This past week’s game, Ladies and Gentlemen was…interesting to say the least. First and foremost, this game is purposefully controversial for how it treats the two different roles, the Ladies and the Gentlemen. Throughout the entire game, the Ladies have to choose what items their Gentlemen should buy them, so at the end of the game they can accumulate enough to be the “best dressed” and win the game. There are a lot of stats for each item, as well as needing to buy different pieces to complete a set. The Gentlemen are left mostly unaware of this info, or how one item is better than the other. The only thing they know is how expensive the item is, and how badly their Lady wants it. Communication between a team of a Lady and Gentleman is supposed to be very vague, without direct explanation of details on money/items.

The Gentlemen, on the other hand, have a completely different job than the Ladies. They have to collect certain tokens in direct competition of the other Gentlemen to earn more money and complete contracts. The Ladies have no idea how much money they’ve earned, what the contracts are, etc. There can also be a lone person known as a Courtesan, who can cause people to win or lose depending on whether the Gentlemen agree to buy that person items. This throws off standard play by having the Gentlemen split their priorities, and is honestly my favorite part about the game.

Of course, this game is a satirical take on Victorian values and lifestyles, with women unable to do anything relating to resource gathering or money handling. The hardest part about this game, in my opinion, is keeping the conversation between Lady and Gentleman vague without directly telling each other what the other needs to win the game. It honestly frustrated me on how I could not control every aspect of the game (I still won though).

I don’t believe anyone I know would enjoy this game, but honestly I would highly enjoy showing this game to my mother to see what she thinks about it. I’m sure her words would be very interesting to say the least, but in the end she would get a good laugh out of it, which is what was intended in the first place.