Cursed Court

Description

👑 Rule the Court or Be Cursed!

In Cursed Court, players wager their limited influence across the courtly seasons. As the machinations of the nine key nobles are progressively revealed, their fortunes rise and fall. The intrigues of the realm s greater nobility are a subject of fixation, even obsession, for the minor nobles whose fortunes are elevated or shattered by what happens at court. Cursed Court is a tight, ingenious design that continually turns the action back to the players and their deductions, strategies, and wagers. The players take the roles of minor nobles with limited power. Each has just four wagering crowns and 20 betting coins in their color. The nine major nobles appear in a three-by-three grid on the game s board, and four times each in the game s 36-card deck. From the top-left they are the Courtesan, Merchant, King, Priestess, King, Duke, Jester, Sorceress, and Assassin. Each game lasts three years, and each year has four seasons. Each year begins with hidden information. Cards are dealt face-down, like hole cards in poker, with a key exception: Each hole card is shared by a pair of adjacent players, who may both look at it. So each player begins the year knowing the card to their left and the card to their right, and other players can deduce the hidden information they can t see based on what their opponents do. Each season begins with public information. One card is dealt face-up to the tableau, an array of cards next to the board. In each season, each player places one of their crowns on a board region, either a noble region or a set region. A noble bet is a wager that at least one of that noble s cards will appear among the hidden and public cards before the year s end. A set bet is a wager that some specific collection of nobles will all appear. For example, the Opera set comprises the Courtesan, Merchant, Priestess, and Queen. If any of those nobles are missing, that wager will be worthless. Each player will leave behind one bet per season. But! The influence coins complicate the wagers and turn the players inexorably toward each other. Each region can only hold a single player s bet, so every time a player places a betting crown, they may place any number of their coins up to all they have left beneath it. Coins protect bets. If a later player wants to bump an earlier bet to take over a region, the new bet must double the original coin stack. A player who cannot double cannot bump, and must bet somewhere else. Bumped players must re-place their bets elsewhere; seasons end only when all players have placed one bet in the Spring, two bets in the Summer, three bets in the Autumn, and all four of their bets in the Winter.