Players: 3-5
Playing Time: 60-90 minutes

The Components

Masquerade comes in a small card box containing 72 cards. They're all full-color linen-textured cards. As is common for this niche of more complex card game there are a number of different types of cards. Each player will get a Mask card and a Dancer card. Order cards are allocated each turn. A board is made out of Stage cards, some of which cause you to select Guardian/Treasure cards or Event cards. Emblem cards give victory points for various conditions, while Spell cards are the only deck which you draw randomly from during the game. Despite the huge mass of cards, it was quite easy to keep straight what was what during gameplay.

The artwork on the cards is very stylistic, full of bold lines and solid colors. It's like a cross between Mike Mignola and Japanese anime. None of my players actually liked the style very much, but it did get the idea of Japanese pop culture across.

The usability of the cards was fair. The most important values of each card were clearly marked in brightly color circles, but you had to read text to understand the specifics of any card.

Overall I've given Masquerade a high "3" out of "5" for Style. It's got good-quality cards, and everything is fair.

The Gameplay

The object of Masquerade is to gain victory points by collecting treasures, beating other dancers in duels, collecting emblems of power, and meeting your mask's secret victory conditions. In other words: doing lots of different stuff.

Setup: Each player is secretly dealt a mask. This reveals a secret victory condition, which is either ending the game with one of the three Emblems in hand (Dragon, Rose, or Sword) or else ending the game by one of the three possible ways (by running out the Event, Guardian, or Spell deck).

Then each player is dealt an Order card, which will determine their order of play on the first round. (In future rounds, Order cards also grant a special power.)

Finally each player selects a Dancer card in reverse order. Just as their Mask represents the divine being who is playing this cosmic game, the Dancer is their avatar. Each Dancer has a specific power value (from 2-4) and a special ability which influences the game, mostly by allowing the drawing of more Spell cards or making them cheaper to play. Each player also has 2 life.

The rest of the cards are also set up. The six Stages are laid out, forming the board. The Guardian deck is placed nearby in numerical order (from easiest to hardest monster). The Event deck is set nearby in alphabetical order. The Emblem cards are spread out, to be claimed later in the game.

Order of Play: Each round of the game has five phases:

1. Order Phase
2. Stage Phase
3. Spell Phase
4. Challenge Phase
5. Event Phase

Order Phase: In order, each player choose a different Order card than the one they currently have. This will influence their order for the rest of the round, and also what additional special power they get (as described below).

This step is omited in the first round, and further no player can use the special power of their Order card that round.

Stage Phase: In order, each player places their Dancer on one of the six Stages. There is a limit: each Stage can only hold one or two Dancers. This can make the order quite important if you want to go to a specific Stage. Afterward, a player gets to use the special powers of the Stage he landed on, of his Order card, and possibly of his Dancer and Treasures.

Stages. Each of the six Stages give specific advantages or access to specific decks of cards:

• Arena: Allows player to challenge another player in the appropriate phase. [dancer limit: 2]
• Chapel: Allows player to play an Event during the appropriate phase. [dancer limit: 1, may only be used every other round]
• Circle: Player loses 1 life and draws 2 spells. [dancer limit: 2]
• Fountain: Player gains 2 life. [dancer limit: 2]
• Library: Player draws 1 spell. [dancer limit: 2]
• Tower: Allows player to challenge the next Guardian in the appropriate phase. [dancer limit: 1]

Orders. Based on the Order card they took, each player may have an additional advantage:

1. Leading. Just lets you go first.
2. Rumbling. Gives you +1 power all turn.
3. Guarding. Keeps you out of challenges all turn unless you have the most VPs.
4. Meditating. Players draws 1 spell.
5. Watching. Player gains 1 life.

Characters & Treasures. Some Dancers have powers that go off in this phase, such as the Word Caster who gets to draw an extra Spell at the Circle or the Library. Some Treasures that players may have gained also go off at this time, such as the Philosopher's Stone, which also lets you draw a Spell.

Spell Phase: About half the Spells that you can get in the game can be cast in the spell phase. These do things like let you gain life, steal VPs from other players, and play events. Each spell has a level cost, from 0 to 3, which is the number of additional cards that you must discard to play the spell. This keeps things very tight because there is a hand limit of 5, which means that a level 3 spell requires almost your entire hand. In order, each player casts as many spells as he wants during this phase.

Emblem of the Roses. There are three Emblems in the game. Each of these is a victory point counter worth 1 point that can move around between the players based on actions. The first of these is the Emblem of the Roses. It comes into play when someone selects the Picking Flowers event (in the Event phase) then goes to a new player when they cast the Nocturne spell (in the Spell phase).

Challenge Phase: Any players on the Arena may now challenge another player each, and the player on the Tower must challenge a Guardian. This is, as usual, done in order.

Challenging a Guardian. A player challenges the topmost Guardian in the stack by comparing his power to the power of the Guardian. He may increase his power by one or more points by playing Challenge spells. Then the Guardian's power is increased randomly from 0-3 by flipping up a Spell card, then adding the level cost of the card to the Guardian's power. Many of the Guardians also have special powers, such as the Medusa who wounds her attacker even if they win and the Sphinx, who actually flips two cards.

If the player wins the challenge, they flip over the Guardian, take the Treasure shown on the back, and also draw a Spell card. If they lose, they lose a life.

Challenging Players. Challenging a player works similarly. First the attacker players as many challenge Spell cards as he wants to increase his power, then the defender does.

The winner of the challenge draws one Spell, then lays a Spell face-down in front of them as a victory point. The loser loses a life.

Losing Life. As noted, each Dancer starts off with 2 life. If they're reduced to 0, they can no longer initiate challenges, and if they end up in a challenge, they fight with a power of 0 ... until they increase their life to above 0 again.

Other Emblems. The two other Emblems come into play during the challenge phase. The Emblem of the Dragon goes to the first player who takes a Treasure and thereafter moves to the player with the most treasures. The Emblem of the Sword goes to the first player who defeats another in a challenge, then moves to another player when they defeat the player holding it.

Event Phase: The last phase of the round is the Event phase. A player with a Dancer in the Chapel sorts through the Event deck, picks one, and plays it. The Events have various beneficial effects, such as giving the player the Emblem of the Roses or setting up a series of challenges, which the Chapel players has a +2 in.

Ending the Round: At the end of the round each player takes his Dancer back from its Stage. Then unless the game ended, a new round is begun.

Ending the Game: The game ends when one of three conditions is met:

1. The Event deck is emptied.
2. The Guardian/Treasure deck is emptied.
3. The Spell deck has been reshuffled a number of times equal to the number of players

Then each player counts up their Victory Points which include: 0-2 points for the various treasures; 1 point for each card stored away for defeating a player; 2 points for meeting a Mask victory condition; and 1 point for each emblem of power. The player with the most points is the winner.

Relationships to Other Games

Masquerade is a pretty rare Japanese game brought to the American market. It's the third such which Z-Man has published, the first being Fairy Tale, by the same author, and another being Stack Market. Like the other games, Masquerade is an entirely unique design, fairly nonstandard for the current market.

Masquerade falls closest in genre to the card-game-that-plays-like-a-board-game genre of gaming. This niche is mainly filled by the German publisher Adlung Spiel who puts out complex, sophisticated games in tiny card boxes, often using the same trick as Masquerade does: using cards to fulfill a lot of different functions in the game.

Finally, with its emphasis on random card draws and the take-that play which many of them generate, Masquerade is in some ways closer to the American design school than anything you'd find in Europe.

The Game Design

Overall, Masquerade is a surprisingly tight resource-management game. You have three vital things which you're trying to balance: your life, your hand of spells, and your victory points. As a result you're constantly trading off the first two for the third, and every round is a battle to figure out how you can make best use of Orders and Stages to improve your resources and thus score. Not only is this all quite tactical, but there's also some nice strategy, as you can plan a (hopeful) sequence of moves a couple of rounds ahead.

There is randomness in the game, most obviously present in the drawing of the Spell cards. However it tends to move the players in a few directions. First, it encourages them to slow down the leader, generally a good thing. Second, with regard to use of the spell bonuses in challenges, it creates risk-reward gameplay. You have to assess whether you can take out an opponent or not, then go for it.

One of the biggest factors in whether you'll like the game or not is in how you react to the card-game-that-plays-like-a-board-game genre. If you like it, this is a great example that feels like it has just a bit more depth and color than much of what Adlung produces. If you prefer to have a board instead of a bunch of fiddly cards, however, this game won't change that basic fact.

Masquerade earns a "4" out of "5" for Substance: a good game.

Conclusion

Masquerade is a unique Japanese card game design by Satoshi Nakamura. It has been randomness in it than most German designs, but nonetheless allows for a fair amount of strategic resource management. For just $15, it packs as much gameplay into its little box as you can find in many releases that are twice the cost.