And the walls grow, grow, grow … – review of the game “Hadrian’s Wall”

Hadrian’s Wall  belongs to the genre of the so-called scratch-offs – after stocking up on something to write, each player will mark the appropriate boxes on his two sheets. These illustrate the possible developments of the fortifications, accompanying structures and the tracks of the inhabitants.

At the beginning of the round, we will receive a pool of resources and workers that will allow us to build sections of the wall, recruit cohorts (defense units), erect public buildings, gain the favor of the people, trade, train gladiators, conduct reconnaissance and … use many other opportunities. After six years, we count points from the attribute tracks, cards of the chosen path, and we deduct points for attacks that we did not manage to repel.

The sheets, which are the main element of the game, are frightening at first glance – there is a lot going on on them. However, the development paths are arranged on them in a very logical and convenient way, and the instruction will lead us by the hand through all the dependencies. Marking the appropriate boxes will give us bonuses – usually in the form of additional people and resources to be used in the current round. So, while implementing the main goal of defending the wall, we look at different tracks and look for an effective way to obtain additional resources and generate points.

Without going into details, so as not to overwhelm you with information:  Hadrian’s Wall consists of several crossed-out mini-games gathered under one roof. Each of them works a bit differently, and discovering the relationships between them gives a lot of satisfaction. All this means that only after a few games we start to feel confident and choose the path to victory more consciously.

We perform the actions in the turn at our own pace, not looking at the other players. On the one hand, this means that there is practically no problem of idle waiting for your move in the game, on the other hand – we have no way of tracking what others are doing. Interaction manifests itself only on the trade track (we buy goods from each other) and reconnaissance track (we copy the Tetris pattern from the neighbor’s card).

The nature of the game makes the round look like a written exam or a test. Each player silently writes something on their cards, shuffles resources, flips the cards to put down the pen, wait for the rest, add up the points and go back to writing. This is not necessarily a defect  of Hadrian’s Wall , but a feature of it.

Limited randomness and minimal interaction between players prevent us from feeling that we need others to play. And it is in the single-player mode that Hadrian’s Wall comes out best. A nice nod to solo players is the mini-campaign published on the game’s BGG website (available only in English at the time of writing). It adds unusual requirements and challenges to the gameplay, allowing you to fully appreciate all the relationships between actions.

Hadrian’s Wall is the ultimate drawing for me; adding one more mechanic would be like a mint leaf in a Monty Python sketch – it would be too much. Now it is right – you can think about it, come up with a favorable sequence of actions, get a number of bonuses and score well.

If we are looking for a challenge in combining on our own –  Hadrian’s Wall  can perfectly suit our taste and actually only as such a type of game I can recommend it. The lack of extensive interaction between players in such an extensive title will make us spend an hour separated from each other by … a wall.