Ostia: Mariner Edition - Unbiased Unboxing with John LaRuffa

About Ostia: Mariner Edition, from BoardGameGeek:

Celebrated as a modern classic, Ostia combines mancala-driven resource management and action selection with a race across the sea routes of ancient Rome. Amass a mighty fleet of merchant ships and establish a sprawling collection of ports across the ocean. Gather vital trade goods, exotic beasts, and the support of the nobility at home to secure your place in the halls of history. Crafty Games is extremely proud to offer this thoughtful upgrade to the original, folding in the first two expansions and deluxe content, with multiple upgrades for faster, smoother play. The Ostia Mariner Edition includes all of the following in one "big box": Ostia Base Game Merchants Expansion Patronus Expansion Deluxe Content Custom Storage Solution The Ostia Mariner Edition does not include the Pirates Expansion or other material not listed above. It also does not include double-layer boards as this publisher is prohibited from including these items. This updated edition improves playability without altering gameplay. Among the improvements are: ? REFERENCE CARDS: One of the first things we knew we wanted for the Ostia Mariner Edition was a Reference card for each player. The game isn't difficult to play, but the large number of actions and their interactions could stymie Harbor board decisions, especially for new players. That's why our jumbo-sized* Reference cards focus an entire side on the steps of your turn, including detailed breakdowns of every action you can take. The Reference card's back side focuses on how the game can end and how you score, so you always have a handy guide for what you're trying to accomplish and how much time you have left to get it done. The Reference cards are the same height as the Harbor and Asset boards, letting you set it right alongside your play area. ? ORDER / DELIVER ICON: This is arguably the most extreme change we made to the game, and the one that might trip up certain players the most. We replaced and renamed one of the six core action icons - originally called Order and represented by the Amphora in the action frame because we thought it was unnecessarily confusing to have the same icon representing both an action and a resource. Deliver also seemed to fit what you were doing with this action more thematically than the original presentation. ? MAINBOARD: You'll notice several things here. We used a much cleaner font for all the city names. We labeled the Local Sea and Distant Sea on either side of the dotted line (there's another set of these labels at the bottom of the board). We also adjusted the colors of the Initial Port / Port tiles & spaces to aid low vision players. This cutaway reminds us of another change we desperately wanted to make but couldn't, as it would have upset the custom insert: we wanted to increase the size of the Discovery tiles, as the icons on those can be very hard to read. Instead, our graphic designers spent a good deal of time spreading out those icons to help with their recognition. We showcase that a few graphics down. ? ASSET BOARDS: With the Asset boards - previously called the Construction / Shipbuilding Track boards - we aimed to simplify at every turn. We decluttered the background texture, which previously made everything hard to read. We moved the Triumph icons into both the tracks and added the immediate icon to them so it was obvious when and how you gained them. We also swapped the positions of the Shipbuilding and Construction tracks to match their presentation everywhere else in the game (in the rules, on the Harbor boards, and elsewhere). ? TILES & TOKENS: Our graphics team had a light touch on the tiles and tokens, and yet they touched nearly all of them. This is because our playtests identified that the immediate and endgame icons consistently improved a player's understanding of how and when benefits are gained and used. We placed these icons nearly everywhere they applied. Update! Since we first previewed the tiles and tokens (with the graphic above), we've revisited the Discovery tiles. Now, they include both the immediate and endgame icons next to the relevant benefits. You can see the final Discovery tile designs in the base game rulebook. We've left this original image alone so you can see the component's evolution. ? ORDER CARDS: The Order cards had a strong design already. The primary issue with them was how the second optional cost and corresponding bonus Amphora benefit were presented. Consistency was needed on both sides of the card to graphically link each cost with the benefit across from it. This also gave us the opportunity to increase the size of the secondary costs, as those were very small on the original cards. As with most components in the game, we also added immediate and endgame icons where they were applicable. ? FREE ACTION: Here we see the action and upgrade portions of the Purchase segment of the Harbor board. Placing a building here upgrades the Free Action to trade gold for other resources. The original iconography for the Free Action matched nothing else in the game, least of all the other Action icons, so we developed something new. This altered icon resembles the Administrate icon but has enough differences to call out that the Free Action has its own special rules. We also added reference for the Free Action in the Harbor board's upper left, so you always know what the base action does before it's upgraded. This reference is a little out of frame in the graphic above, in case anyone is wondering why it isn't visible here. We wanted to focus this section on the new icon, but also mention the reference because it's another small quality-of-life upgrade we're proud to include. ? SCOREPAD: Finally, we have an improved scorepad. The original was way too busy. None of the split cells in the top three rows were necessary, so we eliminated all the breaks there. We also faded the art in the lower right corner. Once we'd cleared the field, as it were, we focused on making the scoring criteria in the left column as obvious as possible. Adding the Triumph icon to the first three scoring rows was a no brainer, as was updating the next three rows to match the backs of those components. We spread out the set icons and topped the pad off with the endgame icon that's now so prevalent everywhere final scoring is applied. -description from the publisher's website