Let’s get this out of the way up front: yes, Courtisans is a funny title for a card game. Designed by Romaric Galonnier and Anthony Perone, one presumes the title’s French meaning hasn’t gone the way of the English word “courtesans” to imply upscale prostitutes. Or maybe it has. I really couldn’t tell you.

Look, it doesn’t matter. Whether it’s about upscale prostitutes, upscale courtiers, or upscale court officiants, Courtisans is a shockingly good game with almost zero rules overhead.

My collection of courtiers.

The queen is throwing a bash. Everybody who’s anybody is invited. Unfortunately, royal parties tend to devolve into squabbling. Did I say unfortunately? I meant the opposite of that.

The central conceit of Courtisans is a deck of cards spread across six suits that represent various courtly notables, hangers-on, and general doofuses, plus a deceptively straightforward rule for how to play them. It goes thusly: every turn, you will draw three cards into your hand. One of these cards must be played to your own domain. Basically, that’s your scoring tableau. Another card must be played to an opponent’s domain. And the third must be played to the queen’s royal table.

This final destination is the most important of all, not to mention the one with some actual flexibility. Cards can be played either to the top or bottom of the table. When the deck and everybody’s hands are fully depleted, the position of all those cards will determine whether each of those six houses are esteemed or fallen from grace. In layman’s terms, whether they’re worth a positive or negative point. Everybody now looks at their domain and tallies up their score. It’s as easy as riding a bicycle upside down.

Except there are two wrinkles. The first is that certain courtisans boast special abilities. Spies are placed face-down, whether adding some uncertainty to a player’s domain or cluttering the queen’s table with blind bids. Assassins remove a card from wherever they’re placed, producing wild swings of fortune. Guards are immune to assassins. (That’s a far cry from the thousands of guards I’ve assassinated across hundreds of games, but okay.) And nobles count as two cards, whether for scoring purposes or counted at the table.

To prevent everybody from bandwagoning at the first sight of a favored or fallen house, everybody also draws two goal cards at the start of the game. These provide scoring bonuses provided you meet their hidden objectives. You might, for example, earn extra points for causing the collapse of the House of Carps and holding at least four guards when the feast ends. Or perhaps you’re seeking to possess fewer Nightingales than your left-hand neighbor while also ensuring every house has at least one card under the table. Smartly, the goal cards are divvied up into two decks, with one featuring objectives that are more contingent on the luck of the draw.

The royal court and its attendant courtesans.

Not that anything in Courtisans is devoid of chance. This is very much a game of luck, albeit one that features a healthy dose of social navigation. Everything is negotiated between players, a nonverbal but critical dialogue over which houses will be rewarded or punished, and by extension which players will prosper or fail.

In that process, every single play represents a droplet of information. The card you add to your own domain is likely a house you hope will succeed, while those you place at the queen’s table can speak volumes about your long-term goals. At the same time, because everything is drawn at random, there’s no telling whether a particular clue is accurate. When the Hares are currently worth a point, did you drop one of their cards into an opponent’s domain because they’re trailing and an extra point won’t do any harm? Do you intend to switch the Hares’ fortunes at your earliest convenience? Or were you simply making do with a bum draw?

This is hardly the first game that’s asked players to determine the relative value of their scoring pile. One recent example is Sankoré, in which your collection of scholarly accomplishments might be worth a heap of points or nothing at all depending on which tomes the table’s collective academia decided to publish. Courtisans pulls the same trick, but with such elegance that it puts the competition to shame. There are no bells or whistles here, let alone complex systems. Only a stark, immediate, and sometimes obscured table state that forces everyone into a constant reckoning.

And the way it develops! Truly, it’s a thing to see. Dribbled out three cards at a time, it isn’t long before the table is an interlocking tangle of not only scoring values, but allegiances and bad blood. Courtisans is a masterclass in how people form silent partnerships or rivalries. This is the sort of game where two players might feed one another points just to prevent everyone from piling on, only for one of them to turn traitor because their former partner was growing flush on favored Toads and Stags.

The mask disguises his identity.

Ultimately, that’s what makes Courtisans special. Even though it doesn’t feature negotiations the way we usually conceptualize them, with trades and verbal promises, it’s a defiantly social experience. Players make agreements simply by laying out cards, whether to increase or decrease a house’s scoring value, bump a player’s domain, or assassinate a valuable noble. It’s simple, it’s fast, it’s unburdened, but it’s also deliciously complicated to navigate. While its chancy core might put off some folks, it’s slight enough that a series of bad draws only costs fifteen minutes. Courtisans is an upscale winner.

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A complimentary copy was provided.