Gaming has a very long tradition of very small card games that allow players to be very mean to one another. Arguably it goes back to the days of playing cards and the Hearts family of evasive trick-taking where you’re trying to avoid winning points, some versions of which see you passing pain cards to other players, and getting their cruft in turn.
So it’s a crowded market to venture into, but with it’s super-simple rule set and beautiful cards, Courtisans clearly feels it has the chops to make a splash nevertheless.
As a small-box card game, there’s not a lot in the small Courtisans box, but what there is is very high quality. The main draw is the main deck of tarot-sized cards in five colors, representing five noble families, each one luminous with characterful artwork and gold embossing. They’re an absolute delight, justaposing a character and its suite symbol – which doubles as a color marker for the colorblind – in the manor of a court card from a deck of playing cards.
The rest of the compact box is less attractive. There’s a much smaller, much plainer deck of objective cards and a rolled-up board made of printed fabric depicting the families feasting at the queen’s table. The art is in the same grand style as the cards, and rolled up boards are easy to store but fabric, while eco-friendly, isn’t the most practical choice. Because it’s stored in a roll, it won’t lie flat on the table without a sheet of perspex or an iron. This isn’t a major issue during play as cards go above or below the board, not on it, but it is a shame that it doesn’t show off more of that glorious art to full effect.
Gamers have a bit of a reputation for claiming that games are simple when they’re anything but, and this is particularly true of card games when half the rules can be printed on the cards themselves. But Courtisans really is very straightforward to learn. On your turn, you draw three cards from the deck. One, you keep face up in front of you. Another you place, face up, before an opponent of your choice. And the third you place either above or below the Queen’s table, in the column matching its suit.
Once the deck runs out, suits that have more cards above the table than below are “esteemed” and each one in a player’s tableau is worth a point. Those with more cards below than above are “fallen” and each costs you a point. Cards with a x2 icon are worth double in both reckonings. Tot up your points, and see who’s won. The only other complexities to this formula are a smattering of special cards: spies do not reveal their suit until the game ends, assassins remove a card from whatever area they’re laid in, and guards can’t be assassinated.
You’ve now learned almost the entire rules of Courtisans. And you would not believe just how much angst is lurking below that smooth, approachable ruleset and those lovely cards.
The fact that you lay almost all the cards face up, the odd spy excluded, means there’s nowhere to hide. When a pile of red cards are cowering pitifully below the queen’s table, and you give another player a red card, that’s an outright act of aggression. You’re saying, “I want you to lose”, and no amount of apologetic talk or sour-puss facial expressions can disguise it. It’s like the famous, blood-draining, knife-twist betrayals of Diplomacy, allegedly Henry Kissinger's favorite board game, except you haven’t taken seven hours to get there, and you’ll commit a dozen more such hostilities in this game alone.
And the game contains a number of ways to make every gut-punch worse. You can give someone an out-of-favor suit and make it worse by adding the same suit to the stack below the table. You can double the misery in both respects by doing the same with one or two x2 cards. You can give someone an assassin in an out-of-favor suit and kill one of their higher scoring, in favor, cards. And then you can rub salt in the wounds by laying the one decent option in your three-card draw in your own tableau.
This outright, in-your-face meanness does mean that the game works best with four. With two, you’ve only got one target. With three, and to a lesser extent with five, it’s very easy to dogpile one poor player into oblivion relatively early in the game, although given it only takes a quarter-hour to play that’s hardly the end of the world, and no doubt your bullying will be remembered in turn for the next hand. But four strikes the perfect balance of blow and counterblow.
In all cases, you’ll have to do your level best to direct the pain away from yourself and toward other players, in the time-honored fashion of trying to persuade people to target the current leader. Some people love this kind of trash talk, others hate it, and this probably isn’t a game for them. But to prevent anyone from becoming an easy target, there’s one final cog to the game’s mechanisms: everyone gets two secret missions. These are all straightforward, like ensuring a particular suit is fallen or esteemed or owning two assassins. But they do the job very effectively, muddying the waters and adding to the excitement while giving you a reason to keep a poker face when someone slaps a card down.
At this point, it feels important to mention that luck of the draw and social engineering aren’t the only tricks Courtisans has up its sleeve. While the initial few plays are uncertain, mapping out the status of the different suits and the interpersonal dynamics between the players for the game to come, the collection of cards rapidly reaches a level where decision-making is decidedly non-obvious. A simple card might raise or lower someone’s score, but then there are the hidden goals to be aware of. And the special cards inject additional dynamism: assassins in particular make it very difficult to properly weigh the correct course of action. The card itself may be worth a point, or not, but its choice of target can also impact the game in subtle ways.
This uncertainty dovetails beautifully with the social aspects of the game, into an ouroboros that’s likely to end up eating someone at the table along with its tail. You start to feel like every play contains both a social and a strategic message. What does it mean that the player opposite gave a green to their neighbor? Does it say something about their own secret goals, or the spies they placed the turn before? Or is it more of a gotcha revenge moment, for that neighbor dumping rubbish on them early in the game, or even for a disagreement they had last week? Is it worth making an argument out loud for the table? And if so what form should it take, and what will persuade your fellow players that might give you an edge? It’s amazing how such a tiny game can tease at all the communal faultlines around the table.
