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Board games have perhaps had a reputation for looking a bit dry, beige and boring. To be honest, I’m a fan of quite of few games that you might describe as beige, but I love it when exciting game play is combined with an interesting subject and better yet made pretty. Making, buying and displaying art is the perfect theme for a board game to tick all those boxes. These are some of my favourite games about visual arts.
A Fake Artist Goes to New York
This is a small party game which tests the artistic skill and poker face of your friends.
Each round one person will use dry erase boards to write a single word for the artists to draw. However, one of the artists doesn’t know what the word is, their board has been marked with an X. Every player has a different colour pen and using one line will contribute to the picture. The fake artist, who doesn’t know what they’re drawing, must blend in with the other players to go undetected. At the end of a round players must guess who they think is the fake artist. If the fake artist isn’t correctly identified by the majority of players, they gain a point as well as the player who chose what the artists drew. Otherwise, all the real artists receive a point. Although for me it’s one of those games that just gets played for fun and nobody ever seems to keep track of the points.
Although it involves drawing, the gameplay is not unlike The Chameleon, which I’ve also had a lot of fun with. However, The Chameleon can sometimes create a bit of tension, so I’d not necessarily play that with every game group. I’d suggest playing A Fake Artist Goes to New York with anyone though. As with most games that involve drawing, the less artistic skill you possess, the more fun the game. As long as you keep the words simple, kids can easily play and enjoy this too. A Fake Artist Goes to New York is always so much fun, you create some brilliant experiences and memories and every now and then a fabulous piece of art.
Canvas
This drew me in with a gorgeous cover when I knew nothing about the game itself, but it didn’t disappoint me when I played it. It is so beautiful, fun, clever, and unique.
Players collect transparent art cards showing different elements of a painting and can have up to five cards in hand. Each turn players can select a new art card or assemble their painting by layering three of their cards together to create a unique artwork and title. The artwork contains a set of icons used during scoring and these can be manipulated depending on the way in which players choose to layer the cards. The paintings are scored based on the criteria in the public scoring cards. When a player has made three artworks the game ends.
There’s real strategy here and the complexity can be ramped up with trickier combinations of scoring conditions. The rule book offers suggestions for the scoring criteria you might want to use. I love the balance of tactics and creativity in this game, although I can struggle with selecting pictures that are best for scoring over nicer compositions and fun titles. Still, I really appreciate games that you can play in different ways depending on your preferences and mood. Plus, part of the fun of Canvas is seeing what pictures everybody creates. The components are great, which is always a plus, but for me feels more important in games about beautiful art. It’s a really satisfying puzzle, whilst still playing nice and quickly. Often, we play two or three games in a row. It scales well and doesn’t drag at higher player counts but has an easy to implement two-player variant which works perfectly.
Kanagawa
Just like Canvas, the stunning box art on Kanagawa piqued my interest before knowing anything else about it. In the game players are acolytes following Hokusai’s teachings in a bid to improve their technique and grow their own studio.
In each round players draft multi-purpose cards which can be used to improve their studio or add to their masterpiece. Improving a studio increases the range of landscapes that artists have mastered. Adding to a masterpiece expands a painting adding different features such as trees, characters, animals, and structures as well as the season depicted.
The game ends when a player places the last section of their masterpiece. Players score based on victory points collected across their studio, sections of their painting, the longest consecutive run of matching seasons and any objectives scored throughout the game.
The artwork is beautiful throughout making this a very relaxing game. I really enjoy the process of building my masterpiece, deciding what to add and how the scene develops. That’s not to say that it’s without depth though, both the drafting and placement can be quite thinky. I really enjoy multi-use cards in games and the choices that they present, they make Kanagawa a great lighter mid-length option.
Fresco
Fresco is one of the very few games that I win in my household, but that’s not the reason that I like it so much. Perhaps less striking than some of the other games in this list, it’s got lovely tactile components and incorporates the theme brilliantly.
At the beginning of each round players decide what time they will get up, which dictates the turn order, the earlier you wake up, the earlier you can get to market and snaffle the best paints. However, it’s a fine balance, getting up at the crack of dawn every day will make your apprentices grumpy and some of them might leave to work for other artists. Using your available apprentices, players decide in secret, what actions they will take that turn, buying paint, taking commissions, working on the fresco, mixing paint, and spending some leisure time at the theatre. Points are scored throughout the game by painting the fresco using specified combinations of paint.
The theme is so well incorporated, mixing paints and getting new lovely little cubes of paint colour makes the game really immersive. The player interaction is also great, which isn’t always the case in Euro style games. The interaction here isn’t mean, but anticipating what your opponents will do and planning your actions accordingly is key. What other players do very much has an impact on the options available to you. Trying to predict who might do what is crucial to ensure you don’t waste your actions. This creates a real puzzle of keeping your apprentices happy and making sure you get enough earlier turns to get what you need. The base game has a couple of simple modules that are easy to add in providing a little extra complexity and offers lots of replayability. I wouldn’t describe this as a particularly heavy game, but it’s a step-up from gateway games. The tension created by the player interaction and interesting choices mean there’s plenty there for experienced gamers, but it’s straightforward to learn for those newer to the hobby too.
Modern Art
It’s not just meaningful creative expression, art is big business too, which is brilliantly represented in this game.
This is an auction game with an extremely simple rule set. Each player is both buying and selling the work of five different artists. In each round players take it in turns to auction one of the paintings in their hand. Each piece has an icon which determines the type of auction, if the painting sells the auctioneer collects the money otherwise, they keep the painting. At the end of each round the value of each artist’s work is determined by the number of paintings sold and players collect money equivalent to the value of their collection. After four rounds the art dealer with the most money wins.
For a game that’s so simple to play it incorporates the theme so brilliantly. This could just be an abstract auction game, but the theme really elevates this mechanism. It’s a perfect simulation of the fluctuations of a fickle and volatile art market. You must take care not to over hype artists or flood the market to make sure that you see a return on your investment.
Although you can play with three this is definitely best played at four or five, the slightly higher player count makes a big difference. This almost feels like a party game to me, it’s such a great all-rounder. With just one simple and intuitive mechanism it’s quite a welcoming game which I’d happily introduce to non-gaming folk. All the art featured is by real artists, which is a short cut to making your game beautiful, although I appreciate art is subjective. The artists featured have very different styles though, so it’s likely that some is to your taste. The rule book includes a short biography of each artist and describes their work, which I find such a brilliant touch. It’s a little like having an auction catalogue, but moreover, I love games that teach you something beyond the game itself.
The Gallerist
If you like delving into the economy side of the art world in Modern Art and you like big heavy euro games, The Gallerist may very well be for you.
This is a worker placement game that combines the roles of agent, art dealer and curator with players discovering and nurturing new and upcoming artists. Each turn you place your gallerist to select one of eight possible actions from the artist’s colony, media centre, sales office and international market. By promoting artists and buying, exhibiting and selling their work, you raise the profile of your gallery, build your reputation, and bank balance. The player with the most money at the end of the game is the winner.
This is certainly more of a challenge than any of the other games in this list and at first can seem completely overwhelming. However, the rulebook is great, there are excellent player aids and clear iconography which help make the game play smoothly once you get going. Set-up can feel a little fiddly, but you’re rewarded with such a rich crunchy game absolutely full of interesting choices. Like Modern Art the game features real works of art as well as photography by the game designer, Vital Lacerda. It has lovely components and the graphic design is really evocative, which really helps to further immerse me in the theme. I wish I had the time to play this more often, because I think the design is a work of art.
In summary
I don’t need a game to look good to enjoy it, but it certainly never hurts. Games that look appealing make the hobby more welcoming and accessible which can only be a good thing. There’s something for you here whether you’re after a casual party game or brain burner that also looks beautiful.