Liberatores: Rapid Review
Information:
Mechanics: Social Deduction, Negotiation
Player Age: 13+ Player Count: 3 - 6 PlayersTime to Play: 30 - 60 Minutes
Game Designer: Yan Yegorov
Player Age: 13+
Game Designer: Yan Yegorov
Rundown:
The liberatores hide in the shadows manipulating forces to try and remove Caesar from power. The liberatores cannot trust each other, though, as there are competitors who want Caesar’s power for themself and Caesar’s personnel agent to keep him safe.
Liberatores lasts seven rounds and each player will have seven turns. On your turn, you chose a citizen from the display and either endorse, bribe, or hire them. Each role has its victory condition (explained later) but essentially the players want to have more influence than caeser at the end of the game. If the track reaches 15 on Caesar’s influence during the game or Caesar has a higher influence total than the liberatores, then Caesar wins.
Players can perform one of three actions per turn; endorse a citizen, bribe a citizen, or hire a citizen. They can also activate a citizen’s ability if the conditions are met.
Endorsing a Citizen:
Endorsing a citizen has the rightmost citizen moved to the right side of the main board (the endorsed section). This will increase Caesar’s influence equal to the top left symbol but will grant you favour and all cards you have with the Caesar ability can activate this turn. This is your only source of income. Meaning there will often be times you are forced to endorse.
Bribing a Citizen:
Bribing a citizen is similar to endorsing but you can choose any citizen and move them to the left side of the board, adding their influence to the liberatores side. The catch is you have to bribe them, so you pay a cost found on the left side of the card which is more expensive than hiring them. This is for the good of the liberatores so you have to play your part in the grand scheme of things.
Hiring a Citizen:
You can hire a citizen by paying the bottom left cost on their card. Each citizen will either have an endorsed ability (activated when endorsing), a passive ability that has different times it activates, and an immediate ability that activates when hired. Since this is a social deduction game, the fun twist with hiring is you can give this citizen to any player and they have to accept.
Appeal:
A lot of social deduction games are more party based games in their implementation. Liberatores is built as a strategy game with three types of unique citizen abilities; yellow when hired, grey when condition is met, and red only when you endorse. It also incorporates conflicting actions and an interesting dynamic of manipulating Caesar to try and push your agenda, whether that's to gain money so you can bribe other citizens, gain influence so when the liberatores are successful you can supersede him or actually trying to help him stay in power. Be too obvious in your strategy though and players will start hiring unhelpful citizens to keep you under control.
Parts:
There are three parts (roles) to the liberatores that are shuffled together at different amounts based on player count. Then one is dealt to each player as their identity which could be the republic, the competitor or a solo agent.
Republic:
The republic is the base liberatore. They want to remove Caesar from power and restore democracy.
Competitor:
The competitor wants to work with the liberatore not for democracy but to replace Caesar. After Caesar is overthrown, if the competitor has the highest influence they win and replace Caesar on his thrown. In a game with multiple competitors, a team cannot replace Caesar so they are fighting between each other for this power so only the one with the most influence wins.
Agent:
The agent is a double agent who is working as the inside man trying to protect Caesar from harm. If they manage to push Caesar’s influence to 15+ at any point, they win the game. They also win if Caesar has more influence than the liberatores at the end of the game.
Interaction:
Liberatores is a highly interactive game. At its base level, players have to cooperate to push Caesar off his mantle. This is challenging as players need to have a steady flow of money to hire citizens and build up their tableu of abilities or they have to bribe citizens hereby progressing the game towards the victory of the liberatores. The catch, however, is the best method to gain money is to endorse the rightmost citizen adding their influence to Caesar and pushing the players closer to a loss. This way you get to engage your citizens with the red symbol, possibly gaining you even more money or influence.
Adding in the layer of social deduction then adds a deeper layer of distrust between players. If you see a player gaining too much influence and suspect them of being a competitor, you can bombard them with courier servants to move their influence over to the liberatores at the end of the game. If a player endorses too much you may suspect them of being the agent and give them informant cards which will award the liberatores with added influence if the player is revealed to in fact be an agent. If you distrust your fellow players too much you can lose track of the board state and Caeser can get away with more and more influence.
Determination:
- Too challenging to beat Caesar at three players.
- Strategic game at the base level.
- Interesting gameplay and theme.
- More cooperative then typical social deduction games.
Liberatores is a unique take on social deduction games. At its core it is a strategy game where players have to work together to free the roman empire from Caesers grasp. However, as the game goes on discord will infect the group and distrust will flow. Players will end up gaining too much influence or will over endorse citizens. If you enjoy social deduction games but prefer those with less party elements and more strategy, then Liberatores is a great game that will have you distrusting your allies as you work towards the common good of dethroning Caeser.
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