Mainports (Ports of Europe series)

Earn your first million as a shipping magnate
Build new ships, close profitable deals, stock up on fuel and embark on your first journey across the European continent. Ship grain from Lisbon to St. Petersburg and pick up some coal in Hamburg to deliver the cargo to Rotterdam. Expand your enterprise with new ships and the latest technologies to get a head start to your opponents.

This strategy game includes a two-sided board with Central Europe and Great Europe. The rules include two game variants and special rules for two players!

Discover Europe
Travel through Central Europe, which is one side of the game board with harbors as Rotterdam, Antwerpen, Hamburg and Marseille. Load your ship and navigate your ship towards the Ruhr area, to Mannheim or Dortmund, to deliver steel for the heavy industry in New contracts will be available for shipping grain to other harbors behind this erea. This economic strategic board game provides you with several tactical and strategic options to choose from. Find out that technological advance is vital to ship goods in a profitable way. The Great Europe side is even more interesting, since you need to cross the seas of Europe to reach your destinations. Mainports can be learned within 10 minutes. Therefore it is called a "family plus game". Since you are able to learn the rules of this game and the luck factor is limited. This picture shows one of the technology cards you can invest in.

Shops Benelux- Rules

Free parking or just excellent timing?
Mainports is the third game of the succesfull Ports of Europe series, which also includes the harbour games Rotterdam en Antwerpen. There are many options to choose from! The first decision to be made is from which of the shipping docks you want to start your journey and if you are able to load goods. The starting contracts will help you to get the things going a little bit, but make sure that you keep a good eye on the lucrative deals in the open market for contracts. Try to buy new fuel for a low price to cover the European waters. Smart players come to realize very soon that some technological progress is essential to increase the earnings of your shipping company. But also cashing in at the right moment in one of the harboures is helpful and very fulfilling. It feels like the moment you get on the "Free Parking" spot. Is it just luck? You know better! Because you have planned it this way! Timing is everything, including having exactly the right position on the rondel and your ships just near these harbour(s): time to Cash In!

How to become a millionaire?
It is save to say that if you become a millionaire through honest business, it does feel much better than gaining money through repression or selling bad products. If you manage to buy fuel for low prices, get the goods to their destionation in time and invest in the best combination of new technology and some capacity increase, you have a good chance of becoming the first millionaire in the business. The rondel is the central game mechanism which allows you to choose between different options. The operation system (see this card on your right) is an interesting investment, since it allows you to make an additional move on the rondel for free. Mainports is a boardgame with multiple options during the game, but also players can decide at the start of the game if they want to play the version in which the game ends at the end of the round in which the 20th shipment has been completed succesfully or if you go for the "total domination version" in which the player who reaches the one million in cash first is the winner of the game.

Experience maximum variation
Due to the two different sides of the huge game board, each with it's own game play, Mainports is a very complete board game with 165 playing cards, 3 market boards, a lot of wooden game materials including ships, ship loads and factories. And - of course - a lot of money. Mainports covers the whole map of Europe. Besides harbours as Rotterdam and Antwerpen, it allows you to visit other great European harbours as Hamburg, Athens and Marseille, to name a few. But beware: the mainports vary from game to game, so the distribution of cash (dividend) and the busy shipping lanes vary each game. Do you want to know more?
Please check the game overview and/or the complete game rules of Mainports.
 


Picture of the bottom of the box which shows the maps in the game

Languages
This first international edition of Mainports is multilingual. It includes the rules in the following languages: English, German, French and Dutch.

Other games in de series Ports of Europe
Rotterdam and Antwerp

Credits
Game author: Hans van Tol
Graphic design: Alex Mourits and Yvon-Cheryl Scholten
Illustrations: Wim Euverman (cover) and Alex Mourits