Morituri Te Salutant

This week's club game saw me playing with more gladiators. But this time they were 54mm figures, and the rules were Morituri Te Salutant (MtS). Victor brought along the figures, arena and his knowledge of the rules, whilst Geoff and I just played.

MtS is a more detailed game that other rules I play. Each gladiator has a tailored deck of maneuver cards, covering attacks and moves, and plays one face-down each turn. The gladiators determine initiative, which is based on their weight, a die roll and the specific maneuver chosen. The winner can choose to resolve their choice first or second. 

If you don't like the maneuver you played, then each has a couple of maneuvers it can be converted into, which may be better options. Usually an attack will convert to a move of some kind, whilst moves simply become different moves. A few conversions are attacks, but they have a reduced chance of success.

If you attack and the opposing gladiator is in the arc of your attack, you resolve it on a matrix which cross-references the attack against the opponent's maneuver choice. This will tell you both how likely the attack is to hit and, if it connects, how heavy the damage scored will be.

There's an interesting degree of bluff and counter-bluff involved. We did find, however, that if a gladiator took a good hit it was quite hard for them to come back. Not impossible, as our third game showed, but certainly hard.

Anyway, we played three games during the course of the evening. In the first my murmillo was slowly sliced up by a dimacherius.  In the second I ran a hoplomachus against the murmillo, and got sliced up again. In both games I failed to inflict a single wound on my opponent.

In the third game I ran a thraex against a murmillo.

In this I did inflict wounds on my opponent, with none in return, but a rash attack to try and finish him saw my thraex impaled on his sword and instantly killed. So that was fun.

Anyway, the rules are fun, and certainly give an entertaining game, but require a fair bit of thought to play and take around 30-45 minutes to resolve a bout. It's not a set for quick campaign game resolution, but is one for a clever game with choices at every turn. One thing we did feel is that conversions were rather too easy; a gladiator who acts second could use a good maneuver to block an attack, but then convert it into something different on their own action - a kind of double-dipping. 

I'm not sure if it's a game I'd print off for myself, but it's certainly one I'd play again it it was on offer.

The 54mm gladiators are plastic ones from Pegasus, although Victor does have a selection of metal ones from a Russian company as well.