Overview
At a glance
Is this game right for my group?
ABG editorial scores on a 1–5 scale.
Harder to teach
High replayability
Highly interactive
Scales well
Deep strategy
More strategic control
How it plays
How does it play?
Build a Roman dynasty through military, senate, and popular influence while rival governors, barbarians, and political crises tear the empire apart.
Core mechanisms
Key systems that shape the decisions players make.
Action Points
Spend a limited allowance of points across several possible actions each turn.
Deck / Bag Building
Add new pieces during play to improve the cards, tokens, or dice drawn later.
Hand Management
Time and sequence a limited hand of cards to preserve future options.
Dice Rolling
Roll dice to introduce uncertainty into actions, production, movement, or resolution.
Area Movement
Move pieces between connected regions rather than along individual spaces.
Campaign Card Play
Play cards to command conflicts and carry consequences through a campaign.
Read the full game description
Time of Crisis is a card-driven strategy and light wargame set during Rome’s Crisis of the Third Century. Each player begins as a provincial governor with a small influence deck divided among military, senate, and popular support. Unlike a conventional deck-builder, you choose the cards for each hand, then spend their influence to recruit legions, govern provinces, improve cities, buy stronger cards, suppress mobs, repel barbarian invasions, and challenge rivals for Rome itself. Your position on the map determines which cards you can acquire, linking territorial control directly to deck development. Becoming emperor brings prestige but also makes you the principal target; failed defense can create pretender empires and a cascade of political instability. Dice resolve battles and crisis checks, yet careful card timing, influence specialization, and opportunistic diplomacy drive the two-to-three-hour contest. The recommended 2018 second printing incorporates the published corrections.
