| 👨👩👧👦 | Players: 2-5 |
| ⏳ | Time: 20-30 mins |
| 🎂 | Ages: 8+ |
| ⚙️ | Mechanisms: Set Collection, Take That |
A banquet with the Queen sounds fun right? Well it can be, as long as you don’t mind a little backstabbing, spying and some court intrigue with your food!
We’ve been busy playing Courtisans, a 2-5 player game where you try to influence which families at the Queen’s court gain favour, and which ones end up in the doghouse!
In Courtisans, players draw a hand of three cards each turn. You choose one to keep, one to give to another player, and one to place either above or below the court to in a bid to sway that family’s reputation.
Each card shows the colour and crest of one of the six families attending the event, along with any special abilities they have. At the end of the game you get points for having collected cards from families that ended up in the Queen’s good books, and lose points for any that have fallen from grace.
We always like a game that you can just pull out and play and this fits the bill nicely. Setup is quick and easy, and the cloth mat is a nice touch and helps keep the box size down. While the actions are very simple, there’s so much to think about! You need to make some tough choices about which cards to keep and where to play the others, and be ready to pivot at a moment’s notice if the court starts moving in a way that works against you.
We’ve had a lot of fun using some of the special cards, especially the assassins which let you remove cards you don’t like, and the mysterious spies who keep their allegiance hidden until it’s time to score. The goal cards are great too, as they give you some added direction and depth. Scores can be quite close and it’s often been the points from completing one of the goals that decided the winner!
We’ve only played at two so far and because you always have to give the same player your third card it makes for some intense decisions. Sometimes you can’t help but give them something that helps them, even when you don’t want to. We’re keen to see if this changes with more players and are looking forward to visiting with the Queen again soon.
You can see this post on Instagram here and if you are interested you can find out more about the game on the Pandasaurus website
The copy of Courtisans used for this review was provided to A Tale of Two Meeples by Pandasaurus Games and LPG Distribution
The Boardgame Detective 
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