San Marco

From: Ravensburger Designer: Alan Moon & Aaron Weissblum List Price: $35 ($28 street) Players: 3-4 Playing Time: 60-90 minutes  Type of game: Family Strategy  Skill level: 5 Complexity: 4  Reviewed by: Craig Massey, Issue 26, Summer 2001

I grew up with younger brothers. This meant sharing everything was expected, especially when it came to the last piece of dessert. Loud protests were the rule if anyone’s dessert was the slightest bit bigger than the next guy’s. My mother’s solution was simple: one person divided the dessert into three pieces while the other two chose which pieces they wanted first. Of course this meant if I was cutting dessert, I tackled the task of division with the precision of a surgeon making sure that no one got so much as a crumb more than the next guy. Heck, I probably even used a ruler once or twice.

Many years have passed since “I divide, you choose” was used to make things fair at my house, but the concept is now the central mechanic in San Marco from the team of Alan Moon and Aaron Weissblum. The theme behind San Marco has players trying to garner an invitation to join the Grand Council of Venice. In order to do so, players must impress the Doge by having the most aristocrats as the Doge moves through the districts of Venice. Control the most aristocrats when the Doge makes a stop and a player scores points. The player with the most points at the end of the game wins the seat on the Grand Council.

The game is from Ravensburger so production is absolutely top notch with the usual assortment of colored wooden cubes augmented by a pile of plastic bridges. The game board is a bit loud in its color scheme, but the player pieces don’t get lost and so it is easy to see what is going on at a glance.

Each player starts with some aristocrats in a couple of the six districts, plus one or two bridges which he may place to connect adjoining districts. The game is played over three rounds with each round consisting of about three or four turns. Here is where the “I divide, you choose” mechanic comes into play. There are two types of cards that get divided among the players each turn. Action cards are the “good” cards and allow players to do interesting things during their turn, such as adding aristocrats to specific regions (which can then be moved across one— and only one— bridge owned by that player to a neighboring region), adding another bridge, swapping an opponent’s aristocrat for your own, or scoring a district.

Limit cards, numbered 1-3, are the “bad” cards. Taking one accrues “limit points” equal to the card’s face value. Once someone accumulates ten or more limit points, the round is over for him and all other players below ten points get one final turn. As a further incentive to avoid limits, players finishing a round with fewer than ten score a bonus equal to the difference between their total and that of the player with the most limit points for that round. The player with the fewest limit points gets a free banishment— the ability to choose a region and remove a number of aristocrats equal to the roll of a die. Avoiding limit points can therefore carry a fairly significant advantage.

Each turn players are either dividers or choosers. In a three-player game one player divides and two choose, with the role of divider rotating each turn; with four, players are randomly matched up in divider/chooser pairings each turn. Each divider gets a stack of action and limit cards and must then divide them as he sees fit. This could mean a fairly equitable split at face value or it could mean wildly unbalanced piles. Once the cards have been divided, the choosers step up to the plate. Each chooser must pick a pile, carry out any actions contained in that pile, and add any limit cards to his total. The divider does the same with whichever pile is left over.

Scoring occurs whenever a player uses a doge action card. The doge can move throughout the districts in Venice across bridges to score the region of the player’s choice. If the doge crosses bridges not owned by the active player, he must pay a toll of a victory point to the owner of the bridge. The scoring system is just like El Grande. Two values are marked in each region. When a region is chosen for scoring, the player with the most aristocrats scores the higher value and the player with the next most aristocrats scores the lower. Normally each region only scores when someone moves the doge there, but all regions also score at the very end of the game.

The mechanism of having one player divide the cards and the other player choose the pile that suits him best is a wonderful and fresh mechanic. It presents an amazing amount of agonizing choices to both the divider and chooser. The divider must carefully balance the allocation of useful action cards and limit points. Should the divider load up some really useful action cards with extra limit points to entice the choosing player to take a lesser stack of cards? Or maybe the divider is actively trying to maintain a very low limit point total for the round in the hopes of scoring points and getting a free banishment at the end of the round. It is rare that there is an easy or obvious split. Careful consideration must be given to what cards your opponent will find most useful.

The decisions are just as interesting and difficult for the person choosing between the stacks of cards once divided. You immediately want to grab the stack with the most useful cards for you, but they may come with a heavy amount of limit points. You also want to get inside the head of the person who divided the cards and understand why he split them the way he did as well as try to figure out what he will do with the stack you leave him. As with the divider, there is almost never an obvious choice to make.

Choice abounds when it comes to playing the action cards as well. Do you spread aristocrats over several districts to maximize scoring potential or load up in a few key districts to guarantee scoring? Where is the best area to swap? And then there is the banishment card with the ability to swing a region your way on the right roll of the dice or wipe out your aristocrats along with everyone else. Because of the large amount of choice in the division and play of the cards, the game can drag when playing with those who tend towards over-analysis. A quick kick under the table usually alleviates this problem.

The three-player game moves along a bit quicker, but works just as well. Where many games often break down for three players as they can turn into a two on one situation easily, this is not the case in San Marco.

This is a very well designed game, one that offers a challenging array of decisions every turn. The divide and choose mechanism is fresh and new and works extremely well as a simple, but deep way to allocate resources and stimulate indirect player interaction while keeping the game tense, close and most importantly fun. The game comes with English rules. This, in addition to the fact that San Marco is simple to explain and teach while providing a good amount of depth, should help make the game accessible beyond the traditional gaming community which it I feel it deserves. I enjoy the game very much and would highly recommend it. Now it’s time to go slice a piece of dessert. I hope I don’t have to share.

Much of the gameplay in San Marco is very familiar. The twist is in how players come by that gameplay— the delicious agony over how to split cards and which pile to choose. And in the wrong hands, it’s agony for everyone as seconds stretch to minutes. Analysis paralysis is a real problem here, and not one satisfactorily solved with a timer. Rushing decisions only leads to horrible mistakes, and a poorly-considered split can throw a huge advantage to the first chooser. Keep this in mind when deciding if this is a game your group will enjoy. I’ve come to believe San Marco is better with three players than with four. In the latter case, each divider does his job secretly so as not to be influenced by the actions of the other. With three, the division process is performed in the open which lets all players share the experience. This is much more fun and also moves more quickly, a win-win all around. - Ed.