YORKTON - Card games are one of the interesting sub-genres of board games.
Rare will be the board gamer who doesn’t have at least a few card games which they count among favoured games.
It is, for example, hard not to list cribbage on my personal list, in part because it was one of the first games I really got to play with my dad, and partly because it is just such a great game.
Gin rummy would be a similar example.
Jump forward a few decades and Dominion is a go-to favourite of The Meeple Guild.
That all said, while having played dozens of card games, most fall into the fun, worth occasional play category, with only the rarest of the many card games climbing to the top shelf.
So now on to Courtisans, a card game designed by Romaric Galonnier and Anthony Perone, with art by Noemie Chevalier from publisher Catch Up Games.
This is a game which has some interesting things going for it.
To start with the art by Chevalier is great. It’s bright and bold and has gold embossed highlights.
In Courtisans, you receive and play three of the great looking cards on each of your turns.
One is played at the Queen's table to sway a family's influence, whether in a positive or negative manner.
The Queen’s table could have been an ordinary game board, but not in this one it’s a woven, sort of tapestry cloth board which would look awesome matted, framed, and hung on a game room wall. It looks great, but really is more production than needed.
“The two other cards are played in your domain and in an opponent's domain, and they can be worth positive or negative points, depending on their family's status at the end of the game. Choose where best to place your three cards if you want to end up with the most points and win,” notes the publisher’s description.
And that’s it.
Well there are some special cards, the assassin which can eliminate other cards, the guard that can’t be attacked by the assassin and the spy, played face down until the end of a round, but ultimately the rules here are super simple.
And, once you’ve played a game, and get the ‘feel’ for Courtisans, it plays quickly.
It’s also versatile in playing 2-5, and frankly probably more, you just handle less cards as the number of players increases.
There a decisions to be made as you try to score points, but this is not a brain burner either.
It is a great looking, fast playing, filler style card game that won’t rise to the top of the list for most gamers, but it will likely also be welcomed to the table for a few plays many game nights too.
