PLAYED FOR YOU

Cirque du Monstre

Monstrous artists

There are too many monsters living in this world, being in each other’s way and forgetting how to laugh! In the Cirque du Monstre you should assemble as many monsters of different races as possible to run the best circus in town and to teach the monsters to laugh again! You want to collect fame points, ask and bid with talent for money from sponsors and try to find new sponsors.

Cirque du Monstre is a deck building game in which you start the game with eight artists or members in your circus and one sponsor. The game uses standard mechanisms from other deck building games, each player has his personal draw pile and personal discard pile.

There are always four sponsors on display; in each round you you bid for sponsors using talent values of artist cards in your hand, adhering to stringent rules for bidding, passing and continuing bidding; then you discard artists and sponsors in order to acquire new artists, draw cards and regenerate exhausted sponsors. Special cards are used according to information on the card. When the sponsor cards are gone you win with the highest value of fame points on your artist cards on display.

Cirque du Monstre offers an original topic which has been painstakingly and lovingly implemented, in the German and English translations monster artists and their acts have very fancy names, from Slime’s Wild Spin to Hula Hooping Behemoth, and a   Noveau Riche Orc as a sponsor is quite funny, too.

The experiment to decipher cards with the help of the rules is rather tenuous work, so the game currently remains restricted to expert that speak or read Japanese! What a pity!

Players: 3-5

Age: 12+

Time: 60+

Designer: Ryo Kawakami, Hitoshi Yasuda

Art: Fujimi Shobo Kawasaki and Team

Price: ca. 30 Euro

Publisher: Kadokawa Shoten 2012

Web: www.japonbrand.gamers-jp.com

Genre: deck-building, fantasy

Users: For experts

Version: jp

Rules: de en fr

In-game text: yes

Comments:

Components in Japanese language only

Rules available in other languages, with very concise card explanation

For experts only

Compares to:

Other deck-building games

Other editions:

Currently none

Chance (pink): 2

Tactic (turquoise): 3

Strategy (blue): 2

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 1

Communication (red): 0

Interaction (brown): 1

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0