Ostia

Ostia is a game that intersted me when the first campaign came out on Kickstarter, the striking box art looking like nothing else out there in the industry. I had heard it was made by the same designer as Aqua Garden, which I knew of and heard it was a solid game but at the time had never played. So I was unsure to back that original campaign. However, from the rave reviews of The Dice Tower apparently this large Euro game contained an excellent game. Because of this, when the expansion Kickstarter for Ostia: Pirates came out I knew I had to jump on board for it.

The game comes in a long tall box with mini wooden pieces galore. I will say I'm not the biggest fan of the insert at least for all the different building tokens because it is a very tight fit for putting a set of 4 in each well. I think it'd be a lot more comfortable to use if they just gave a slight amount more wiggle room for them to set in. Otherwise, it's a honestly a very nicely produced game: the player boards are all dual layered, tokens feel good quality, and there's two resource trays in the shape of boats to be able to share around the table.

Gameplay is pretty straight forward once you grasp the main concept: Every turn you're selecting one slice of your hexagon, generating resources associated with that hex if any based on the number and/or type of boats, and then grabing all the boats and dropping them Mancala-style around the hex till you drop the last one which indicates the action you'll take for the turn. At first that seems relatively simple, you get resources then take an action - but that disguises the puzzle nature behind this.

For one, unless you have a crowd of boats in the sea area, you're typically generating resources for a different action than what you'll be taking for the turn. Secondly, because of the Mancala-style traversal you have to figure out what group of boats will let you take the action you want this turn otherwise you'll have to do a completely different action in order to setup for next turn.

Also, eventually you get access to these bigger ships called Ponta ships, which generate two resources instead of one. So that lends into the puzzle of where you want to drop that Ponta ship off for another turn so that you maximize the resources you want to generate. It's such a simple little change to Mancala, having different sized elements with different values, and yet it opens up a powerfully engaging decision space.

But let's not forget the main board. At first, it has a very minimal cartographer aesthetic to it but overall I think it has its own charm and beauty in being simplistic. You'll be moving your ships out along these trade routes for different discoveries and eventually getting access to trade ports and destination tiles. These are really important because you're not allowed to build a Ponta ship unless you've pushed all of your ships on the main map out enough from the Ostia start point.

And it all ties in with sailing your boats along those trade routes. By going farther out you can get free resources, access to trade ports, and racing out there can net you immediate one-time bonuses or better end game scoring. Plus, the only way to improve your board is by getting buildings from those trade ports so eventually you’ll have to expand otherwise you can’t get those permanent bonuses.

Solo is rather interesting in that you get a little side board that you progress at the start of your turns while racing for certain conditions. I do feel like some of the harder goals are impossible to do if randomized in a certain way, but perhaps that's by design.

Overall, I can see why Ostia garners praise - it's an excellent game. Ostia pulls you in every direction all at once, you want to do all the things and everything feeds into each other. Orchestrating it all is a very mind bending puzzle, one where if things go wrong you only have yourself to blame. It does a lot for being so simple in terms of action and resource scope. Hoping to explore the expansion at some point as well as try it with other people, but otherwise I'm happy I have it.