As anyone who has seen me can attest, I have no interest in fashion. That said, The Battle of Versailles is based on a true story that is interesting even to people like me, suffering from a love/hate relationship with their wardrobe.
In 1973, a fashion show was announced as a direct competition between the leading designers of France and America. The reason behind The Battle of Versailles was twofold; firstly, this was a great way to raise awareness and money to renovate the Palace of Versailles. Secondly, the underdog American designers would be given the opportunity to compete against the giants of French haute couture - gaining exposure beyond anything they could otherwise hope for (even if it was generally seen as a foregone conclusion that France would win).
The event itself was unlike anything seen before in the fashion world and was far more successful in achieving their goals than anyone predicted.
As anyone who has seen me can attest, I have no interest in fashion. That said, The Battle of Versailles is based on a true story that is interesting even to people like me, suffering from a love/hate relationship with their wardrobe.
In 1973, a fashion show was announced as a direct competition between the leading designers of France and America. The reason behind The Battle of Versailles was twofold; firstly, this was a great way to raise awareness and money to renovate the Palace of Versailles. Secondly, the underdog American designers would be given the opportunity to compete against the giants of French haute couture - gaining exposure beyond anything they could otherwise hope for (even if it was generally seen as a foregone conclusion that France would win).
The event itself was unlike anything seen before in the fashion world and was far more successful in achieving their goals than anyone predicted.
This event has the theme running through every facet of this cut-throat, highly asymmetric game. Each player is trying to influence the catwalk to gain prestige, attract the most celebrities, or complete an objective unique to each side.
One player is the French team, with establishment support and far more resources, but stuck in predictable and stale styles. As well as the shared win conditions, they win if they are able to finance enough renovations for Versailles.
The other side is the American team. Brash newcomers, with relatively unknown designers but a far more dramatic and unique style. Their unique win condition is to display enough varieties of dress styles.
Behind the scenes
Setup is simple, but keep the rulebook nearby – the specifics of the exact tile layout can be hard to remember.
How it starts...
First, open the Versailles board and place Versailles tokens of the relevant colour face down on each space. Flip the middle two face up. Place the Prestige token in the neutral position on the left of the track.
Next, place each runway tile in a line (making sure each is in the correct order, the correct edge is facing each player, and the starting side is facing upwards). The tiles are clear about which is the starting side and which edge is for each country, so the only thing you may need a reminder of is which order to place them in.
Each player takes their designers deck, shuffles it, and places it face up alongside the Designers tile.
They then shuffle their team deck and place that face down beside the Draw Cards tile. Place the Model standee on the Draw Cards tile to show where we start.
All’s fair in love and wardrobe
The game lasts for a maximum of 5 rounds but is often won before then.
Starting from whichever tile is currently first (I’ll explain that later), each player performs the action for their side of the tile (if any). Each tile has arrows to show which player goes first. Once done, the model moves to the next tile, and this proceeds until the end of the runway. At this point, each current Designer is discarded, the model moves back to the start, and a new round is started.
The runway is the first obvious asymmetry in the game. The 5 “Play a card” tiles are weighted so France plays a total of 5 cards, but America only plays 3. Also, many of the other tiles start off with an advantage to France. For example, right from the start both players draw 5 cards, but America has to then discard one.
As with the real The Battle of Versailles, at first glance America has no hope of winning. In fact, in a highly thematic but potential flaw with the game for some, the general opinion is that America is actually more powerful than France due to the strength of their deck and has a tiny overall advantage.
When playing a card, you have multiple options.
- You can place a dress beside the current tile. If there is already a dress there, they stack so the top icon of the previous card is still visible. For the French, their dresses are low scoring, so you stack them up to increase the prestige. For Americans, it leaves one of the features visible to showcase variety and helps them with their unique win condition.
- You can play a celebrity card to Versailles. Not only do some celebrities have abilities when played, filling Versailles with 7 of your celebrities is one of the win conditions. There is a bit of a fight in this, as each player can kick an opponent’s celebrity off and take their place.
- You can play an event. These can have a variety of effects, and it is one of the ways America can excel, as their event cards are often far more powerful than France’s.
- Instead of playing a card, you can discard a card to do one of the following: Draw the number of cards noted on the bottom of the card, or place it face down alongside the Income tile. Again, the American cards are generally more powerful at this than France, but France gets to do it nearly twice as often.
When you reach the Designer tile, the current dresses’ styles are checked against the designer’s skills. If there are the right styles visible on dresses along your side, you can trigger the associated abilities (potentially multiple times). This allows players to tweak the runway to change the order or adjust the balance of power.
The Income tile is how you fund the renovation of Versailles. The cards discarded here are revealed, and whoever has the highest income takes two face-up Versailles tokens. If the other player has generated at least half the income of the winner, they also get to take a face-up token. Any tokens adjacent to the ones taken are then flipped over. Each token has an instant ability and a certain number of flag icons; these icons are for France’s unique win condition.
The last tile is the Prestige tile. Each side adds up all the prestige on their side of their dresses, celebrities, current designer, and runway. Totals are compared, and the Prestige token is moved along the track by the difference. This is a simple tug of war; if either player reaches their end of the track, then they win.
Things can get busy by the end
A Runway Success
At first glance the runway is just a simple turn track, somewhat weighted to France’s advantage. This is where this turns into a battle rather than just a race.
Each runway tile can be moved or altered using various events, celebrities, designers, and Versailles tokens.
Moving tiles changes the order in which the runway will be processed, which can also potentially skip or repeat a tile during the current round.
Each tile also has a level of advantage, signified by yellow spotlights. The Play a Card tiles have two states, with one side being upgraded and/or the other side being downgraded when flipped. The other tiles have no fixed side, so they are flipped/rotated to gradually switch on/off lights on each side. So, you could switch from 1>2 to 0>3 or 2>1, with the bonuses on each side of the card ratcheting up/down accordingly.
The tiles can be adjusted to give advantage to one side or the other
These tile bonuses can massively change the potential of that stage. From as simple as deciding who plays a card first or giving a wildcard style to help score from your designer, to allowing a player to add an extra card before revealing Income, making it harder/easier to trigger Designer abilities, or setting how many cards each pllayer draws.
This does mean that a slight advantage in the runway can lead to snowballing, as your next round is improved and can allow you to adjust the runway in your favour even more. That said, the game is quite quick, and with all of the plates that both sides are spinning, you can often sneak a win through a seemingly unfair runway.
Style isn’t everything… but it helps
Considering the subject matter, The Battle of Versailles artwork is surprisingly muted. That said, it’s a great touch that the celebrities and designers have drawings of the real people. Event cards also relate to specific incidents with images to match. The rulebook includes historical notes of designers and events; it really helps sell that this is a story rather than just a series of random cards.
Iconography is generally very easy to work out after a bit of practice, although some (especially on some Versailles tokens) need to be remembered rather than recognized.
Dancing in high heels
It’s often a struggle in asymmetric games to keep the game balanced. In a historically accurate choice that may put some people off, this game is purposefully not quite fair. While the game starts off with France ahead, it’s the Americans that have a power advantage overall in their deck.
This does mean that it’s essential for each side to play very differently to avoid crashing out.
America’s cards are more powerful. While they have fewer chances to play cards, those cards can have far more impact and can allow America to steamroll to a Prestige or Celebrity win. America’s strategy is to run fast and hard to a win, although your chances are a bit more luck-based as you often rely on drawing the right cards. You get more cards back when discarding, but that uses up one of your rarer card plays. Still, fishing for the right card can really swing the game.
France gets to do more, but everything is a little weaker than their opponents'. You spend far more time playing both sides of the board and blocking your opponent’s plans. As you only keep the styles of the top dresses in each stack, you also have to plan more to trigger the Designer abilities this round. It’s a far more defensive, reactive (and maybe more stressful) play style, which does mean The Battle of Versailles is a great game for people that play games differently from each other. I do wonder if France is seen as weaker, at least in part, because they have a more complex play style compared to America’s less nuanced strategy. With more plates to spin, it’s easier to drop one.
Final thoughts
I can honestly say that I’ve never played a game quite like The Battle of Versailles. The number of interactions, hidden bidding for Income, constant adjusting of the runway, and tug-of-war over celebrities and prestige mean that you are constantly fighting on multiple fronts.
This is also probably one of the most vicious 2-player games I’ve played. Events and abilities allow you to move dresses, kick out celebrities, steal income, and aggressively stack the runway in your favour. Moving the current tile can completely derail your opponent by skipping an action they were obviously planning for (or skipping one of America’s three card tiles).
I really do enjoy this game, but the way that the game can sometimes allow one player to turn the entire game against the other means it’s best for people who enjoy the playing more than the winning. The game is quite quick (about 30 minutes or so), so you can play both sides or multiple times. Even with the slight imbalance, France does often win. From personal experience, the majority of games ended a tile or two before the other player would have won.
