Ostrakon
BGG rank
BGG #19,156
BGG rating
5.9

Ostrakon

2004

Rules assistance for Ostrakon

Plain-language explanations of turns, card effects and disputed situations, with official source references and saved question history.

  • 5–12 players
  • 60 min
  • 10+
  • Complexity 1.4/5

Rules assistant for Ostrakon

What would you like to know?

Answers come from the official rulebook, with the page to check.

Ostrakon is a board game released in 2004 for 5–12 players, 60 minutes per game, and ages 10 and up. It was designed by Silvano Sorrentino and its main mechanics are Voting.

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About the game

Is there life in outer space or not? Baseball or basketball? To be or to have? Chicken or beef? The real speaker knows how to charm the audience with the greatest dilemma, predicting the opinions thanks to a supernatural intuition... or a more practical cheating technique! In Ostrakon, you take the role of a Greek philosopher, posing questions on assigned topics with only 2 answers. The other players decide which of the two answers suits them, and the philosopher secretly votes with the side he thinks will outnumber the other. If he is correct, he scores points equal to the number of players who voted against his choice. If he is incorrect, he scores nothing. So its best to pick questions with roughly equally viable answers.

Mechanics

Publishers

  • DV Games
  • Mayfair Games

Questions and answers

Ostrakon supports 5–12 players according to the catalogue. This range comes from the publisher’s listed player count, so the game can be set up for any group size within it. Some setups, rules and scoring details may still vary by player count, so check your edition’s rulebook for the exact configuration.