2006, 2013
Designer: Klaus–Jürgen Wrede
Publisher: Mayfair Games
Key Details: 2–4 players, the box is right in saying about 45 minutes
Gameplay Score: 7/10
Theme Score: 8/10
Overview of Play: The game falls into two main phases. In the first, you’re placing pieces on the board; in the second, you’re trying to get them off the board. The player who gets the most pieces off the board wins.
The board represents the city of Pompeii, and contains a variety of buildings of different sizes. On your turn, you play one of your cards, which will tell you your options for where you can play one of your family members. Some plays allow you to combo and place more than one piece, so there’s a lot of strategy of where to place your pieces—and how to benefit from other players’ placement.
Once you get to a certain point in the deck (building the deck is tedious, and the worst part of the game), the game takes an abrupt turn—the volcano erupts! At that point, players no longer use the cards, but take turns placing lava tiles and moving pieces. The lava starts moving from set spaces on the board, but after that, players draw lava tiles from a bag; each tile has a symbol telling on which part of the board it has to go. But there is some choice, so you can try to block—or even kill—your opponents’ pieces, or at least play as far from yours as possible. There is a ton of “take-that” in the second half of the game.
In addition to playing one lava tile, you move two of your pieces (in rare cases, just one). Pieces move as many spaces as the number of pieces in their starting square (e.g., if you start in a space with four pieces, you can move four spaces). This movement aspect is a key part of the placement strategy in the first phase.
The game ends when all of the pieces are off the board, either having escaped through one of the city’s gates or having been killed by lava (directly through a tile being placed on top of them or by being trapped) and thrown in the volcano. The player with the most pieces that escaped wins.
Comments on Use of Theme: Once again, let me start with the blurb at the beginning of the rules:
The Year of the Four Emperors
A strong earthquake heavily damages Pompeii, the city at the foot of Mount
Vesuvius. Fearing an eruption of the Volcano, many of the 20,000
inhabitants leave their homes in a panicked flight. Those who remain
behind begin to rebuild Pompeii.
The Year of the Consulship of Augustus and Vespasianus
16 years later… Pompeii’s development into an important trade city has
reached its peak. Over the past few years, numerous Roman citizens,
famous gladiators, and rich patricians have returned to the city—moving
into the new and splendid buildings in the shadow of Vesuvius. The fear of
the volcano has long since been forgotten. When the citizens of Pompeii
begin their daily work, they have no inkling of the imminent catastrophe.
By sunrise of the following morning, Pompeii is buried under ash and lava.
As is the case with a lot of these blurbs at the beginning of rulebooks, there’s a lot going on. And, as is often the case, there are key details to try to create a backdrop for the game—but puzzling errors, too.
First things first: before you get worked up about the reference to lava, let me quote a note at the end of the rules, which explains the dating of 79 CE then says:
Further, the towns were not destroyed by lava. In fact they were destroyed by a
massive pyroclastic flow (a fast-moving current of hot gas and rock). But for the
purposes of game play, lava tiles serve the same purpose.
So, no need to be pedantic, because the designers know what they did, and why they made their choice. I find this little disclaimer fascinating, in the way it pre-empts this kind of criticism.
Moving on: Mt. Vesuvius, a volcano in the Bay of Naples region of Italy, erupted August 24th–25th, 79 CE. There was a major earthquake in the region February 5, 62 CE; this was so bad that it essentially destroyed the city.
OK, now it’s time to be pedantic: 62 is not the Year of the Four Emperors; that would be 68 (and part of 69). This is the term we use to describe the aftermath of the suicide of the emperor Nero, the last of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, those emperors who could trace their lineage to the first emperor, Augustus Caesar and his wife Livia. So, Nero was the first of the Four Emperors, and then multiple would-be emperors came to the fore. Vespasian came out on top, starting the Flavian dynasty. It’s not clear why they connected the earthquake to the Year of the Four Emperors; it’s possible it’s simply a mistake, but it may derive from a desire for synchronicity (to which Greek and Roman historians are especially prone).
The reference to the consuls for the year of the eruption is a nice touch, since that’s one of two ways that Romans identified a year (the other was from the founding of the city). In this case, the year is 79 CE. The reference here isn’t entirely clear, but this is the consulship of the emperor, Vespasian (in the last year of his reign), and his son, Titus (see my discussion of Roman names for how they can get confusing).
There’s not much more detail here, though the idea that Rome’s citizens flocked to Pompeii is a bit overstated; it was a relatively wealthy city, but not really a destination. But the rebuilding of the city after the earthquake fits nicely with the game’s first phase, when the players are filling up the city’s buildings.
And the setting is clear enough, and the mechanics are pretty straightforward, especially in the second (and more fun) half of the game, when you’re trying to get your people out of the city. The plastic volcano is sort of ridiculous, but looms over the board in a nicely ominous way (I’m kind of sucker for anything that gives a board game some height, or some kind of vertical element)—and takes center stage when the object of the game becomes throwing your opponents’ pieces into the volcano (and trying to avoid the same thing happen to yours). All in all, it’s pretty satisfying to dispatch your opponents’ little pieces that way—though it would be more fun if they were meeples (is that twisted to say that?).
The Board
While not an exact copy, the board is clearly meant to represent the plan of Pompeii. The clearest indications are that there are seven gates in the city and on the board, and they’re roughly in the same place. But these names are hard to see, and frankly if you had asked me before I sat down to write this whether the gates were given their names, I would have said ‘no.’ But they’re there! (One error: far right gate is Porta di Sano, but should be Sarno.)
They’re also in Italian, which is generally the case on most maps you’ll see. I’m guessing because most of these plans derive from the Italian excavations there (scholars from other countries excavate there, too, but they all do so technically under the Italian Soprintendenza), or from the things sold in gift shops there.
The other nice nod to Pompeii is the inclusion of an amphitheater in the bottom right-hand side of the board, which recalls the amphitheater in what generally looks like the bottom right-hand side of a Plan of Pompeii (though it is technically northeast). In general, the rest of the buildings are pretty generic, but recognizable as Roman. There are a couple circular buildings, and they might be meant to recall the Temple of Vesta in Rome.
Of course, putting the mountain right next to the city is inaccurate, since the volcano is more than five miles away, but necessary for the game. It’s also in the wrong place, since Vesuvius is NW of Pompeii, so this doesn’t fit with the plan’s orientation. But it’s not entirely wrong, since it’s in the rough general area of the Porta Vesuvio, or ‘Vesuvius Gate,’ which would have led to a road to Vesuvius. Similarly, the Porta di Stabia, or ‘Stabian Gate,’ would lead you to Stabiae, a small town a few miles from Pompeii. The Porta Marina, or ‘Sea Gate,’ would ultimately lead you to the sea (less than a mile away today).
It’s not the prettiest board in the world, but it’s recognizable as what it’s supposed to be, and gets the job done.
Other Components
The cards, however, seem liked a missed opportunity. In and of itself, the art is fine, and the clothing and hair show a nice attention to detail, but the limited number of pictures feels like a missed chance to give the game more flavor.
There are five different building colors, one of which is grey, and is sort of an overflow if the colored buildings are full. Accordingly there are only four types of cards to go with the four colors of the other buildings, and each one is always the same picture, with only the numbers changed. There’s some care, though, in the choices of the pictures. The brown one is a Murmillo (a type of gladiator) standing in an amphitheater. Another is a Roman senator, wearing a toga, in what looks like a basilica. Another is a Roman matron, standing in a Roman house. The final one seems like she’s supposed to be a priestess—specifically a Vestal, since there’s a round building behind it, recalling the round Temple of the Vestal Virgins in Rome.
The color types kind of match the buildings in which the cards allow you to place your piece. For example, the amphitheater I mentioned above is a brown building, and it’s the brown cards that have the gladiator on them. Gladiators fought in amphitheaters, so there you go. Each building has a little image of the person from the matching card in its spaces, tying it all together even more (and also helping those with difficulties distinguishing between colors).
The only two other types of cards are the ‘Omen Cards,’ which show a smoking Vesuvius, and the ‘Eruption Cards,’ which show an erupting volcano and say ‘79 A.D.’ on them).
The final details appear during the Eruption Phase, since the lava tokens each have one of six symbols, in their words, “Vase, Helmet, Mask, Scroll, Column, Coin.” These are pretty generic, but there are a couple nice touches. The first is the helmet, which is the kind of helmet that a Murmillo gladiator would wear. Appropriately enough, the starting tile for this is over by the amphitheater. The scroll is nice, too, since it calls to mind the Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum, in which were found numerous charred rolls of papyrus. Most of the papyrus we have comes from garbage dumps in Egypt (where the dryness of the air helps preserve them), so uncovering part of a well-stocked private library has changed so many things we thought we knew about ancient literature. The only problem is that the scrolls are so barely charred that they fall apart almost on contact—but new technologies daily lead to improved ways of reading them. Every Classicist I know holds out hope for some famous but now-lost work (I’m hoping for Ovid’s lost Medea, called by multiple ancient authors the best thing he wrote).
Overall, this is a good example of how important components can be. The board is nice, but if the lettering were easier to see, it would help play up the theme and reinforce the idea that this is an approximation of the city’s plan. The cards convey all the information they need to, and the details on them are good. But there’s only four pictures, which feels skimpy, and the colors are very dull. More pictures and more colors could really make this pop. Meeples would have been a nice touch, too, but maybe that would have made throwing pieces into the volcano a bit too dark for this kind of game.
The Importance of Pompeii
Pompeii is one of the most famous ancient cities, not because it was particularly important back in the day (it wasn’t), but because when Vesuvius erupted in 79 CE, its ash and pumice covered the city within the span of a few hours—leaving for 17thcentury excavators a city frozen in a (terrible) moment of time.
The nearby city of Herculaneum is a much richer archaeological site, in part because it is closer to Vesuvius, and so was covered faster and deeper by the same eruption. Herculaneum was discovered first, too, but Pompeii has been easier to excavate, and the site is much bigger, and all of this might account for Pompeii’s greater fame in the modern world—and ultimately why this game is about Pompeii rather than Herculaneum.
The two cities together tell us countless things about daily life in the Roman world that we otherwise wouldn’t know, and for that reason are arguably the most archaeological sites in the world. Not only do we get to see entire houses and their layouts, but many of them have their wall-paintings in tact, so the sites have taught us astonishing amounts about Roman art.
Another reason the eruption is Vesuvius is so important is that we have an eyewitness account of it. In two letters to the Roman historian Tacitus, the senator Pliny the Younger describes the eruption and the response of his uncle, Pliny the Elder, to it. In addition to being the admiral of a fleet nearby, the Elder Pliny was the author of the Natural History, the first encyclopedia. Out of curiosity, he went closer, and eventually died while trying to save people who were trying to escape.
In one of his letters, Pliny the Younger says of the eruption that “no tree captures its likeness and appearance better than the umbrella pine” (Letters6.16.5) In his honor, such eruptions today are called ‘Plinian.’
Overall Thoughts: OK, it’s a little weird, maybe, to have a game make light of a tragedy, but that’s kind of common. And if you can get past that, this is a fun game, in part because it’s two games in one. The two parts are nicely tied together, too, since the coolest part of placing people in the first half is having to balance two things: how it will help / hurt people placing guys, but then also how it will affect you (and others) in the second phase.
The two parts are also the best part of the theme, too. It would have been easy—and obvious—to make a game that was just about escaping from Pompeii. But by bringing in the earthquake (which is understandably overshadowed by the eruption), there’s more historical perspective, and a good excuse for the mechanics of the first half.
I like ‘take-that’ mechanics in my games, so I especially the enjoy the second part, when you’re trying to get your people out of the city while throwing your opponents’ people into the volcano. The plastic Vesuvius is kind of goofy, but it really makes the game’s second half
One thing that bugs me about this game has nothing to do with the rules or theme, but with the components. When I got the game, one piece was missing (not an issue unless you play with four players and hey, this stuff happens), and the bag that holds the lava tiles ripped right away (it’s really, really cheap, thin fabric). (So I had to replace it with a certain purple and gold bag that I just happened to have lying around….)
This isn’t the most intellectual game, but if you’ve talked in a class about Pompeii, or you’re going to, at least you have a rough map with the gates of the city, and you could use this to remind people about the earthquake and rebuilding before the eruption—and to get students to think about those infamous “last days” of Pompeii.
It’s a fun game, and I’m always happy to play it. Many thanks to my sister for getting it for me a few Christmases ago!