Forum Trajanum sends players to ancient Rome to develop their coloniae and contribute to Trajan’s grand forum. Stefan Feld’s 2018 design centers on a tile selection mechanism where players choose from a personal grid of building tiles, trade with opponents, and construct both their home colony and portions of the central forum. The result is a typically Feldian experience with multiple scoring paths and interconnected systems, though the community reception has been more measured than for his most acclaimed work.
The game unfolds over three rounds, each containing multiple phases where players select tiles, build in their colonies, contribute to the forum, and score based on various criteria. The dual building focus, expanding your personal colony while also competing for position in the shared forum, creates a central strategic tension.
Roman Engineering and the Trading Grid
The tile selection and trading mechanism is Forum Trajanum’s most interesting element. Each round, players select two tiles from their personal grid, keep one, and offer the other for trade. This creates a mini-negotiation each round where the tile you offer is visible to opponents, and the trades often involve interesting decisions about what to give away versus what to keep. The information asymmetry between what you know about your grid and what opponents can see creates subtle strategic play.
The colony building system provides satisfying spatial puzzle elements. Placing tiles in your personal grid triggers effects and opens up scoring opportunities based on adjacency and coverage. Building your colony efficiently to maximize the benefits of each tile placement requires both tactical responsiveness and strategic foresight.
Forum contributions add a shared competitive space where players compete for majority positions. The communal forum board grows as players contribute tiles, and scoring based on forum presence provides an alternative to pure colony optimization. This dual focus prevents the game from feeling like parallel solitaire, even though much of the gameplay is focused on personal colony development.
The multiple scoring conditions typical of Feld’s designs are present and well-integrated. Citizens, envoys, forum presence, and colony development all contribute to the final score, and different strategic emphases can lead to competitive outcomes. The variety of valid approaches gives the game reasonable replay value.
When the Forum Feels Crowded
The rules overhead is significant relative to the strategic depth delivered. Multiple phases, tile types, scoring conditions, and building requirements create a complex system that takes time to teach and internalize. The payoff for learning these systems doesn’t match the investment for many players, who find the strategic decisions less interesting than the rules complexity would suggest.
The game feels mechanical in a way that even Feld’s other abstract euros don’t. The theme of building Roman coloniae and contributing to Trajan’s forum barely registers during play, and the tile selection and placement feel like pure optimization exercises without the narrative or emotional engagement that the best euros manage to create.
Player interaction beyond the trading phase is limited. Once tiles are selected, players largely build in their own spaces, and the forum competition, while present, doesn’t generate the kind of direct tension that makes competitive games exciting. The trading is the game’s interactive highlight, and it’s not enough to carry the social experience.
The game doesn’t distinguish itself within Feld’s catalog. Players who enjoy Feld already have Castles of Burgundy, Trajan, Bruges, and other designs that execute similar strategic ideas with more elegance and engagement. Forum Trajanum sits in the middle of his output without a standout mechanism or experience that demands attention over his other work.
A Competent Addition to a Crowded Resume
Forum Trajanum’s position is that of a solid but unremarkable entry in a prolific designer’s catalog. The tile trading is interesting, the colony building is satisfying, and the multiple scoring paths create reasonable strategic variety. But it doesn’t have the breakthrough mechanism that made Castles of Burgundy essential, or the thematic integration that gives Bruges its charm. It’s the kind of game that Feld fans will enjoy and return to occasionally, but rarely champion.
Should You Play Forum Trajanum?
Forum Trajanum is worth exploring if you’re a Feld completist who enjoys his design sensibility and wants another vehicle for his trademark point-salad scoring. The tile trading and colony building provide enough novelty to justify a few sessions, and the Roman setting has appeal if you enjoy that era.
Skip it if you’re looking for your first or only Feld game, as several others in his catalog are stronger entry points. Skip it if you need strong theme or player interaction in your euros, or if you find complex rule systems without proportional strategic depth frustrating. There are better Feld designs and better Roman-themed euros competing for the same shelf space.
The Verdict on Forum Trajanum
Forum Trajanum is a perfectly competent Stefan Feld design that does everything adequately without doing anything exceptionally. The tile selection and trading mechanism is the strongest element, colony building provides spatial satisfaction, and the multiple scoring tracks offer strategic variety. It’s too complex for casual gamers, too mild for those seeking Feld’s most challenging work, and too thematically thin to attract theme-driven players. In a catalog as rich as Feld’s, competence isn’t quite enough to stand out.