18 May 2025
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Maskmen is a shedding game, a simple card game where the goal is to empty your hand before your opponents, played over several rounds. Each round is a season of wrestling, the cards in your hands represent one of six colourful characters who have to be pitted against one another.
Written by Dan York
Throwdown! It’s time for a wrestling-themed small card game from purveyors of small box delights, Oink Games. Maskmen is a long-awaited reprint of a decade-old design which I can’t get enough of!
How to Play Maskmen
The rules are simple, initially the slate is clear and no one wrestler is stronger than another, but by playing out more cards than in the previous hand, a player can define that, for example, the green wrestler is stronger than grey right now. This means that for the rest of the round, it becomes easier to play a green card after a grey one. The first half of each round sees players establishing relationships between each of the card colours, defining who is the strongest and weakest this season.
This organically transitions into a rush to find the best way to empty the cards from your hand, assessing how best to use the strongest wrestlers in your hand to sneak in the weaker ones and to finally shed them from your grip.
The gameplay is such a breeze, rounds go by very quickly even when there are six players at the table. This is great because it smooths out any potential bad feelings that might arise as a result of a bad hand.
There is, of course, a luck factor in any card game, and on your first few plays it can be tempting to think that Maskmen is unfair, when some players seems to always have the perfect answer, but in my experience, many games ended up being won by the same handful of individuals so skill does prevail.
Related Article: Read our review of Tiger & Dragon, another fantastic Oink Game
Maskmen Game Review
The game is fantastic at asking you interesting tactical questions, pushing you to evaluate your hand every turn. Since you last took a game action, it’s likely that new relationships between the card colours have been created, so the four purples in your hand which you were concerned about, suddenly now have an opening to win a round or two.
Production-wise, the Oink Games small form factor continues to be a boon. Maskmen has made it into my short list of games that I can carry everywhere with me, something to crack out when there’s 20 minutes and a handful of people waiting for something. It’s not the easiest to put back into the box afterwards, I’m often worried about damaging some of the tokens, but never in a way that would be detrimental to gameplay.
The rulebook is dense with text and mostly unhelpful images that don’t contribute to a clean learning or teaching environment, it took us a few plays to get the rules absolutely correct, which is a shame, but once people are past their first round, it shouldn’t be too much of a deal-breaker.
I really love Maskmen, it’s a huge hit among many of my play groups as another swift card game filler experience. The dynamic card value system is a curiosity which gets people thinking from the very first turn, but it’s never a brain burner. The box is a little overloaded with too many components and the rules are a touch hard to teach, but none of that matters compared to how fun and exciting most games of Maskmen are.
Related Article: Read our review of more Oink Games, with DroPolter
Maskmen Verdict
This is a must play game. Breezy, interactive and just really funny. Maskmen is easily a go-to filler game for me! It's worth trying if you liked Scout, as Maskmen and Scout both sit perfectly as examples of small card games with a traditional feel, layered with some modern design twists.
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About Maskmen
Designer: Jun Sasaki, Taiki Shinzawa
Publisher: Oink Games
Time: 15-25 minutes
Players: 2-6
Ages: 9+
Price: £10
What’s in the box?
- 60 Wrestler Cards
- 30 Strength Markers
- 12 Score Counters
- Game Manual