Phantom of the Opera
- Board's Eye View
- Dec 30, 2025
- 2 min read
Korea Board Games' edition of Phantom of the Opera was one of the hit small-box games of Spiel Essen 2025. It's a two-player trick-taking card game designed by Geonil, who published a previous edition of the game through his company Schemers. This edition incorporates a few small changes but it's essentially the same game.
The players represent the characters from the novel, movies and musical Erik (the Phantom) and Christine. The game is played over two rounds (hands), using a deck of 24 cards in four suits numbered 1-6. Each round, four cards are removed unseen and each player is dealt a hand of 20 cards. Players choose a card to simultaneously exchange with their opponent and the number from one of those cards is designated the special number for the round; in the first round it is the Phantom that chooses the special number and the choice in the second round is made by Christine.
The game comes with four alternative player boards representing a line of music comprising 12 notes. You choose one board. The music is used to determine who should win each trick: the Phantom wants to win the notes that are in black and he wants Christine to win the notes that are not in black. Notes that go the way the Phantom wants are covered with a token, and the Phantom wins if all 12 notes are covered by the end of the second round. Christine wins if, after the two round's 20 tricks there is still one or more notes without a token.
There's more. Tho' you must always follow suit if you can, this trick-taking game incorporates a changing 'supertrump' suit as well as the ordinary trump suit. The mask suit (yellow) is trump but each of the other suits can be the stronger 'supertrump' depending on the position of the tokens on the music board; at the start of the game the mirror suit (blue) is 'supertrump'. The special number cards also add to the challenge. Whenever one is played, further card swaps are triggered and the stakes for a trick are increased (adding an extra token if it goes in the Phantom's favour and removing a previously placed token if the trick goes Christine's way).
The varying of who needs to win or lose each trick and the mid-game hand manipulation make this an interesting two-player card game while still keeping it quick and easy to play. The members of the Board's Eye View team have enjoyed our plays of Phantom of the Opera, and all have come in around 15 minutes; making this an ideal filler.
