Canvas Finishing Touches Review

“Ahem! May I present for the exhibition; Vast Mess. A juxtaposition of serene sea life, overlaid with a pasta representation of the gluttony of humanity”. I hold the picture up to the group, quashing the protesting inner artist. “Oh and what a coincidence, I’ve just noticed this picture has just about enough triangles to get me 4 ribbons and a place in the “Most Shapes” standing picture frame.” (One of 4 frames in the Finishing Touches expansion). And there my overlapping monstrosity stands stark against what is one of the most aesthetically pleasing games I own.

There is no getting away from the production quality of Canvas and the second expansion is no exception. The artwork is simply gorgeous and the components are high quality (especially the wooden tokens and extra cards in the deluxe edition). Canvas hits our gaming table a lot due to its beauty and simplicity. It is easy to teach as a gateway game, and is a quick and light relief from our heavier eurogames as there are only two actions; take a card, or complete a painting. All the replayability and light complexity lies in the scoring conditions, which are modular, and can change each game. That said, when you add in both expansions, it gains more table presence, and with extra ways of scoring to think about, can exceed the 30 minute game time depicted on the box.

The first expansion, Canvas: Reflections, adds a large board, “x2” icons and double sided “reversible” cards. This time, Canvas: Finishing Touches gives us cards with a “wild” star symbol, blending icons (copy the icon(s) next to it), individual player powers(deluxe), and four exhibition frames where the paintings with the most hue, shape, texture and tone icons respectively are displayed for extra points. Did I mention individual player powers!!

Finishing Touches maintains the core gameplay mechanics of just two actions, then adds one extra step after completing a painting. Here you choose one of the four core icons pictured on the painting, and exhibit that painting in the associated frame for extra points. If a painting is already exhibited in that frame, you need to beat the number of the specified icon in that painting in order to supersede it. If there were a large amount of points on offer here, you may aim to “kick” a player's painting out of a frame. Alas there are not, so player interaction stays fairly low. The player powers however, are fantastic. They are pictured, but I won't spoil them in the text of this review. It was very enjoyable to discover them during unboxing and I am unlikely to play a game of canvas without this module again.

Canvas suffers from one drawback associated with a few drafting games where the market isn’t refreshed during the game. I lovingly call this the “Vast Mess” problem as you can get some quite funny results. The scoring on Canvas is not linked to how the picture looks. With a limited market of cards; sometimes given the cards in front of you, the best score requires overlaying cards all with, for example, the image in the top right. The wild, and blending icons in this expansion give you a little bit of grace here as they can help to satisfy multiple “scoring cards”, giving a chance to make selections based on the picture as well. That said, the reflections expansion is much better at solving the Vast Mess problem, as flipping a card will move its image to the other side of your masterpiece if needed. Because of this, I was a little disappointed that there were no reflection cards in this expansion. With 30 (+10 if deluxe) additional art cards in the deck, the 30 reversible ones come up less often when all are combined.

Final Thoughts

Where there is nothing groundbreaking in this Finishing Touches expansion, what’s not to love about more content and replayability for this beautiful, innovative game. There are more art cards, more scoring cards and if you go deluxe, artist cards with player powers. If you have Canvas, play it mostly with two players, and and are choosing between the expansions, go and look at Canvas Reflections. If you already have both, this expansion is a very nice “finishing touch”.