Listen Up, Citizen!  This is basic "How to Get Started" once you've made that all important $7.50 purchase from Amazon.com...  It is not a tutorial per se, just a notion of how to setup and play for beginners.

NOTE: STILL IN WORK... I'll GET AROUND TO FINISHING SHORTLY.

Getting started

1. Find 2 to 8 like minded people and sit down at a kitchen table together. 

Open your copy of Circus Maximus.  Fondle the counters; admire the quality Avalon Hill workmanship... but don't get disgusting about it.

2. Choose COLORS

...For your racing team, that is.  Notice how the counters have different colors?  It's important.

The simplest expedient is to dump the little counters that are colored (but have no writing on them... they will be referred to as BLANK or COLOR or ACTIVATION counters from now on) in the box lid (hey, it's not just for holding games any more), shake the box, and reach in without looking.  Grab 1, or 2, or 3 (if you are playing multiple teams). 

You may devise your own method of randomizing colors... my personal favorite is to throw knives at a spinning color wheel, but I find it's not popular with my fellow players (maybe because I mount it on the dart board above the gaming table?)

That last bit was called Faction Selection (3.3 in the rulebook).  You should grab a little chariot counter and a little horses counter.   grab the others (except for the little blank counter from the previous exercise, set that aside).  Leave the little coin thingies be for now... that's an advanced game sort of thing, and like the Legions of Rome, you have to learn to Crawl before you learn to March!

3. Put the Counters in the starting area of the gameboard.  

This is the series of grey "Lane Indicators" that looks like this:

Again, the rulebook alludes to "Choosing your starting position (lane) randomly" (See 3.2).  I just have the players dice off from lane 1 to lane 8.  Random enough for me!

4.  Choose a Race Steward.  

Ideally, you should choose the biggest half-wit of the group, as this can often be a thankless task.  The Race Steward does one thing in the basic game; takes counters out of a cup. 

5.  Doing the Paperwork

This is the most daunting thing about getting started with a CM game; therefore I will now speak slowly and use short, monosyllabic words. 

There's a nice pad of paper that comes with the game with many, many little boxes on it.  That's the RACING LOG.  Everything, EVERYTHING of consequence that happens during a race is recorded on this logsheet.  You will now learn the Log Sheet's little mysteries.

This is a race log.  The Top part is information about the Chariot, Driver, and Faction. The Bottom part is about Endurance and Speed.

The Top Part: