Review: San Marco

Introducción

Venice is at its peak. A few aristocratic families rule the High Council, with the Doge as its President. It is announced that one more family will be accepted into the council. A battle of political powers begins. Ruthless attacks occur as part of the power struggles in the different districts of Venice. Clever transfers of aristocrats and immediate expulsions are the order of the day. You represent one of the contending families in the election. You must use all available means to find favor with the Doge. Win his highest esteem and you will be the winner.

This is how San Marco is presented to us, a design by Alan R. Moon (Ticket to Ride) & Aaron Weissblum (Celestia, 10 Days in Europe). First published in 2001 by Ravensburger in an English, French, Italian, and German version. The illustrations are done by Alessandra Cimatoribus (Torres, Big Top).

It is not published in Spanish, so you will have to resort to the import or second-hand market (the game is completely language-independent, except for the rulebook). It allows games for 3 to 4 players, with a suggested minimum age of 10 and an approximate duration of 75 minutes. The retail price is €39.95. For this review, a copy of the multilingual version from Ravensburger was used.

Importante: si ya conoces el juego y/o sólo te interesa mi opinión sobre el mismo, puedes pasar directamente al apartado de Opinión. Los apartados Contenido y Mecánica están destinados especialmente a aquellos que no conocen el juego y prefieren hacerse una idea general de cómo funciona.

Contenido

Inside a two-piece cardboard box (lid and bottom), measuring 37.1×27.2×5.6 cm (a rectangular box similar to Tikal or Java), we find the following components:

Main Board (cardboard)
100 Aristocrat Cubes (25 of each color) (wooden)
8 Discs (2 of each color) (wooden)
12 Bridges (plastic)
90 Cards (44×68 mm.):
- 62 Action Cards
- 28 Limit Cards
1 Doge Pawn (wooden)
1 Die (wooden)
1 Passage Disc (wooden)
Rulebook

Mecánica

San Marco is a game set in the heyday of Venice, where players compete to gain the greatest political influence in the city’s six districts. Across three passages, divided into a variable number of rounds, participants alternate the roles of distributor and selector to split up combinations of cards using an “I cut, you choose” mechanic. In each round, the distributor organizes action and limit cards into different groups, and the selector chooses their preferred batch first. Action cards allow placing aristocrats in the districts, moving them across bridges, transferring or expelling rivals through die rolls, and moving the Doge to trigger the immediate scoring of an area, awarding victory points to the two highest influences in that location. Conversely, limit cards act as a penalty and, if a player accumulates ten or more points on them, it triggers the end of the current passage for them. After the third passage concludes, a special point tally is conducted across all districts of Venice, and the player who has accumulated the most victory points on the board’s track is declared the winner.

Conceptos Básicos

Let’s start with the Main Board. This represents the city of Venice divided into six districts bounded by canals. Each of these districts shows two printed numerical values that determine the point reward players will receive based on their majorities, as well as a die face used exclusively for the initial placement of components. Along the margins of the board, there is a scoring track to record the progress of scores, a grid in the upper right corner for assigning roles each round, and a sundial in the lower right corner used to track the progress of the passages that make up the game.

The Aristocrat Cubes are the components that represent the political strength of the players’ families in the different sectors of the city. They act as control markers within the six districts on the map; the player who manages to accumulate the highest or second-highest amount of these cubes in a specific district will obtain the corresponding prestige points during the scoring phases. Likewise, these blocks are used to a lesser extent on the canal structures to visibly signal ownership of the constructed communication pathways.

The Discs are the wooden pieces that function as tracking and turn-management elements for the participants. Each player has two units of their color: the first one is placed directly on the scoring track to advance and record the victory points earned during the game. The second unit is used to interact with the board’s role grid, where it is positioned to determine who will act as the card distributor and who will be the selectors in each round.

The Bridges are pieces placed over the map’s canals to connect two adjacent districts on the board. Their functional purpose is to alter the geography of the game, allowing movement cards to extend their reach to transfer aristocrats to neighboring areas that would originally be out of range. In addition to enabling these transit routes for deploying cubes, they serve as mandatory tollways for the movement of the council leader’s figure, forcing rivals to pay prestige points to the bridge owner if they wish to cross it.

The Action Cards represent the different political maneuvers and direct interventions that players can execute in the city. These cards are divided into several types that dictate the rules of the round: district cards allow deploying aristocrats to specific areas, bridge cards enable the construction or relocation of pathways, transfer cards allow replacing enemy cubes with one’s own, expulsion cards eliminate rival aristocrats through die rolls, and leader cards trigger the activation of scoring. These cards are distributed and grouped into batches during the selection phase so that players can resolve their effects in the order they prefer.

The Limit Cards show numerical penalty values (1, 2, or 3) and represent the political costs or restrictions that players take on when acquiring new gameplay options. They act as a negative timer and an element of hidden pressure during the distribution phase, as they are mandatorily linked to the action batches that players choose. When selected, they are placed face up in front of the participant and their values accumulate from round to round; if a player reaches or exceeds a total of ten points on these cards, their active participation stops and the closure of the current passage of the game is immediately triggered.

The Doge is a unique figure or pawn that embodies the highest authority and political influence of the city within the game. Its main function in the match is to serve as a mobile trigger for partial scoring phases; when a player uses the corresponding card, this pawn is placed or moved between districts connected by bridges to immediately evaluate the territorial control of the sector where it ends its movement. Players must strategically maneuver its position by paying points to guide it toward areas of the city where they have the greatest presence of aristocrats.

The Die is mandatorily used during the initial setup of the game to determine, through successive rolls, in which specific districts of the map each player must carry out the initial deployment of their first aristocrats. Throughout the game, its use is reactivated when resolving the effects of expulsion cards, where its direct numerical result defines the exact amount of aristocrat cubes that will be removed and returned to the pools of their respective owners in a selected district.

Finally, the Passage Disc acts as the official chronological marker of the game. Its sole function is to record the general progress of the game on a large scale on the sundial printed on the bottom right area of the Main Board. At the conclusion of each of the major cycles of rounds (called passages), this marker is manually advanced one space to the next number to visually indicate to the players the start of a new distribution stage and the resetting of the decks, serving as an indicator of the imminent end of the game after the third cycle is completed.

That is enough for now.

Preparación de la Partida

The board is placed in the center of the table.
A general supply is formed with the bridges.
Each player chooses a color and takes 25 aristocrats from the general supply (placing them in their play area) and 2 discs (one is placed on the 0 space of the scoring track and the other near the role distribution layout).
The orange marker is placed on number 1 of the sundial in the lower right area of the board.
The Doge, the die, and the rest of the leftover bridges are set aside next to the board.
The action card deck and the limit card deck are shuffled independently and placed face down next to the board.
Each player rolls the die four consecutive times and, after each roll, places 2 aristocrats from their supply into the district corresponding to the number rolled. If a player gets the same number in all four rolls, they must repeat the last roll until they get a different number. The remaining aristocrats are kept in front of the player as their personal supply.
The starting player is determined randomly.
Starting with them and continuing clockwise, each player places a bridge on the board connecting any two districts. No more than 3 bridges are allowed to connect the same two districts, and they place one of their aristocrats on the bridge they just placed to indicate ownership.

We are ready to begin!

Desarrollo de la Partida

A game of San Marco is played over 3 Passages, which conclude when players accumulate too many penalty cards. Each passage consists of a variable number of rounds, in which players alternate the roles of card distributors and selectors.

In each round, the player who has the role of Initiator must perform the following steps in order:

Establish the Round Roles. The Initiator automatically becomes the first Distributor of the round, placing their cylinder on the role chart of the board. Next, they take the cylinders of the other players, mix them blindly, and place them in the remaining spaces to randomly determine who will be the first Selector, the second Distributor, and the second Selector (in 3-player games, the Initiator is the only Distributor and the other two players act as first and second Selector based on chance).
Distribute the Cards. Each of the two Distributors secretly draws 5 action cards and 3 limit cards from their respective decks (6 action cards and 4 limit cards in 3-player games). Subsequently, each Distributor divides their cards into two offers or piles as they prefer, and must include at least one card in each batch.
Select and Resolve the Cards. The Distributors reveal the created offers. The first Selector chooses one of the two piles prepared by the first Distributor: they immediately place the limit cards in front of them and then resolve all the action cards from that deck in the order they choose. Once this is done, the first Distributor takes the remaining pile, places their limit cards, and executes their actions. After this, the second Selector and the second Distributor repeat the same process with the other set of offers (in 3-player games, the first Selector chooses one of the three available decks, the second Selector chooses another, and the Distributor keeps the remaining deck).

After completing these steps, all played action cards are discarded, while limit cards remain in front of the players. The role of Initiator passes to the next player clockwise, and a new round begins.

The main actions available through the cards are:

District Cards. They allow the player to take an aristocrat from their personal supply and bring it into play on the board. To do this, they proceed in one of the following ways:
Place the aristocrat directly in the district specified on the card.
Place the aristocrat in the district of the card and immediately cross a single bridge to move it to an adjacent district, as long as that bridge is owned by the player performing the action.
Bridge Cards. They allow the player to connect two districts on the board by taking a bridge from the general supply and placing one of their own aristocrats on top to denote ownership (there can be no more than 3 bridges connecting the same two districts). If the general supply is depleted, the player can claim an opponent’s bridge, being able to leave it in place or move it to another location, returning the old owner’s aristocrat to their supply and replacing it with one of their own.
Transfer Cards. They allow the player to select any district on the board and remove a rival’s aristocrat to return it to their supply, placing one of their own aristocrats in its place.
Expulsion Cards. The player chooses a district on the board and rolls the die to determine how many aristocrats will be expelled from there back to their owners’ supplies. If the die result is higher than the amount of enemy aristocrats present in the district, the active player will be forced to remove their own aristocrats until the total dictated by the die is met.
Doge Cards. They trigger the immediate evaluation of a district. If it is the first time it is played in the game, the Doge is placed in the district chosen by the active player and scoring takes place. For subsequent Doge cards, the player can score the current district where the figure is located or move it to a neighboring district using the bridges. Moving the Doge across one’s own bridges is free, but crossing someone else’s bridge costs 1 victory point, which is transferred directly to the owner of that bridge. If the Doge is isolated in a district without bridges, 2 victory points can be sacrificed to the supply to move it to an adjacent district. Playing multiple Doge cards in a row allows scoring the same place multiple times or moving it consecutively.
- When resolving the scores of a district (either by a Doge card or at the end of the game), players compare their number of aristocrats in the area:
  - The player with the absolute majority is considered first place and gets the victory points of the higher number indicated in the district.
  - The player with the second highest amount is considered second place and gets the points of the lower number.
  - In the event of a tie for first place, all involved receive the points for second place, and no one takes those for first place. If the tie occurs for second place, none of those players receive points.

End of a Passage

When one or more players accumulate 10 or more points on their limit cards at the end of a selection, they finish their participation in the current passage after resolving the actions of that turn. Depending on the players who remain active, they proceed as follows:

If 2 players remain with fewer than 10 limit points, they play one last extra round under the usual rules (a single Distributor and a single Selector). After this round, the passage ends for them definitively.
If 3 players remain in this situation, they play one last extra round applying the special three-player rules before closing the passage.
If three or all four players exceed the 10-point limit simultaneously, the passage concludes immediately.

When the passage closes, the limit resolution phase is carried out:

Limit Bonuses. All players who finished with fewer than 10 limit points receive victory points. The amount is calculated by subtracting one’s own limit points from the highest limit value any player has at the table.
Special Expulsion. The player who managed to finish with the lowest amount of limit points wins the right to perform a free expulsion action with the die in their preferred district. In the event of a tie for having the minimum limits, this action is lost.

Once the special expulsion is complete, all limit cards are cleared, all decks are shuffled again, the time marker on the sundial advances one space, and the next passage begins with the player to the left of the previous Initiator.

After this, a new passage would begin.

Fin de la Partida

The game ends once the third passage of the game is completed, including the corresponding special expulsion action. At this moment, a special evaluation is carried out in which each of the six districts of the city of Venice will be scored, regardless of the Doge’s current location.

When evaluating each player’s final score, the following will be taken into account:

The player who has the greatest number of aristocrats in the evaluated district receives the amount of victory points indicated by the higher number of that district.
The player with the second greatest amount of aristocrats in the evaluated district receives the amount of victory points indicated by the lower number of that district.
If two or more players tie with the greatest amount of aristocrats, the score shifts down one place and both receive the points corresponding to second place (the lower number).
If two or more players tie for second place in a district, they leave empty-handed and receive no victory points.

The player who accumulates the most victory points on the board’s track after this special count will be proclaimed the winner. In the event of a tie in total points, the player who has a greater number of aristocrats in the San Marco district will win the tiebreaker. If the tie persists, the players share the victory.

Opinión Personal

When we talk about classic designers to whom we owe our gratitude, Alan R. Moon should occupy one of the top spots. And the thing is, just like Klaus Teuber with Catan, we owe that marvel that is Ticket to Ride (here is its tocho-review) to the Southampton-born designer, another of the great entry points into the world of board games. And probably the one that best withstands the passage of time as one acquires more background.

But before Days of Wonder published the first edition of the most famous train board game of all time, Mr. Moon had already designed games that have left their mark, such as Union Pacific, Elfenland (here is its tocho-review), or the game that concerns us today. Let’s see then how this San Marco behaves on the table, which Alan R. Moon co-designed alongside Aaron Weissblum.

In San Marco, each player takes on the role of a family of Venetian aristocrats seeking to increase their influence in the different districts that make up the capital of the Veneto region. To do this, players will assign members of their family to these districts to try to win the favor of the Doge when he visits them.

We are looking at the game with which Moon and Weissblum invented the “I Cut, You Choose” mechanic, through which a player will form a set of items to offer them to another player, who will keep the option they consider most interesting, leaving the remaining one to the player who put it together.

A mechanic that generates a very interesting dynamic, since the active player knows very clearly which elements they would like to keep. But of course, if they put together a batch with those elements, the normal thing is that the rival will keep precisely that batch, leaving the active player with the least interesting one.

In this way, a negotiation phase develops, both with rivals and with oneself, although nothing is binding until the batches have been formed and anything promised can be forgotten. And if the rival gives no clues, it is the active player themselves who develops a kind of virtual negotiation by putting themselves in the rival’s shoes, trying to guess which batch would be interesting enough for them so that the one they leave aside is also interesting for the active player.

In San Marco, these elements are cards of two types. On one hand, action cards, which allow altering the balance of power on the board, either by deploying aristocrat cubes in the indicated neighborhoods or those that the player has connected by their own bridges, or specific actions such as deploying bridges that connect two districts, making an aristocrat change sides, expelling aristocrats, or moving the Doge to score a district.

On the other hand, limit cards. These have no effect other than serving as a timer, since the game will take place over three passages. Each passage will end when, at the end of a round, one or more players have accumulated a certain amount of points on these limit cards. As long as a player does not reach this amount, rounds will keep following one after another.

Players will have an additional reason for not wanting to accumulate these limit cards, since, when the end of the passage is triggered and the final turns are completed, players who are below the aforementioned amount will be rewarded with victory points and even a powerful expulsion action.

In this way, each time the active player, acting as the distributor, draws cards from the two decks, they must form offers seeking a balance that makes the selecting player or players hesitate, thoroughly evaluating the current situation on the board, since with each choice, it will change.

Well, with this I think you have been able to form an idea of what this San Marco proposes. A majority game with a lot of interaction in which the “I Cut, You Choose” mechanic takes center stage, generating a rather unique flow.

To distribute well, you cannot just look at your own interests; you have to do a complete scan of your rival’s situation. What do they desperately need? Which district do they want to control? If you create a batch with a mediocre card but one that is exactly what they need, you have to compensate the other package so that the decision hurts. It is a design that forces the purest indirect interaction: you are constantly trying to read your opponent’s mind.

When you are the one choosing, the game squeezes your brain. You often find yourself with two options perfectly balanced in their misery or their glory. “If I take batch A, I advance in Venice, but I leave him the scoring card with which he is going to destroy me.” The mechanic generates a flow where you are never completely happy with what you take, because you know the other package has been designed to benefit the distributor if you let your guard down.

It is also very important to develop a good network of bridges, as these have a dual function. On one hand, they provide versatility to district cards, since a bridge connecting two districts means that cards from either of those two districts allow adding aristocrats to either of the two connected districts.

On the other, they are the paths through which the Doge can travel to stop in a district to conduct an evaluation in it and reward the player (or players) who has the most aristocrats in it. That is why it is important to try to position oneself as best as possible, especially facing the end of the game, where there will be a general evaluation.

Perhaps what convinces me least about the design is the turn order system. That the distributor role rotates each round is logical. But what does not seem logical to me is that the rest of the roles are assigned randomly. It is true that in the end having one role or another might not be crucial, but precisely for that reason, I don’t understand why the rest of the roles don’t rotate too. I can understand that it is to prevent the same situations from always happening, but making it completely random can give rise to situations that feel unfair.

For example, in a three-player game, each player is the distributor once every three rounds, while being a selector in the other two. Well, in those two, they might happen to be the first selector, and there might be another player whose two turns as selector both turn out to be second selector.

I would have proposed a system where in the first round of each cycle of three, it is drawn who is the first selector and who is the second. These players receive a token indicating that they have been the first and second selector. Thus, in the following rounds of the cycle in which they are a selector, they will act in the position they didn’t get in the first round. And in the second round of the cycle, the distributor of the first round will occupy the remaining selector role relative to the other selector, who was also one in the first round. And something similar for four-player games.

While we’re at it, let’s talk about scalability. Personally, I like it better at four, because like any good majority game, the more participants, the better. But it is true that at three, the distributor role is very demanding because they have to evaluate the board from three points of view, which is why many prefer this combination. Be that as it may, it works very well at both.

In terms of replayability, it is well served. It is a game with a lot of interaction, continuous arguments, and plenty of spice. It’s true that randomness is the only element of variability, but it’s one of those classic-style eurogames that don’t need things to change in every game to maintain interest.

While we’re at it, the randomness that the die adds when resolving an expulsion action, even though it can be frustrating, gives rise to very funny moments when the player resolving the action doesn’t get a suitable value. I think it applies in just the right amount, being a sporadic thing. If it were more recurrent, perhaps it could be too frustrating and unfair.

Although many years have passed, I think San Marco remains relevant and provides good moments in an era of highly overloaded games. If you like designs like El Grande (here is its tocho-review) or Mission: Red Planet (here is its tocho-review), the design by Alan R. Moon and Aaron Weissblum will surely be very satisfying to you. I wish some publisher would launch a reprint in a compact format like those from Playte.

Let’s talk about production. San Marco is a classic design in terms of format, with a large, long box, though quite shallow, inside of which we find an insert that occupies most of the space, since component-wise the game doesn’t have much to it. A cardboard board of good thickness and pressing, mini-euro sized cards of adequate thickness, smooth texture, and acceptable snap (sleeving might come in handy for comfortable shuffling), and standard wooden elements (cubes, discs, and pawns). Undoubtedly, what stands out the most are the plastic bridges, with a high level of detail. The rulebook is well structured and leaves no room for doubt.

Regarding the illustrations, we find a markedly pictorial and traditional aesthetic, directly inspired by the imagery and history of Venice. The brushwork simulates oil or pastel textures, steering away from fotorrealism to embrace a more lyrical and artisanal approach. On the cover, the Lion of Saint Mark stands imposingly in golden tones against a twilight background that evokes the Venetian canals. For its part, the card design exhibits an air close to expressionism and classic storybook illustration, using stylized figures and traditional symbology. Perhaps some iconography is missing for some actions, but the illustration is fairly self-explanatory.

And let’s wrap this up. San Marco is a design with which Alan R. Moon and Aaron Weissblum applied the “I Cut, You Choose” system for the first time, masterfully integrating it into a majority struggle where the tension can be cut with a knife. That constant need to scan the rival’s mind to balance the offers, added to the subtle tempo management imposed by the passage limits and positioning through the network of bridges, brings games overflowing with tension and psychological gameplay. While it is true that the random assignment of turn order in the intermediate rounds can generate some slightly unfair situations, its interaction and the agility of its development make it a classic that continues to offer very good feelings. For all this, I give it a…