Carthage
BGG rank
BGG #8,844
BGG rating
7.3

Carthage

2018

Rules assistance for Carthage

Plain-language explanations of turns, card effects and disputed situations, with official source references and saved question history.

  • 1–5 players
  • 30–75 min
  • 13+
  • Complexity 2.1/5

For 1 player

Rules assistant for Carthage

What would you like to know?

Answers come from the official rulebook, with the page to check.

Carthage is a board game released in 2018 for 1–5 players, 30–75 minutes per game, and ages 13 and up. It was designed by Luke Seinen and its main mechanics are Variable Player Powers, Hand Management, and Take That.

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About the game

Enter the theater of Carthage where only one Gladiator will survive. Take heed for every move could be your last! Carthage is a deck-building board game in which players move around a hex-based arena and face off in gladiatorial warfare to earn crowd favor, gain armor, and battle to the death. This game uses blended mechanisms of deck-building, hand management, and a whole lot of ruthless "take-that" combat. A round begins with the combat phase where players play action cards, after which they spend crowd favor points to build better combat options, lobby the crowd for advantages, or assemble their starting deck into a more lethal combination of tactics. ​Carthage utilizes deck-building and miniatures to give players a progressive game experience...ending in a vicious crescendo of blood and glory! Gladiators start in the theater as weak combatants, but as their actions gain crowd favor, they can develop their tactics (deck) into a lethal combination of damage, armor, and movement on the hex-based arena. Featuring a unique modular ruleset which allows players to alter the game complexity, play time, and strategic depth!

Questions and answers

Carthage supports 1–5 players according to the catalogue. This range comes from the publisher’s listed player count, so the game can be set up for any group size within it. Some setups, rules and scoring details may still vary by player count, so check your edition’s rulebook for the exact configuration.