Players: 3-6
Time: 2-3 hours
Difficulty: 6 (of 10)

The Components

Parthenon comes with:

• 1 gameboard
• 18 fleets
• 1 Archon marker
• 6 reference sheets
• 440 cards

Gameboard: A sturdy, 2-fold board showing the areas around the Aegean Sea. On the one hand, this board is largely not needed, because it mostly just shows six different neighboring & foreign lands, and has some rules about them and spaces for their "Harbor Status" card. On the other hand, some players said that they wished it were larger, so that there could have been space for the many (many) other cards in the game.

In any case the board is a little busy, but otherwise attractive, and is great as a reference for what goes on in all the neighboring & foreign lands.

Fleets: Cardboard pieces mounted in plastic stands. There are three ("A", "B", and "C") in each of the six player colors (brown, red, green, orange, blue, and purple). Some players had some troubles telling the red and brown fleets apart, but otherwise these worked well.

Archon Marker: A large cardboard marker which can be mounted in two plastic stands.

Reference Sheets: Each player gets a well designed and entirely useful island reference sheet, printed on heavy cardboard. It shows all of the buildings which that player can build, and also lists trading ratios on the front, while the back has additional info on all of the acropolis structures. This was innately referenced a lot during the game, both front and back, and is both well-designed and overall indispensible.

Cards: This game comes with an amazing 440 cards. They're all light to medium weight, printed full-color. They've for the most part got attractive, period appropriate artwork and are easy to use. A lot of care has gone into the design of each card, and it shows--and also makes the game easier to play. Cards include: 11 commodities (grain, grapes, olives, ore, timber, wool, pottery, spices, tools, papyrus, and gold); 3 aegises (gift of Poseidon, army, warship); a deck of Philosophy cards; two decks of Wonder cards; and decks of Event, Hazard, and Harbor Status Cards (all of which are used for various random occurrences in the game).

In addition each player gets their own personal set of "build" cards which depict the structures and ships that player can build. Each player also gets a reference card and an archon card in his deck. The structure cards are particularly well designed because each has production & usage information--what you need to know once you've built the structure--to the left, so that you can lay a stack of these cards mostly on top of each other and still see everything critical.

Personally, I think that too many things in this game use cards. In each game I played once or twice during the game I'd have to hunt for something because I'd have so many piles of cards in my play area. Doing something like making the structures chits that you put on your player board could have improved this. However, I can understand strong economic reasons that might have caused them to use cards for everything once they got started.

Rulebook: An attractive 24-page full-color rulebook. It's well-written and relatively easy to pick up the (complex) game from playing it. Using it for reference during the game was slightly more hit and miss.

The theming of this all, by-the-by, is good. I particularly love the inclusion of Great Wonders and Philosophies, which both really set the game in "the Golden Age of Greece" for me.

Overall, Parthenon has very well-designed components that make it easier to play the game. (In fact, if the component design hadn't been done so well, the game might not have worked.) The artwork used on the components is generally nice as well. I do have some slight complaints about card clutter. (Parthenon tends to take up the whole table when you play, and is thus the biggest game I played since ... the last Andrew Parks card game I played, Camelot Legends.) I also would have preferred something nicer than the cardboard ships used in the game. Nonetheless, Parthenon receives very good marks for its components: a high "4" out of "5", with the aesthetics of having so many cards on the table the only thing really preventing it from reaching a perfect score.

The Gameplay

The object of Parthenon is to build up your Aegean island civilization before any of your opponents by cleverly collecting and trading the resources needed for your development.

Setup: Each player chooses one of the six Aegean islands. They take a build deck, which lists everything that they can build and a set of three ships. Two villages from the build deck and one ship will initially be flipped face up; they've already been constructed at the start of the game.

In addition the board is surrounded with many types of cards. Commodities, which are resource cards, are placed in 11 piles. That's six basic commodities (grain, grapes, olives, ore, timber, and wool), 4 rare commodities (pottery, spices, tools, payprus), and gold (gold). Aegis cards help protect your fleets and they're arranged into three piles: gifts of Poseidon, armies, and warships. A stack is made of philosophy cards, which players will be able to search through when they discover phillosophy in the game.

Then a few decks are randomized. The great wonder cards, event cards, hazard cards, and harbor status cards are each shuffled and placed near the board.

One harbor status card is placed on each of the six cities on the board.

An Archon is randomly selected.

And play begins.

More About the Build Decks. The whole object of the game is to build up your civilization, and you do that with your build deck. Each deck includes: six villages, which produce basic commodoties; two workshops, which produce rare commodities; and six acropolis structures, which let you do various things. (There are also a couple of alternate acropolis structures, which let you duplicate something you've already built.)

Each player's deck is different. For example Chios has 3 wool villages, 2 olive villages, 1 ore village, 2 pottery workshops, and the normal set of six acropolis structures (marketplace, shrine, academy, great harbor, treasury, and fortress). It however can't build the other three basic resources, or the other three rare resources, or gold. (Actually, no player can produce the rare resource papyrus or gold.)

At the start of the game each player has two of his villages already built, which will allow him to get going with a couple of resources. Resources will have to be spent to build additional structures; all of the costs are clearly labeled on both the cards and the island reference sheet.

Order of Play: Parthenon is played in seasons, with each season having ten phases:

1. Event Phase
2. Production Phase
3. Island Trade Phase
4. Journey Phase
5. Hazard Phase
6. Fleet Trade Phase
7. Return Phase
8. Build Phase
9. Discard Phase
10. Archon Phase

Each phase occurs simultaneously. All players take their turns at the same time. If there's ever a timing conflict, the archon chooses who goes first.

Four seasons make up a year, and three years is the maximum length of a game (although each of my games ended one or two seasons into year two).

Event Phase: At the start of each year, four (out of six event cards for the year) are placed face down, then each season one is placed face-up and then all the face-up event cards have their effect in an order of the Archon's choice.

Events add some variety to the game. Some make it easier to travel, some harder. Some punish players without a certain commodity or a certain island structure. Some offer commodities to players for various reasons. Sometimes the Archon gets to make an additional choice about what an event card does.

Overall this is where the Archon has the most power.

Production Phase: Each village that you've built produces one of the appropriate basic commodity and each workshop produces one of the appropriate rare commodity. You can assign up to one army (an aegis card) to each village in order to force them to produce two commodity cards instead of one.

Island Trade Phase: You can freely trade with other players. This is nicely encouraged by the fact that each island only produces some of the commodities.

Journey Phase: This is where the game gets really original & innovative and it's the heart of the best gameplay in Parthenon.

There are six other countries that you can trade with. Sparta, Athens, and Ionia are neighboring lands while Italy, Carthage, and Egypt are foreign lands. You can choose to send boats to these places in order to trade.

At any of these locations you can trade basic, rare, and gold commodities in ratios shown on the island cards. For example you can trade basics 2:1 at neighboring lands and 1:1 at foreign lands. Or you can trade 4 basic:1 gold at neighboring lands or 2:1 at foreign lands. Or you can trade 8 basic:1 rare at neighboring lands or 4:1 at foreign lands. This can let you get commodities you need but couldn't get from other players. It's also just about the only way to get gold.

In addition, some of the lands have other benefits. Athens is the only place you can get great wonder plans, and you'll need to build 2 of those to win the game. Egypt is the only place to get papyrus. You can buy warships at Carthage for 1 gold and armies at Italy for 1 gold.

(This is all clearly marked on the board for easy reference, but it becomes second nature very quickly.)

To trade you need a ship card. You'll have one at start, and can build up to two more during the game. You then place up to six cards under that ship. These can be commodities that you want to trade or aegis cards which will help protect the boat. Then you place the corresponding ship marker on the board at the location where you want the ship to go.

Everyone does this for all of their ships (if they want to trade). However, going to neighboring lands is a little dangerous and going to foreign lands is quite dangerous.

Journey Phase: Now one hazard card is flipped up for all the boats which went to neighboring lands. The results are applied to everyone. Then two hazard cards are flipped up for everyone going to foreign lands, and again they're applied to everyone.

These cards can be storms, pirates, or safe journeys. Clearly, you want the last. The others can cause you to lose some or all of your cargo or not be able to make it to your destination. They tend to affect only the player with the most cargo or someone with rare or gold commodities or someone with more than 3 commodities. In other words, you can make your ships safer by loading fewer and less valuable cards, but you might be trading off better gains on the other side.

Now ships arrive at their destination unless something really terrible happened.

Aegis Cards. Aegis cards that you put on a ship can help protect it. Warships protect you from pirates. Or, a gift of Poseidon can be discarded (from the affected ship) to draw a new hazard card for you and only you.

Fleet Trade Phase: But now there's one more obstacle. Each city also has a "harbor status" card. These start out face-down, are revealed throughout the year, then replaced at the start of the new year.

Harbor status cards can make a certain basic commodity more or less valuable. (The latter in particularly can really screw up your plans if you'd been hoping to trade away some of that now-less-valuable commodity.) They can reveal a Blockade on a harbor (which can be avoided with a Warship) or a Tribute card (which can be avoided with an Army). They can involve Harbor Fees which require you to give up commodities.

These harbor statuses can be a final problem to trading with a city, or alternatively a boon. (In particular the shortages let you sell basic commodities for valuable gold.)

Now you can trade each of the commodities in each ship with the appropriate city at the appropriate ratio.

Return Phase: You may now return each of your ships home, making sure that none has more than 6 cards on it.

Build Phase: Having now won the resources that you sought you can build the items necessary for victory. In addition you can use certain acropolis structures to produce additional items.

Villages cost 1-3 basic commodoties, workshops cost a set of 6 basic commodities, acropolis structures cost a mixture of 2 or 3 rare and gold commodities, and wonder structures cost various wacky costs (and sometimes must be built in other phases of the game, requiring things such as trading with certain cities). You can also build additional ships for 1 or 2 gold.

About Acropolises. There are 6 acropolis structures. Marketplaces let you turn basic commodities into gold. Shrines let you produce gifts of Poseidon with a rare commodity. Great Harbors let you produce a warship with 3 basic commodities. Fortresses let you produce an army with the other 3 basic commodities. Treasuries let you hold more cards from turn to turn.

Finally, an academy, which can only be built with papyrus, which only comes from Egypt, lets you build philosophies. These are cool, global powers which can give you big advantages in the game.

About Great Wonders. As already noted, the Great Wonders have to be built in various phases of the game. Overall, building a Great Wonder is a three-step process. First you get the plans from Athens, then you build the first part of the Wonder, then you build the second half. (Each Great Wonder actually comes with two cards as a result.) When you're done Great Wonders also provide cool, global powers. And they're necessary to win the game.

Discard Phase: Each player has to discard down to 3 cards (6 with a treasury) or 1 of each type.

Archon Phase: Now a vote is held around the table to determine who the next Archon is.

Ending the Year: At the end of a year all the year's old events go away, and new events for the new year are placed out face-down. In addition any face-up harbor statuses are discarded and replaced with new face-down harbor statuses.

Winning the Game: A player wins Parthenon by building his whole civilization: 6 villages, 2 workshops, 6 acropolis structures, and 2 Great Wonders. There are also a number of tie breakers. (I for example won my last game of Parthenon when another player and I finished on the same turn, and we had the same number of Philosophies [the first tiebreaker], but I had more aegis cards [the second tiebreaker].)

Shannon's Tips for Speeding the Game Up

This game advertises itself as two to three hours, and in each of the games I played, one with four players and one with five, we came in at just over two hours, the bottom of that range. I think you can speed things up by taking some simple steps to make the simultaneous nature of the game really work.

1. Have the archon really stay on top of things. He should announce the start of the phases and also try and figure out when everyone is done so that the game can move along.
2. The Island Trade Phase and the Journey Phase can flow together. When you're done trading with all the other players, just start setting up your boats. When everyone has placed all of their boats on the board, you know everyone is done with these phases.
3. Likewise the Fleet Trade Phase, the Return Phase, the Build Phase, and the Discard Phase can all flow together. When you're done fleet trading, mark it by taking your ships off the map. (That was your Return Phase.) Go ahead and start building immediately. When you're done with that, discard. When everyone has discarded, you can continue on.

These speed-ups will only work if you're playing in a semi-casual group where you're not avidly trying to work against other players in what you do.

And Shannon's Other Suggestions

An announcement suggestion: at the end of each season, possibly just before the Archon phase, each player should announce what they did that season, and what their current status is. Else, it's just too easy to lose track of how each player is doing.

A variant suggestion: the first year of the game can be a little staid, with players trading less and a lot of people doing some really programmed moves. I think it's worth playing the first time, to get people used to the system, but afterward I highly suggest playing the "tournament variant" suggested in the rules, which jumps players straight to the start of year two.

Relationships to Other Games

Parthenon is a resource collection and management game. It's also a somewhat intricate civilization building game.

When one of the developers originally explained it to me at GenCon, he said it was a 3-hour long game of basic Civilization. I can see the correlations because it's got commodity trading and construction.

I'd however call it a 3-hour long game of advanced The Settlers of Catan. Mind you, the game has plenty of unique features, the best of which is the superb journeying & trading system, but in its broadest strokes, as a game where you trade resources in order to get the right formulas to build up various structures, and in the fact that there are some broad random elements, I think it'll appeal to some of the same demographics, albeit those who are interested in a slightly more complex & richer game.

The Game Design

Parthenon is overall a good game.

The best element is the superb trading which works quite well. The balance of having different players have different resources and of different buildings requiring different resources (sometimes explicitly) forces players to trade with each other as much as they can. On the other hand players are still forced to go to foreign islands, because they inevitably can't get everything they want from other players, and also because it's the only way to get gold or papyrus (and you need gold for 5 of the 6 acropolis structures).

The whole system of journeying and trading with foreign lands is both delightful and original. It's really the heart of the game, and it's a good one. To start off with you have solid tactical planning as you figure out:which goods you want to trade in which lands. How harbor statuses can affect that; what you have; what you need; availability of "special" items in 4 of the 6 foreign lands; and requirements of great wonders can all go into this decision. Then you have a great risk system. You can decide to go with very cautious loads which probably won't set off hazards or you can put more goods or rarer good on your ships; you can try and protect them with aegises, or just cross you fingers so you can load more commodities up. I usually adore a game with a good press-your-luck system, and this is one.

Some players may not like the factor that there is a random factor in the game: harbor statuses, events, and hazards can all make a big difference in the game. On the whole I suspect the random level is somewhat similar to Settlers, but there's also somewhat more chance to offset it here. Likewise some players may be put off by the game's complexity. It's a harder than average teach, but I think it flows quite well once you've played a turn. However, because of the complexity, and the amount of stuff going on at once, it's possible to make a wasteful mistake. Each of the two games I played I wasted at least one shipment by trying to do something impossible; I forgot about a relevant harbor status once, and got one of my trade ratios confused the other time. Whether these elements make the game more or less appealing will ultimately be a matter of choice for an individual player.

My only real complaint about the game is its solitaire nature. You do have some interaction with other players through the trading (and it was indeed enough that my social-game player was happy). A more advanced group could try and negotiate trades ahead of time by asking other players to get them items at other ports. However, with the built-in simultaneous nature of the game, there's innately a lot of solitaire play, and it's easy to get totally disconnected from what cards other players have managed to build on their side of the board. (But see my suggestion above for this.)

On the whole I think Parthenon is a strong game that will appeal to people looking for a middle weight civilization & trading game. I give it a solid "4" out of "5" for Substance: quite good.

Conclusion

Parthenon is an American game with a European feel. It runs longer than most European games, but elements of trading, strategy, and tactics come straight from the German playbook. This game is in many ways reminescent of The Settlers of Catan, but offers more thoughtful and ultimately more interesting play. It's well worth a look.