MARE NOSTRUM is the third game in the TSWW series, and is arguably the largest board game currently available. You can grab your copy right now at www.tsww-online.com/products or from our retail partners.
Mare Nostrum is the all encompassing operational game covering the campaigns in North Africa, The Western Desert, The Levant, The Near East, and East Africa during 1940-43.
Mare Nostrum includes the following components… and there are more in the box than the box admits to!
MAPS
33 map segments in a variety of sizes covering all or much of Morocco, Algeria, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Tunisia, Eritrea, Libya, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia, The Sudan, Kenya, Uganda, Egypt, Palestine, Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, Malta, Gibraltar, Greece, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Syria, plus a little bit of the USSR for good measure.
Like all our games, the maps split into manageable segments. You can play the Western Desert campaign (the Benghasi Gallops) on a 3′ by 5′ table for example. This means that space is not a constraint for players and permits us to split the campaigns up. The first game to modernise the mapping, the maps are to a very high quality utilising a combination of modern satellite imagery and period images to provide a cohesive and accurate map area for play.
The box will tell you that you are getting 29 maps – the advert here is correct….
COUNTERS
18 countersheets with 5040 high quality counters including the forces that fought in the Mediterranean, East Africa, and the Near East, as well as the Allied invasion of North Africa. The game includes the forces from Italy (including all Italian assets not previously released), Germany, Britain, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, India, British Colonial assets, Spain, Portugal, Vichy and Free French, The US forces in the ETO during this period, including the Atlantic Fleet, Turkey, Egypt, Iran, Iraq and Trans Jordan.
We have also included additional play aid counters to aid stacking, and to help with the new rules introduced into the series with this exceptional release. These include ground and air stacking counters, as well as special forces and so forth. You can indeed overrun an air base with the SAS or blow up Royal Navy battleships in Mare Nostrum…..
ORDERS OF BATTLE/AT START BOOKLETS
Inside the box are Allied, Axis, Neutral Nations and At Start booklets, providing players with a multitude of actual and hypothetical units, as well as a world class timeline for the major nations, showing the forces as they arrived (or departed) from this critical theatre. Within the various booklets we provide you with 15 modules:
1. The Grand Campaign.
2. Operation Compass (the first Allied offensive, commencing December 1940)
3. Operation Sonnenblumme (enter Rommel… the Afrika Korps offensive, 41)
4. Operation Exporter (the Allied invasion of Vichy Levant)
5. The Iraqi Revolt (the British response to the Iraqi revolt…)
6. Africa Orientale Italiano (the war in East Africa, 1940-41)
7. Operation Crusader (the Allied offensive in the autumn of 1941)
8. Operation Venezia (the Battle of Gazala, 1942)
9. Operation Pedestal (the critical relief of Malta by the Royal Navy in 1942, includes Operation Hercules – the planned Axis air assault on Malta)
10. The Battle of El Alamein (October 1942 – Monty’s pedantic style proves too much for the Axis in Egypt)
11. Operation Torch (the US led invasion of Vichy North Africa in November 1942)
12. Kasserine Pass (the US encounter Rommel… )
13. Operation Anton (for those of you that own Blitzkrieg – this is the Axis occupation of unoccupied Vichy France)
14. Wadi Akarit (the British smash through arguably the toughest defence line in Africa)
15 Operation Vulcan (the final operations to destroy the Axis forces in Africa)
In addition, within the main timeline and at starts, replacement counters for a limited number of units in Balkan Fury are provided due to late breaking research.
RULES AND CHARTS
The usual game rules are provided, whilst we add fog of war for land warfare to the system as an option. We also add Fast Attack Squadrons and mine warfare to the naval system. The core rules for Mare Nostrum are in effect the current gold standard within the system, although Singapore! will eventually modify the system to cope with other challenges!