Mare Nostrum - Empires Boardgame

Mare Nostrum is a well designed, relatively SHORT (90 mins with experienced players) game about Civilization building and trading in the Mediterranean sea. Trading in the med games are what gave Euro-games a bad name as there as SO MANY, and so many of them are boring and theme-less.Mare Nostrum, thankfully breaks the mold.The game mechanics are simple and efficient, there is a TON of player interaction and there are FOUR possible victory conditions, allowing for many strategies! The icing on the cake is the mythological 'twist' Mare has by adding heroes and monsters from Greek, Roman and Near Eastern mythology. The MYTHIC BEAST PROMO pack (sold separately) adds a bit of spice to the theme of the game. Instead of sending fleets and legions to attack your enemies, you can...."RELEASE THE KRAKEN"...to decimate your foes! I love this stuff and always play with this promo-pack!If you like the mythic nature of the game, I HIGHLY RECOMMEND getting the MYTHIC BEASTS PROMO, which adds even more cool monsters to the game. The STARTING HEROES PROMO is also highly recommended, as it gives each nation a new starting hero and strategy. There's even a HEROES OF THE BIBLE PROMO if you want a more Jewish/Christian slant to the game.About the only downsides to Mare Nostrum is that it can be a VERY MEAN game. Clashes between players can be very common, and using trade to screw over your opponents is a viable, and even required, strategy. If you don't like conflict, you should try before you buy this game, or just avoid it all together. Also, new players can/will get CRUSHED in this game...unless they FULLY UNDERSTAND THE TRADE RULES.

Pros* Very good video on how to play* Easy to build things (no complex list of resources you need to build an item)* Somewhat easy to learn* Simultaneous resource collection* Designed to create conflictCons* Not enough military pieces (would have liked a few more, but its by design)* Not enough markers* Some rule issuesI picked up this game at Origins 2016 with the bigger map and poker piece resource upgrades.The rules could have been a little better written, but they are nicely done with lots of examples. They do leave some questions to what they mean, but if you try and keep the rest of the rules in mind, and go off what you think the intention of the designer was, then you should be OK.I have not played the original Mare Nostrum, but I do love this version. All the resources you can get, the fact you cannot stock pile them from round to round, combat to take over territory or pillage, it’s just a lot of fun.I have never had a game go more than 2 hours, and that is including a 6 player game with the Atlas expansion. With the multiple ways to win, it really keeps you on your toes to pay attention to try and stop the others from winning, and gives you multiple ways to try and win yourself.Each round you update the track order, so each round the trade leader sets how many resources each person has to put out for trade, the culture leader gets to pick their order of who gets to build when, and the military leader gets to pick who moves/fights in what order. Being on the top of those can be very important to your game, but being on top of all of them will win you the game.I bring this game with me to every game night, and since I have owned it, there has only been one time we haven't gotten it out, and it was mainly due to me having a pounding migraine. Our game nights normally last until 2am, and we closed up around 11, or it would have been played.In the attached photos, please be aware the map I am playing on is much bigger than the one that comes with the game, other than that, everything else you see is part of the game.

Mare Nostrum is an entertaining strategy game. Resource management feels on par as does combat. The trade system and many ways to win are done well. The map feels too small and the game lacks "world events" which would make this really good game a great game.