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Gameplay Aspects: Civilization/Economic/Light Combat
Player Interaction: Light to Medium
Player Conflict: Light to Medium
Rules Complexity: Light to Light/Medium
# of Players: 3-5 players
Best # of Players: 5
Game Length: 1-2 hours (usually 1.5 hours at the most)
Cost: $30-40


The unusual truth about Mare Nostrum is that it's a sheep in wolves' clothing. Yeah, I'm twisting the old adage and for good reason. Gamers seeking a deep, civilization-building economic struggle wrapped in attractive production values will find themselves primarily pleased with the production values. The civilization-building aspect is less impressive, unfortunately, despite appearances and depending on your gameplay desires.


Components

- You get a beautifully illustrated albeit simple map of the important ancient world, representing key empires of Rome, Carthage, Egypt, Babylon, and Greece.

- Wooden playing pieces for each empire in one of five different colors, Red = Carthage, Green = Greece, Yellow = Rome, Purple = Babylon, and Blue = Egypt AND in one of four different types: Legions, Triremes, Fortresses, and finally, Influence Markers

- Attractive but extremely flimsy paper player Cards for each Empire that provide initial set-up placements as well as building costs and a short rehash of potential combat results - players may prefer to laminate these cards for longevity purposes

- Plastic baggies to sort your pieces (a nice touch) & 8 6-sided dice

- A variety of beautifully illustrated cards (144 in total) - Resource cards picturing a variety of ancient resources like fish, grain, gold, etc... Tax cards (a generic income), Wonders of the World that grant a variety of different in-game benefits based on the card purchased, or a large selection of Heroes who also provide a mix of different abilities meant to help the player purchasing them. Finally, there are 3 different Director/Role cards that show which player is in charge of which bailiwick (Commerce, Military, or Political Leader))

- Small round cardboard markers representing Caravans, Markets, Cities, and Temples


Rules:

- Players are trying to achieve one of two specific goals, in order to win the game: collect a mix of either 4 Heroes and/or Wonders OR build the Pyramids (by purchasing them with either 12 Tax cards or a mix of 12 different Resources).

- Game turns include 1. Determination of Director Roles (these can change from turn to turn), 2. Commerce phase (acquiring your Resources followed by a Trading segment), 3. Building phase (spending your Resources to purchase and place Units or Influence Markers OR to buy Heroes or Wonders, 4. Military Phase (moving units and fighting with your opponents)

- The Director of each particular specialty (Commerce, Politics, or Military) makes key choices that govern each phase, usually involving who performs the actions in any given phase and in the case of Commerce, he also sets the amount of cards that will be up for trade by each player

- In order to acquire resources or tax cards necessary for purchasing anything, players will need to have a Caravan on any pictured resources in a Region's areas, this will yield one Resource card of the pictured type. Cities (also pictured on the board) will yield one Tax resource card. Caravans can have their production doubled (i.e., they'll yield two Resource cards) by the presence of a Market in their region and Cities can have their Tax output doubled by the presence of a Temple in their region. Players can only have one Caravan (per resource picture), one city (per city picture), one Market, one Temple, and only one Fortress (military unit) per Regional area. Furthermore, the Caravans, Markets, Cities, and Temples are limited in quantity for each game depending on how many are playing.

- Players can purchase Units (Legions, Triremes, Fortresses, or Influence Markers) or Caravans, Markets, Cities and Temples by spending (turning in) sets of Resource cards. If paying with specific Resources (as opposed to Tax cards) the sets must contain all different resources. If paying with Tax cards, the set must be ONLY all Tax cards. For example, to purchase a Legion with specific Resources (costing a set of 3 cards), I could use a Fish, Grain, and Gold card to pay for it but not a set with 2 Fish and 1 Grain. Or I could pay with 3 Tax cards but not a set that had 1 Tax card and 2 Fish - Tax and specific Resource cards are never mixed togteher.

- Combat allows for the movement of All, Some, None, or One unit and at the rate of one space on the board per unit with Naval activations occurring first. If opposing units are in the same space after moving, combat happens and is resolved by each player rolling as many D6 as they have units in the space, tallying the results, and for every 5 points rolled by their opponent, a player must subtract a Unit of his choice. (Note: Combat units don't include Influence Markers. They're used to annex new Regional areas and must be placed BEFORE building can occur in a new area.)

- The results of combat depend on who remains in the area. If the invader is successful in wiping out the defenders, he is left with one of 3 choices: to Sack, Occupy, or Convert an area. Sacking can destroy a Caravan, Market, City, or Temple. Occupying allows a player to place a unit on a Caravan, Market, City, or Temple and reap the rewards associated with that marker. Converting takes a full turn but changes the opposing Influence Marker to your color, thus granting you permanent control of the areas buildings and resources.


My thoughts/Comments:

Board gamers waited for this game to come out for quite a while and while expectations may have been unfairly high, they weren't quite met either. How much you'll appreciate Mare Nostrum depends on what you're looking for in a Civ/Economic style game. If you're seeking depth and some meaty trading, you're definitely in for some disappointments. If you're out for a light-hearted Civ-style game with mild elements of player conflict and interaction, you'll be mildly pleased with Mare Nostrum.

Unfortunately the game is saddled with some issues and these aren't really fixed with the addition of the expansion (Mare Nostrum: Mythology) either. The key issues are that the game tends to end too soon, just when things appear to be heating up. This occurs mainly because the Director of Commerce controls the trading of cards and has no limitations placed on how many cards he can request be up for grabs by trading players. This allows players of high-resource producing Empires to rapidly save up for the Pyramids (one of the winning conditions). One solution may be to ditch the purchasing of the Pyramids as a winning condition. Another small issue is that the designers have set limits on how many buildings are available during the game, ostensibly to help generate conflict rather than player turtling. However these artificial limits can lead to a runaway victory by a single player all too easily - especially when factoring in the limitations on military unit movement (1 space per turn) and the actual proximity of various countries to each other. A country that may be able to slow down another player's success is all too frequently not close enough to take action in time. Another huge issue is simply that if attacked, even if successful in fending off the interloper, players can find themselves too far behind the spending curve to catch up, making combat extremely unappealing and/or a bit unfair even.

Typically, games that involve trading allow for free-form trading, i.e., I offer my opponent a resource I suspect they'll want for one of theirs that they may value less - which involves an enjoyable mental assessment and the ability to make a sale - but in Mare Nostrum, the Director of Commerce determines how many cards will be traded (this is a Title or Role that players can vie for by having the most Caravans or Markets but considering that those are in limited numbers, this Title may not change hands very often, if at all, during a game). Players set the required number of cards face-up on the table and then, starting with the Director of Commerce, each in turn choose a card from another player who can then choose one from someone else until all the cards are gone. This is more pseudo-trading than real trading and like the rest of Mare Nostrum's gameplay elements, feels disappointingly limited.

Gameplay does flow nicely and the overall design simplicity doesn't necessarily ruin the game, it just makes it far less fun than one might imagine. When you factor in how quickly the game ends (if you're using the official rules) considering the perceived game-type involved and factoring in the issues mentioned above, you're left wanting a lot more than Mare Nostrum can offer.



Final Assessments:(using letter grades with +/-)

Production Values = A- (subtracted for flimsy Player Aid sheets)

Rules Clarity = A (Clear, concise, and relatively simple)

Quality of Player Interactions = B+

Quality of Player Conflict = B-/C+ (combat is extremely simple and trading is not free-form)

Originality (in Rules design, Gameplay elements, or theme) = B- (the setting and goals are hardly unique but the Director roles are interesting)

Gameplay Depth (score reflects the quantity, not quality of depth involved) = C+

Overall Fun Factor = C+

Overall Value = B- (this could have been lower were it not for the excellent production values)

Final Opinion = B-/C+

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Thanks for reading and good gaming!