Class Date: 2/26/2026
This week’s class had us playing Cursed Court, a betting and bluffing game loosely themed as minor nobles debating which major nobles to support. Cursed Court is played with a deck of 36 cards (four of each of the nine major nobles) and is played in three rounds called years, which have four rounds of betting each. At the start of every year, there is a facedown card placed between each neighboring pair of players that only they can look at. Before each round of betting, an additional card is played faceup for the whole table to see. Throughout a year, players take turns placing bets on a single noble or a set of nobles who they expect to appear. Players can use coins to steal other players’ bets, playing double the number of coins that the previous player had played on that bet. Finally, at the end of a year, each player scores points for each set that they correctly bet on and for the number of single nobles that appeared that they correctly bet on.
This game was simple to learn, but had a lot of nuance due to the bluffing aspect. My group played with five players, so each player was placing bets without seeing three of the cards. Lots of players ended a year without scoring any points because they placed their bet based on someone else’s bet that was not backed by any actual information. The most difficult part for me was keeping track of the bumped bets. If anyone had a bet removed, they got an extra turn during that round of betting before any new cards were revealed. A few times, I did not realize that someone still needed to bet and flipped a new card that needed to get shuffled back into the deck. Though this issue was also likely caused by my lack of sleep that day.
The aspect of leadership I noticed most during play was risk management. Each player had to choose what risks they were willing to take and balance out their bets accordingly. Protecting your bet with only a few coins made it easy to get it stolen, but if you use all of your coins early, you would have little agency in your later bets, which are made with more information.
Overall, I did enjoy the game. It was a quick playthrough (I believe every group got two games in before our class discussion), easy to learn, and had a lot of interesting decisions to make.