COSCA: Take Over the Mafia

The New York underworld has long been at peace. The mob families have learned to tolerate each other in order to keep a tight grip on the city. But in his great Villa, the old Don is now lying on his deathbed and tensions are stalking the streets. The doctors are saying that Don has got a week to live. Tops. And while he is still breathing, the families are already clamoring to get his seat at the table. Which family (cosca) will prove the craftiest and sway the city’s mafiosos to their side before the Don kicks the bucket? Cosca is a strategy party game of gaining influence through using secret bids and dice, which are never rolled. Over seven rounds (a week), you will secretly send your henchmen (dice) to locations, where they will gather resources in the form of money and guns. Then, you will use combinations of the symbols on your dice to gain the favor of the mafiosos on offer. At the start of each day (round), players hide their dice behind screens and secretly select symbols on the dice. Each symbol matches one of the six locations in the city, which will then be resolved one by one. You use the resources in a bid to gain the favor of individual mafiosos, or in other words, cards in the display, which will grow by one new card each day. The bids for the mafiosos are resolved in sequence. The players whose dice match the symbols on a given mafioso can secretly bid any number of resources to gain the favor of that particular mafioso. The player who bids the most wins the bid. The mafiosos expand your family’s influence in the city and provide you with extra henchmen (dice) on specific days. However, the more mafiosos you control, the harder it is to keep them all. At the end of the seventh day, the player with the most mafiosos on their side wins. Will you rule the city and become the new Capo di Tutti Capi? —description from the publisher