Courtisans.

Courtisans is a very simple, cunning small-box game where players fight to shift the balance across six different ‘families’ (card colors) to determine which cards will be worth positive points at the end of the game and which ones will be worth negative points. The game plays well with three to five players, although in my experience it’s better when players are willing to be spiteful – this is the wrong game for your group if everyone is nice about it.

Courtisans comes with a little mat that shows the six families trying to curry favor with the queen, and players will play cards above and below the mat over the course of the game to increase or decrease their favor, as well as playing cards to the areas in front of them. On each player’s turn, they’ll get three cards to play: one to their own play area, one to the mat (above or below it), and one to another player’s area. The game continues until the deck is exhausted, which takes about a half an hour if everyone’s focused. (I’ve played this with my stepdaughters, and it took longer because they got a little bored between turns.) There are four special card types in the deck, but the vast majority have no function beyond their color. When the game ends, you look at the cards above and below each family on the mat; if there are more cards above, that family is in the good graces of the queen, and every card you have in front of you of that color is worth +1 point. If there are more cards below, the family has fallen from grace and each card you have of that color is worth -1 point. If there are as many cards above as below, the cards aren’t worth any points.

The four special card types do add some extra intrigue to the game, although the heart is still in that ‘take-that’ mechanic where you should be actively trying to screw with your opponents. Noble cards count as double (two cards), whether they’re above or below the mat or in a player’s area. Spy cards are played face-down, wherever they’re played, and are only revealed at game end; if they go to the mat, they’re played at the queen’s spot. No one can look at a played spy card until the game is over, not even the player who played it. Assassin cards let the player eliminate one card from that area – if you play an assassin card to the mat, you get to trash one card from there, and if you play it to any play area, even your own, you may trash a card from there, although this is optional. Assassin cards, like all special cards, do have a family/color, so they count towards the final scoring like any other card. Guard cards are the only cards immune to the assassin. There aren’t very many of these special cards, and none of them is so powerful that they throw off the balance of the game; if anything, they made me suspect there might be more cards coming in an expansion that might be more potent or otherwise upend the rules.

Each player also gets two random private objective cards at the start of the game that are worth 3 points each if they’re achieved, one of which is about your play area and one of which is about the central play area; that’s a small shift compared to the total point values in the game, so in my experience they’re nice to get but not enough to totally shift your strategy.

Ultimately the game works best if you’re trying to screw with each other, boosting a couple of families where you have a bunch of cards by playing above the mat while hurting players who have cards in other families by playing below the mat. That said, if a family goes too far into the negative, all players will avoid it for themselves and try to stick each other with cards from that family, and because you can’t hold cards from turn to turn, you can’t plan to flip a family from positive to negative (or vice versa) on your last turn – you just hope the cards go your way. That makes it a light strategy game with a big luck component, one you play more for the fun of messing with your opponents than for the pleasure of a well-executed plan.

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