Ocasta

From the designer that brought you Oltre Mare this year a game of Italian cities, provinces and coloured cards.

Each player represents a noble family vying for influence via building the cities of the renaissance. Each turn the players draw building cards, auction building cards and build! Success with building is rewarded with victory points and people of position. The later giving more victory points and each has a special ability (draw a building card, gain two money etc.)

There are a lot of different mechanics going on in the game and many different ways to score victory points. What this means is that at any given time you really don't have many choices, usually just one or less things you wanted to do. There's no room for strategy. On top of this the final turn sees many small victories point scores decided and handed out maximising the feeling that many of you early actions had little bearing on the game.

All in all another good looking game that ultimately doesn't deliver.