Mascarade

12th January 2022

​Wednesday gaming round Simon's concluded with Mascarade, a fairly chaotic hidden role card game.

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What's in a game?

• Mask cards: A stable requisite of social deduction games because they are so good at hiding information are cards and Mascarade is no different in that regard. The game makes use of no less than 13 role cards, 12 of which are unique (There are 2 peasant cards.).
  Each card has it's own specific power and without going into detail, these cards frequently allow the active player to take money in some way or other from the bank or steal it from players. Some allow the active player to mess with other players' cards and so on
• Coins: Pretty standard round card tokens representing gold.
• Character tokens: Used to track which characters are in play.
• Courthouse Board: Inevitably, players will get caught bluffing or cheating and must pay a fine on this tile which depicts an official looking building.
• Scenario sheets: Used to track which cards are employed during a game. Not all cards are necessarily played with at the same time in Mascarade and the card-mix will change according to player count - Mascarade plays up to 13.

That's it for components.

Mascarade's components are normal standard you'd expect from a modern game, the game's standout quality are the colourful, detailed illustrations on the mask cards and courthouse board which to me look to have a late medieval/renaissance theme.

The game features a small amount of straightforward easy-to-understand iconography, having said that, the game also features a whole bunch of different roles to try and remember; which are only displayed on player guide cards.

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How's it play?
Setup

• Gold!: Give each player 6 gold.
• Cards: Take the cards as required by the player count; shuffle them and deal 1 to each player face-up, so that all players can see each other's roles.
  After this, all cards should be flipped to face-down.
• First player: Determine a 1st player.

That's it, we're ready to go.

On to play
Mascarade's opening is quite unique; the initial 4 turns must always be the exchange masks action, which is understandable as it randomises the cards that were initially shown. After these 4 turns, play proceeds as you would expect, the active player takes their turn, then play progress clockwise.
During their turn, the active player may perform 1 of the following 3 actions.

• Look at card: All cards are kept face-down during the game and the active player can spend their action to look at their card. This is not as futile as it might sound as players can rapidly switch cards around!
• Exchange cards: When this action is selected, the active player takes their own mask card and that of one other player without out looking or revealing either of them. Then, in secret potentially swaps them round, typically this is done by holding the cards under a table so no one can see what's going on. At this point the active player decides which card is returned to who and remember, all of this is done without looking at either of them.
• Use card: The active player announces that their card and are using its power. The active player does not look at their card when they do this and it can be done even if they aren't sure what their card is, they can even outright lie if they want to or think they can get away with it. This will then lead to 2 outcomes.
  Unchallenged: If no one challenges the active player's declaration, then the active player carries the action they announced.
  Challenged: When the active player makes their announcement, any other player may challenge them by announcing that they in fact have that card. Thus:
  Active player; "I have The Queen and I can take 2 gold from the bank".
  Other player; "no, I have The Queen".
  When all challenges have been declared, the active player and all challengers reveal their cards.
  Whoever has the announced card (In this case The Queen.) can make use of its power. Everyone else who revealed a card, be it active player or challenger has to pay 1 gold to the Courthouse Board. It is possible that no player has the announced card!

These are 3 core actions players can perform, obviously, the cards' abilities will modify these to some degree or other.

Endgame
There are 2 criteria to ending a game.
If a player acquires 13+ gold coins, they win.
If a player loses all their gold, the game immediately ends and the player with the most coins wins.

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Overall
For a large part, Mascarade feels like a pretty standard hidden role game, what makes it stand out though is the card-swapping mechanic.
During play, it's likely that players will quite quickly lose track of which character they have and announcing a card can always be risky; now that's what I call a hidden role!
This can of course be remedied by taking the look at card action, but is it worth spending an entire action to do so while other players could be earning money? Maybe it's worth taking a the risk - or bluffing!
Nudging players into this central dilemma is what makes it unique and interesting.
Otherwise, you'll be on pretty familiar ground if you like hidden role games: Trying to work towards your goals while also trying to calculate what other players are doing or which character they have - although the randomness of Mascarade has made that trickier!

It's hard to gauge  a game Mascarade because like many hidden role games, it's quality is dependant on the players involved, as you tend to play the player and not the game.

Like most hidden role games, Mascarade can be a bit divisive. If you don't like this style of games, you can probably give this a pass.
However, if on the other hand hidden role games are you thing and particularly if you like a bit of unpredictability in your game, then Mascarade is definitively worth a try.