Players: 3-4
Time: 60-90 minutes
Difficulty: 3 (of 10)

This review is of the international edition published by Ravensburger. There's also an American edition published by Rio Grande Games, which I suspect is largely identical. As far as I know, both are recently out-of-print from the publishers, but they're still available at various online stores; so, if you're interested, I'd suggest picking up the game soon.

The Components

San Marco comes with:

• 1 game board
• wood bits
  • 100 aristocrats
  • 1 doge
  • 9 wooden discs
  • 1 die
• 12 bridges
• cards
  • 62 action cards
  • 28 limit cards
• 1 rule book

Game Board: The game board is a large two-panel map (large, because the overall box is large). It's full color, printed on linen-textured cardboard. The map is largely an abstraction, intended mainly to show potential connections between six different districts of Venice. Because of its simplicity, some work has been done to make the map interesting and artistic. Each district, laid out in a distinct color, has a sort of collage overlaid on it, showing various aspects of Venice. You'll either like it or hate it. I personally think it's pretty, but that it outlines the severe abstractness of the game.

There's also a variety of useful information on the map include: name, value, and starting number for each district; a stone tablet designating roles for each turn; and a compass designating the current turn. There's also a scoring ("Prestige") track around the edge of the board.

Wood Bits: The majority of the pieces in the game are painted wood.

The 100 aristocrats are colored wooden cubes, in the four player colors: white, black, yellow, and blue. It's nice to have such distinct colors, with no opportunity for mistake, but the representation of the aristracts as cubes was ultimately disappointing.

The doge, conversely, is a beautifully carved figure. It looks like a little guy with hat, painted red. It's a pity the aristocrats cuoldn't be up to this same standard of representation.

The wooden discs are, simply, painted wooden discs. There's two each of the player colors: one to mark current score and the other to mark current role on the gameboard role tablet. There's also an orange disc which is placed on the turn compass.

The die is a simple wooden six-sider, with black pips on a white die. I personally find that wooden dice look better when left their natural color, because the paint tends to chip and fade since you're bouncing this die about, but that may be just me.

Bridges: The bridges are slightly cheap looking plastic bridges that are nonetheless nicely molded with details for bricks, arches, etc. They're intended to connect up various districts of Venice over the canals. The bridges are just the right width to slip in an aristrocrat cube, to mark ownership, which is a nice design. Nonetheless, wooden bridges would have better fit the ambiance of the overall game.

Cards: The cards are all printed in the small German size, on untextured card stock, with rounded corners.

The purple-backed action cards show one of five potential actions entirely pictorially. I at first bit my tongue at this internationalization, which often fails in games, but here it worked fine. Because of the good use of both nicely painted artwork and icons there was never any question as to what card did what action.

The green-backed limit cards show a number between 1 and 3. The icon (or number) for each card appears in both the top right and top left of the card, which makes it easy to see what's what when you're fanning the cards (though I would have preferred an icon at the bottom of the card too, as some inevitably ended up upside down--and there was no real reason not to have it on this card design).

Rule Book: This black and white plain paper rule book is printed in five languages. My prime annoyance with it is that there's no index or table of contents which tells you which language is where; you just have to flip through the whole book. The rules were generally simple (other than some obscure writing in a section on ending passages), well-illustrated, and good for reference in-game.

Box & Tray: The box is a slightly awkward, tall size. It's definitely oversized for the contents. A well-designed tray has specific places for all the pieces and helps to keep them separate.

Overall, the components of San Marco are fairly average with one exception: a real effort has been made to make the board and cards artistically beautiful in a way that evokes the Renaissance. As such I've given the game an above average Style rating of "4" out of "5".

The Game Play

in San Marco you attempt to gain majority control of the six districts of Venice and to have that control recognized by the wandering Doge.

Setup: The map of Venice is laid out. In turn each players rolls the die four times, each time placing two aristocrats on the same-numbered district of Venice. Then each player gets to place one bridge connecting two districts of Venice (each district has potential connections to between two and four other districts, across the canals). At the end each player will have eight aristrocrats and one bridge on the board.

Order of Play: Regular play now begins with the oldest player. In order, the following actions are taken:

• First Player Becomes First Distributor
• Other Roles Selected
• Distributors Divide
• Actions Resolved
• Limit Cards Checked

In addition, a few extra things occur at the end of each of the three "passages" and at the end of the game.

First Player Becomes First Distributor. The first player begins the round by placing one of his discs on the "first distributor" role space on the stone tablet; this means he'll be dividing up cards momentarily.

Other Roles Selected: Now, all the other roles are randomly selected. Usually, there are a total of four players active in each round: the other three players become "first decision maker", "second distributor", and "second decision maker".

(If there's just one other player still active in the round, he becomes "first decision maker"; if there are two they become "first decision maker" and "second decision maker".)

Distributors Divide: Now the distributors each draw a set of 5 action cards and 3 limit cards; they divide these cards into two sets, as they see fit.

(In the case where there are only three players left in the round, the distributor instead draws 6 and 4 cards and divide them into three sets.)

Actions Resolved. Now, the first decision maker flips up the two piles laid out by the first distributor, chooses one, and takes the related actions. Then the first distributor takes the remaining pile and takes the related actions. Assuming there are a total of four active players, this is now repeated with the second decision maker flipping up the two piles divided by the second distributor, then choosing one and leaving the remaining pile for the second distributor.

(In the case where there are only three players left in the round, the first decision maker chooses one pile, then the second decision maker, then the first distributor gets the last pile.)

When each player resolves their actions, they first set any limit cards to the side. These will become relevant at the the end of the round. Then, they take the actions embodied by the remaining cards in any order they see fit. There are five types of action cards:

District Card. Add 1 aristrocrat to the specified district, or to a directly adjacent district if you own a bridge connecting the two.

Bridge Card. Place a bridge connecting two directly adjacent districts.

Transfer Card. Replace one opposing aristocrat in any district with one of your own.

Banishment Card. Banish 1d6 aristocrats from any one district, possibly including your own if you roll high.

Doge Card. The first time this card is played, the Doge is placed in a district selected by the player. On future plays, the player may either keep the Doge in that district, or move him. The latter recalls moving across bridges and 1 Prestige must be paid to the owner of each bridge moved across other than those you own.

When the Doge arrives in a district, he causes it to score. Each district is marked with two Prestige numbers (e.g., "8/6" or "6/4"). The player with the most aristocrats in the district gets the first Prestige score, and the player with the second most gets the second Prestige score. Ties for first place result in both players getting the second place score; ties for second place result in both players getting nothing.

Limit Cards Checked: At the end of a round, each player now adds up his cumulative limit cards for the current Passage. If no one has more than 10, a new round starts as usual. If 1 or 2 players ended up with more than 10 total, one last round of play is conducted in the current Passage, with those players over 10 sitting out. If 3 players ended up with more than 10 total, the Passage ends immediately.

(After each round a new first player is also selected, to the immediate left of the current first player.)

End of Passage: There are three total Passages in the game, each marked by one or more players exceeding 10 limit points. Three things occur at the end of each Passage.

First, any players with less than 10 limit points gain a number of Prestige points equal to the highest limit in the Passage minus their own (e.g., if the player with the most limit points totalled 12 and you only had 6, you'd gain 6 Prestige points).

Second, the player with the least limit points gets to do a free Banishment on any district.

Third, all Limit cards are cleared, and the Passage number is increased on the compass.

End of Game: After the third Passage is completed, the game ends. Each of the six districts is scored one final time, and the player with the highest Prestige wins.

How the Game Feels

San Marco is fundamentally a social game. The majority of time each round is spent looking over cards, assessing what player will be deciding between your split piles, then watching and kibitzing as the other player chooses one of those piles. The card selection phase can run a bit long, and lead to downtime, if someone gets stuck at how to do a split.

The gameplay to the board is relatively quick in comparison. Usually, there are a few obvious plays that don't depend at all upon order (e.g., play all the District cards first). Each player tends to concentrate upon districts where he either has a clear majority or where ownership is very tight. Overall, decisions are thus pretty restricted.

Other than waiting for other players to divide up cards, the game goes very quickly, with the strangely precise 75 minutes mentioned on the box being fairly realistic.

Relationships to Other Games

San Marco (2001) is fundamentally a majority-based area control game with a unique and empowering competitive method used for action selection.

The definitive game in the majority-control genre is El Grande (1995) . Another game with somewhat similar mechanics for primary and secondary control is Tycoon (1998)--like El Grande, by Wolfgang Kramer and a second author. This is also not Alan Moon's first foray into majority-control games. Previous release, Wongar, written with Richard Borg, also had area scoring when particular pieces moved into each area.

The idea of players making tough decisions by giving each other benefits through action cards is a theme that's been returned to throughout Alan Moon's and Aaron Weissblum's collaborative career. Other variants include Mammoth Hunters (2003), where you have to play cards that benefit other players, and Oasis (2004) where you flip up cards for selection by other players as part of an "offering".

The Game Design

When examing the game design of San Marco, you really have to look at the Bramsian method of card distribution--"I split, you choose"--and assess how well it works as a game mechanic.

Generally the method has been much lauded and hooplahed as a truly original, innovative, and strategic method for card distribution. And, I will admit, in the game I played I saw players able to occasionally set up their opponent with a lose-lose situation, where either pile was bad to take for the decision maker, but not for the distributor. (This was usually related to the number of limit cards held by each player and in the two distribution piles.)

However, I also believe that such situations were by far in the minority. More frequently one of two situations seemed to arise: either there was sufficiently little differentiation above the cards that the distributor was forced to create the most equal piles possible; or, alternatively, the distributor spent overly long spans of time trying to divide the cards just so, to force his opponent to take a worse set of cards to get something that he specifically wanted, and then found some fairly large percentage of the time that his opponent wouldn't go for the deal.

Honestly, there are some very real tactics in the card division, but I also think there's a lot of false strategy, much as I found to be the case with Age of Mythology: The Boardgame's Battle card selection--where the method of card selection implies a high strategic possibility, but in truth human nature notably lowers those strategies to a level much more closely approaching random selection.

Despite all that, let me say that the card division system is interesting and innovative, and thus the game offers a real change of pace from most other games out there.

I also found the other main game system--with its majority control and its various ways to place aristocrats, including some additional advantages offered by bridges--to be solid and generally a good backdrop to use with the card division system. Real strategy was possible thanks to the various methods you could select for Aristocrat placement.

Here's some of the rough edges of the game:

Banishment Highly Random: I'd in fact say, "overly random". All of your efforts toward a particular district can be totally wiped away by a single banishment which is ... frustrating.

King Making Possible: King making is quite possible toward the end of the game when a losing player gets a Doge card and is forced to make a decision as to what to do with it.

Overall, I'd say that San Marco is a solid game. It has an innovative system in its card division, but otherwise I found the game neither particularly exciting nor disturbing, and thus I rate it an average "3" out of "5" for Substance.

Conclusion

San Marco is a fine game by Moon & Weissblum, though I don't find it nearly as stand-out as more recent releases such as New England or Oasis. However, there's also nothing particularly wrong with this game. If you like these designers and want to see yet another unique card selection method and/or how they approach majority-control games, pick it up while you still can.