Everything I know about fashion came from either Zoolander or my friend Geoff, so it’s a safe bet to say I don’t know the first thing about fashion. Yasuke Sato’s Couture portrays fashion models as globe-trotting influencers, assembling a portfolio of dresses, poses, and glam squads. As auction games go, it shows glimmers of brilliance behind its workmanlike façade.

Lots. Three lots.

First, the workmanlike.

Auctions in Couture are divided across three cities. Every round populates these destinations with cards. Some, like haute couture, matching street wear, or a positive editorial, are immediately worthy of your attention. Others, like ill-matched street wear, competing agents, or wardrobe flops, function closer to poorly buried land mines, steering models away from those locales for the season.

There’s a certain degree of obviousness to these decisions that prevents Couture from demanding much attention. This is a game that can be played half-awake. There’s never a situation where a model can, for example, lean into their flops, transforming fashion disasters into a fresh identity of its own. As one of our younger players noted, the illustrations on some of the flop cards are “drip.” After some lengthy explanation that passed in one side of my old man ears and out the other, the complimentary nature of this term became clear. Could a model become so famous for their flops that they “shot the moon” and became an icon? Never.

So you bid on the good stuff and avoid the bad. The result is a game that wholly lacks the texture of the best auction games out there. This is no Ra, where a tile might be wholly appealing to one player but borderline worthless to another. This isn’t to say there aren’t preferences. Street wear becomes more valuable as it’s matched, for instance. But since street wear is worth points whether it matches or not, there’s nothing to prevent me from grabbing a certain card even if I’ll never acquire its match. The result is an auction where value is almost flippantly assessed. At a glance, those three cities are either worthwhile or best avoided. There’s very little nuance to pick through.

The bidding system is the real draw here.

Apart from one huge exception, that is. The actual auction-placing of Couture is decidedly clever. I might even describe its gimmick as Knizian, an easy-to-comprehend system that nevertheless hides real depth.

It works like this. Everybody begins with an identical hand of bidding cards. At the outset of each round, they divide them between the three locations on the table. This is done in secret, using two divider cards to show where New York becomes Paris becomes Tokyo. The result is a single fanned hand that maps out your priorities for the coming auction. Maybe today you’ll descend on Paris in force but only pay the slightest attention to New York. Or none at all.

This is where Couture finds its texture. Canny models can cast a wide net, seeking attention in all three time zones. Or they might double down on a single location in the hopes of nabbing a single valuable card.

Best of all, the shape of your hand develops across the game. In addition to regular scoring cards, you’re also chasing new looks, poses, and staff members. These become additional auction cards, altering the way you bid in future rounds. A lowly assistant might not add any influence, but their tiebreakers imply that they’re getting you ready for the runway while competing models lag behind. Agents add a whole bunch of influence, getting you into venues that might otherwise prove too exclusive, but they’re also a drain on your final score. Or maybe you’ll develop a signature look that suits a particular style, earning you an advantage when bidding on the corresponding cards.

This is impactful stuff. By the end of the game, your hand takes on an identity of its own. More than once, I’ve seen players lose because they spent too much time cultivating their personal affairs, resulting in a clutch of competing agents that could snake any auction they liked, but at too high a toll to their score. The inverse is also true, with conservative hands unable to nab the table’s most desirable offerings. There’s a balance to be struck. The trick of Couture is found in navigating that gray area between too broad an entourage and one that’s too emaciated to accomplish anything.

Card effects are minimal and restrained.

To be clear, this is only half of the battle, both as a matter of scoring and of Couture’s overall quality. While the auction cards are interesting, it’s the rest of the card offer that remains uninspired. It feels like a great bidding system in search of a better tableau to bid on. Despite the auction functioning as intended, offering textured choices and double-edged awards, the lots behind the curtain feel vapid and dull. It’s like cultivating a team that can fix prices and place million-dollar bids, only to discover you’ve won a month’s supply of Rice-A-Roni.

All in all, Couture remains more interesting as a conceptual framework than as a game. It’s inoffensive enough that it doesn’t prompt any regrets, but it’s also not likely to stick in the brain. Not exactly the desired outcome for a topic that’s all about leaving an impression. Rather than going big, this fashion show went for restrained — and failed to make a splash.

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