Players: 3-5
Playing Time: 2-3 hours

The Components

Mare Nostrum comes in a box full of good-quality components. These include:

Board: A large 4-panel map of the Mediterranean, broken up into various land and sea spaces. The map is detailed in subdued colors of gray and brown, but is nonetheless attractive. Cities and resources marked on the board are all easy to make out.

Wooden Bits: Each player gets a set of 33 wooden game bits including 12 influence disks, 8 octagonal fortresses, 5 Triremes, and 8 Legions. The military figures are both quite cute, though the octagonal fortresses leave a little to be desired.

Cardboard Bits: The board will also be filled out with a number of cardboard bits, each a circular token. There are 28 caravans and 12 markets, plus 12 cities and 6 temples. The caravans are markets are both predominantly blue, while the cities and temples are both predominantly red. This has its pluses and minuses. On the downside it’s easy to mistake one marker for the other of the same color, because they’re pretty similar. On the other hand its easy to make out who has the most red markers and who has the most blue, which is ultimately notable for controlling certain roles during the game.

Cards: There are a total of 144 cards, all printed on slightly flimsy cardstock, all featuring high-quality and attractive illustrations. 123 of the cards are resources which are earned and traded throughout the game. The remaining cards are: 3 player roles, 11 heroes, and 7 wonders of the world. These latter cards all feature special powers which are well described on the cards so that the rules rarely need to be referenced.

Player Aid Cards: Each player gets a unique player aid card which shows his precise setup on the front side and has a lot of information on the game on the back. These are very helpful. The game itself plays pretty simply once you get the hang of it, but having a listing of heroes and wonders right in front of you during the game is nice. As with everything else in the game, the graphic design on these cards is attractive.

Dice: 8 wooden dice.

Rules: An 8-page rule which includes examples and Q&A.

Overall Mare Nostrum is quite attractive. As is the case with most French games it features excellent quality illustration and graphic design. The components are all good (though I wish the cards were a tiny bit sturdier) and generally everything makes it easy to play the game. Thus Mare Nostrum earns a “5” out of “5” for Style.

The Gameplay

The object of Mare Nostrum is to build Wonders of the World and heroes sufficient to make yourself the most notable civilization in the world.

Setup: Each player chooses a starting country from Babylon, Carthage, Greece, Egypt, and Rome. Each player then places appropriate wooden bits (influence and fortresses) and cardboard bits (caravans and cities) within his territory, as shown on his player aid. Each player also gets a starting hero card, which gives his civilization a unique power, such as allowing the Romans to build armies faster or the Babylonians to extend their influence for free.

An alternative setup method allows each player to setup his territory via point-based purchases, but is probably more complexity than is required for this game.

Three players are selected for the initial roles of Director of Commerce, Political Leader, and Military Leader—which as we’ll see are the players who control the three main phases of the game.

Order of Play: During a turn the following four phases occur:

1. Allocate Roles
2. Commerce
3. Construction
4. Military

Allocate Roles: After the first turn, the three special player roles can move around each turn. They are assigned as follows:

• Director of Commerce to the player with the most caravans and markets (blue cardboard bits) in their provinces.
• Political Leader to the player with the most cities and temples (red cardboard bits) in their provinces.
• Military Leader to the player with the most legions, trireme, and fortresses (wooden bits).

Commerce: The commerce phase starts with each player collecting his revenues. This is based on the caravan, market, city, and temple markers in territories where he has influence markers (as well as those places he’s “occupying”, which we’ll encounter in the military phase).

A caravan generates one of the appropriate resource, of which there are twelve different types (livestock, grain, fruit, gems, slaves, olive oil, metal, good, papyrus, perfume, fish, wine)--or two if there is a market in the space.

A city generates one tax resource--or two if there is a temple in the space.

Afterward the players trade. This is initiated by the Director of Commerce who determines how many cards all players will trade. The players then all place that number of resource cards face-down in front of them, with everyone simultaneously revealing what they’re trading.

The Director of Commerce then takes a card from another player, who then takes cards from another player … continuing until only one player has cards left. (At this point the Director of Commerce may have to give one card back to that player to even things out.)

The players all having exchanged cards, the Commerce phase now ends.

Construction: Each player now takes a construction phase in an order chosen by the Political Leader. On his turn a player may build things in provinces in which he had influence at the start of the phase. All construction is paid for with resource cards, either a set of identical tax cards or a set of all-different non-tax resource cards.

The things that can be purchased are:

• Influence Marker. 3 cards. These are either purchased in an empty province adjacent to your own or else you can replace an opponent’s influence marker if you’ve “converted” a province.
• City, Caravan. 3 cards. These are built on city or caravan spaces where a city or caravan has not yet been built. The number of markers available to do so are very limited, and will be the prime cause of warfare beginning.
• Legion, Trireme, Fortress. 3 cards. These wood bits are, of course, your army. Triremes are built on waterfront property and must be moved out to the sea during the Military phase. You can only have one Fortress per province.
• Temple, Market. 6 cards. Only one of each can be built in a province.
• Wonder, Hero. 9 cards. These are ultimately measures of victory, but they also each give nice powers which will help you out during the rest of the game. Once you’ve built 4 total (including your starting hero), you win the game.
• The Pyramids. 12 cards. The first player to build these automatically wins.

At the end of your Construction phase you must discard all your resources except up to two tax cards.

There are two things to note here:

First, because you’re always discarding resources, you really have to work to build the higher value things. Getting 9-12 tax cards is quite tough since that requires quite a few cities and/or temples. Likewise getting 9-12 different resources is quite a bit of work since they’re strategically arranged about the map. If you manage the trade phase particularly well, you may be able to accomplish these goals earlier.

Second, the game ends immediately when someone wins and that can make the Political Leader’s ordering extremely important at the end of the game. Likewise, there are severe limits on both cities and caravans, so it’s good to be in the Political Leader’s graces when the turn comes to build the last of those (or to scoop up new ones if sackings occur).

Military: Finally the players engage in the Military phase in an order chosen by the Military leader.

Movement is simple: Legions and Triremes can each move one space. In addition Legions can freely move across chains of Triremes (which effectively make spaces they touch adjacent for all your purposes.

You move Triremes first, then optionally conduct any sea battles. You move Legions next, then must fight battles in any land spaces where you and an opponent are both located.

(Notably Triremes always stay in the sea after they’re initially moved out and Legions always stay on land, so the twain shall never meet in battle.)

Battle is simple too: you roll one 6-sided die per Legion/Trireme unit in a space, total the results together, then add +6 if you have a Fortress. You and your opponent each roll simultaneously then you each simultaneously remove losses: 1 figure for each 5 points of damage that your opponent did.

If you both survive the province remains “at war”, which means that nothing can be built there until the state no longer exists.

However, if the invader manages to wipe out the defender, then he can do nasty things. He has three choices:

• He can sack the province, destroying a city, caravan, temple, or market.
• He can occupy the province which allows him to temporarily take control of one city, caravan, temple, or market per Legion token he has there; he’ll then get those resources next turn.
• He can convert the province, which means that his opponent will still get the province’s resources next turn, but after that the invader can replace their influence marker with his own (for the normal 3 card cost of building an influence marker).

Winning the Game: The game ends as soon as someone builds their fourth hero/wonder or as soon as they build the Pyramids.

Relationships to Other Games

Mare Nostrum fits into a broad class of game that I call Civ Light. These are mixed resource/war games that play like shorter, simpler versions of the classic Avalon Hill board game Civilization. Generally a good Civ Light game should have four types of gameplay: civilization advance (a/k/a technology), resource management, trade, and warfare.

When I assessed several Civ Light games last year I found Mare Nostrum to be the best of the group. It’s got a great trade system, real resource management, and definite warfare. The only thing lacking is technology, which you have a tiny bit thanks to the wonders and heroes, but there’s not really much advancement and definitely nothing complex like a tech tree.

Nonetheless, Mare Nostrum hits the Civ Light category better than anything else available.

Game Design

Generally the game design of Mare Nostrum is generally elegant and well-done. Almost all of the systems are really clean and well thought out (though explaining the various things you can do after winning a battle can be a bit tricky for some reason).

There’s also some great human interaction in the game, starting with the trading but also in the ways that you can interact with the various leaders and directors. There’s a lot of opportunity for deal-making, all offered up in a really casual way that’s not bound by rules.

The way in which troops are created, moved, and battle is all quite minimalist, and stronger for that. You have limited forces on the board each time, but they’re meaningful. Movement is brief, but through boats can be expansive. The battles occur very quickly. This is all to the game’s benefit because it’s much of what helps it play (relatively) quickly. One of the few other minimalist designs that I’ve played like this is Fantasy Flight’s A Game of Thrones.

Finally the game has multiple paths to victory. A lot of this is encoded by what civilization you’re playing--the Romans have a better military presence, the Egyptians are more likely to win based on cities, etc—but nonetheless it allows for very different play styles.

My only complaint about Mare Nostrum is that the ending can be abrupt. It’s a little hard to measure how close a player is getting to the goal of 12 taxes or 12 different resources, and thus the game can suddenly be over when you thought you were just revving up for a new war. This is less of a problem when the players are more experienced.

Overall, Mare Nostrum is an excellent game if you’re looking for a short wargame with some good depth. It earns a full “5” out of “5” for Substance.

Conclusion

Mare Nostrum is the top Civ Light game around, combining resource management and warefare into a coherent whole that can be played in just 2-3 hours.

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