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Artsy people get excited and hyped up because this is the game you wanted! Mighty Boards and Mitch Wallace have gifted us all with an art gallery in our own home and with the excitement of an auction. What’s there to dislike? In Art Society you have to make the highest bet to ensure you get the best masterpieces to create a very successful art gallery, you also get an assistant and plenty of decorations to make it the most elegant gallery in town.
How to play (2 players)
Each player receives a “wall” (player board), 20 numbered bidding cards, a starting golden painting (blindly selected) and a random golden bidding card, the player with the lowest number on the golden bidding card starts the game.
The starting player randomly and blindly chooses 3 paintings from the box and places them in front of the “museum wall” (game board), paintings are divided in 4 categories: City life, Portrait, Still life and Landscape.
After the paintings are revealed both players select a bidding card and place it covered on the table, the cards get turned over at the same time and the player with the highest number gets to choose the painting first.
Paintings get placed on the player board and matching frames will get you decorations to help fill up your wall.
The discarded paintings get added to the museum wall and increase the value of the other paintings of the same category. Each category has a prestige marker, this will be placed on the scoring track on the museum wall.
The prestige of each category will increase each round and will add up to your score at the end of the game.
A player must place a new painting or a decoration every round, with the opportunity to store one on the side of their board with the assistant. The game ends when:
- a player has no empty spaces on their wall
- players have no bidding cards left
- a player has stored their second excess painting.
Scoring might seem complicated at first glance but, if you follow the table at the back of the rules book is pretty quick and straight forward, each player also has a score token to easily keep track of their score.
Pretty as a picture
Firstly, we would like to spend a few words for the box, as soon as we took it out of the plastic film, we were impressed with the fact that it has 2 layers. Paintings are on a lower level than the frames which gives a 3d feel, this detail was totally unnecessary but extremely satisfying and gives you a hint that the artistic team has put a great effort into the design.
Art Society is not just about placing paintings on your board, there are rules to follow that might make it tricky if your opponent picks shapes and painting categories that you really can’t fit in.
Size, frame style and category all play a very important part in the game, and my oh my if the artwork and illustrations are good!
There are quite a few people involved in the art team for this game and it paid off, they went through the very meticulous job of finding all the most famous paintings, remake them in a very cutesy way and added tiny details to make it fun and aesthetically pleasing at the same time.
This level of attention to detail, ensures that each player can really personalise and style their own gallery according to their taste and artistic flair.
The decorations are very detailed as well, and we are sure that all of us saw at least one of them on their grandparents or old aunties wall. Darn it… these little tiny dancing porcelain figurines!
Player boards are so much fun, with 4 different helpers that really bring the board to life with their personality. You can almost hear them agreeing with you on the position of your newly acquired masterpiece.
Final thoughts
Art Society is a lovely 2 to 4 player game that will delight you for about an hour. A fun, interactive, and stylish board game for the family that also, could potentially encourage the youngest players to delve into the art world, offering a wide range of paintings reproductions and artists’ homages, that you can’t help but google right after spotting them.
Very easy to pick up, calm and enjoyable with potential for a strategic game play in the last few rounds.
Many might not like the vast number of components, as between deco, paintings and cards there are hundreds of small pieces to set up and pack away.
In fact, we always have to make sure that our little one is fast asleep before taking it out to make sure those little sticky hands are well out of reach.
However, the box itself carries on the aesthetic of the game by having designed spaces for all the pieces and having a velure inset.
We highly recommend Art Society, to both those that love art and those that are not so interested in it. It doesn’t leave space for bickering or getting grumpy about the other player’s move, much to Scott’s relief as Roberta doesn’t get a chance to moan.
Now go and enjoy yourselves!
