
You were sold onto the sand and walked off it free. Now you own men who stand where you stood. Buy them, train them, send them out to bleed. Every one of them wants what you were given, and however long you last, the sand is waiting.
You were sold onto the sand and walked off it free. Now you own men who stand where you stood. Buy them, train them, send them out to bleed. Every one of them wants what you were given, and however long you last, the sand is waiting.
You start with a small school and not much coin. Buy men off the block. Arm them, feed them, drill them, stitch them up. Every one of them is the man you used to be. Some of them know it.
Towns send for your men. Name your price, choose who goes, and watch from the stands. When it goes wrong, take the blade yourself. The men who come home are worth more. The men who don't are cheaper to feed.
Every man gets an ending. He dies, and his name goes on the wall. He's sold, and the chronicle says for how much. Or he earns the wooden sword, and it's up to you whether he gets it. The school has no ending. It runs until it falls.
Pompeii, 73 BC. Seventy gladiators break out of a school at Capua with kitchen knives. By summer they're camped on the mountain you can see from your yard. You never meet them. You just watch the prices move, the towns get nervous, and your men look at the mountain a little too long.
Not every lanista is a monster. Some free their best men and die poor. Some put a man to death in front of the yard and never have to do it twice. Nobody tells you which one you are. The chronicle just writes it down.

Lose one of your men in a fight.

Win a fight when the other side yields.

Yield a fight before any of your men is killed.

Win a fight with two or more men and bring them all home.

Win a fight with two or more men when only one of them lives.



See a beaten man of yours get up when the crowd roars for him.
Minimum Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system OS: Windows 10 64-bit Processor: Intel Core i5-8400 / AMD Ryzen 5 2600 Memory: 8 GB RAM Graphics: NVIDIA GTX 1060 / AMD RX 580, 4 GB, Vulkan support Storage: 1 GB available space Additional Notes: Requires a dedicated graphics card with Vulkan support. Integrated graphics are not supported. Large battles (100 a side) need the recommended specification. Recommended Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system OS: Windows 11 64-bit Processor: AMD Ryzen 7 5700X / Intel Core i7-10700 Memory: 16 GB RAM Graphics: NVIDIA RTX 3060 / AMD RX 6600 Storage: 1 GB available space
Minimum Requires an Apple processor OS: macOS 11 (Big Sur) or later Processor: Apple M1 Memory: 8 GB RAM Graphics: Apple M1 (8-core GPU) Storage: 1 GB available space Additional Notes: Apple silicon Mac required. Large battles (100 a side) need the recommended specification. Recommended Requires an Apple processor OS: macOS 14 or later Processor: Apple M3 Pro Memory: 16 GB RAM Graphics: Apple M3 Pro (18-core GPU) Storage: 1 GB available space
Minimum OS: 64-bit Linux: Ubuntu 22.04 or newer, or an equivalent distribution Processor: Intel Core i5-8400 / AMD Ryzen 5 2600 Memory: 1 GB RAM Graphics: NVIDIA GTX 1060 / AMD RX 580, 4 GB, Vulkan support Storage: 8 GB available space Additional Notes: Requires a dedicated graphics card with Vulkan support. Integrated graphics are not supported. Large battles (100 a side) need the recommended specification. Recommended OS: 64-bit Linux, a current distribution Processor: AMD Ryzen 7 5700X / Intel Core i7-10700 Memory: 16 GB RAM Graphics: NVIDIA RTX 3060 / AMD RX 6600 Storage: 1 GB available space