Masques

Players act as heads of rival Venetian families sending guest cards to a masked ball in the Doge's palace to gain favor with guild masters and collect ducats. Gameplay centers on a hand of guest cards with varying influence values and unique powers; players place these guests in palace rooms and in the hallways between rooms to contest adjacent rewards. Guests can belong to any family in play, so players can use rivals’ representatives strategically and manipulate opponent placements to shift influence. Scoring comes from controlling rooms and claiming tokens representing guild favor or money, with timing and card placement determining political power by the game's end.

Players: 2–4 best 4
Playing time: 45 min
Age: 13+
Complexity: 2 / 5

5.4 on LudoyaPoliticalRenaissanceArea Majority / InfluenceHand ManagementOpen Drafting

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About the game

Design: Pascal Pelemans
Charles Chevallier
Catherine Dumas
Art: Miguel Coimbra
Édouard Guiton
Goulven Quentel

Where to buy it

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Fantasy ShopOut of stock 12.95 €

On Ludoya's tables

Full stats in Ludoya

12
Plays logged: 22
Players: 22m 30s
Average play: 16
In collections

5.4/10

from 9 Ludoya reviews

Evan4.6
This is a light game where you brick out these cards into a square. They are placed in alternating coin or faction spots, leaving room for cards between. Players draft character cards representing themselves, all other player's guys and the guys of one unaligned color. Then players play whatever cards they managed to draft into the spots on the wall. At the end of a round, whichever color has the most strength adjacent to a coin or faction spot, gets the reward for that spot. To add interest, there are unaligned guys with special abilities you can buy and place instead of being forced to use that high strength opponent's guy you drafted. It's cute and there are a lot of moving pieces to think about. I feel ambivalent about this game as I never really felt I had a good grasp of what the strategy is and what to be careful about. Our game ended where I wound up handing the victory to someone else out of not seeing the only move that would have stopped him, because I was too focused on setting myself up for a victory on the following turn. :star: Art, Iconography and components functional :star: Clever or interesting mechanisms :star: Reasonably low downtime between turns with mildly AP players :star: Multiple plays stay interesting :star: Low or mitigatable luck elements :star::nostar::nostar::nostar::nostar: Raw enjoyment
Benjamín Amorín7.0
Filler and easy card game pretty cool. I have good memories of this one.